Charles Atlas

Charles Atlas, film director and video artist, has been producing film and video works since the mid-1970's. Much of his recent output in these media has been the result of commissioned works for television in the US and Europe.

His film, Merce Cunningham: A Lifetime of Dance, a 90 minute international co-production for television won a "best documentary" award at Dance Screen 2000 in Monaco. Atlas created the host video sequences and served as consulting director for the 2003-04 season of the PBS series, Art 21: art of the 21st century. His recent film The Legend of Leigh Bowery, a documentary feature had a theatrical release in the US and was released on DVD in 2004. His latest film Magic City, USA about magicians and Las Vegas was commissioned by ARTE and was broadcast in Europe on New Years Eve 2004-5.

Many of Atlas’ films and videos have been made in collaboration with choreographers/dancers (including Merce Cunningham, Douglas Dunn, Karole Armitage, Philippe Decoufle and Michael Clark) and performers (including John Kelly, DANCENOISE, Marina Abramovic, Diamanda Galas, and Leigh Bowery). Recent dance-related pieces include Rainer Variations (2002), with choreographer/filmmaker Yvonne Rainer and Views on Camera (2005) and Views on Video (2005) with choreographer Merce Cunningham. A selection of his film and video works were screened as part of a retrospective survey of his career at Tate Modern (2006).

Throughout his career, Atlas has also been involved as collaborator in live performance work, as director and also as designer of sets, costumes, lighting, and mixed media presentations. His work in this area has spanned the range from loft performances to opera house productions. He has been designing lighting for the Michael Clark Company since 1984.

His multi-media performance/theater piece, Delusional, (created in collaboration with Marina Abramovic) for solo performer was presented in Europe in April 1994. Atlas created video sequences about the work of the Judson Dance Theatre in the 1960s as part of The White Oak Dance Project's PastForward, which toured the US and Europe in 2001. Glimpse, a collaboration with Cesc Gelabert and Carlos Miranda for which he provided the DVD video projection was premiered at Forum 2004 in Barcelona.

Atlas designed costumes and created live video projections for the stage production, Muscle Shoals, a collaboration with choreographer Douglas Dunn and composer Steve Lacy, which premiered in Paris in February 2003. Most recently, he created the live video component for TURNING, a collaboration with Antony and the Johnsons which premiered in April 2004 at St. Ann’s Warehouse and toured across Europe in 2006. He is currently collaborating with Austrian musician Christian Fennesz on a new live video/ music improvisation piece recently performed in Paris and Berlin.

Atlas has created several large-scale, mixed media video installations. The Hanged One had as its components 15 channels of video, programmed lighting, and kinetic sculptural elements, shown at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1997. Recent video installations have been exhibited at XL Xavier LaBoulbenne, NY; the Aldrich Museum for Contemporary Art, CT; The Kitchen, NY; Magazin 4, Austria; Ost-Gut, Berlin; La Criee, France; and Performance Space, Australia. His recent gallery show, “Instant Fame” consisted of a series of real-time video portraits of performers and artists created live in the gallery space. It was originally installed at Participant, Inc. in New York (2003) and later remounted at the Vilma Gold Gallery in London (2006).

Atlas is the recipient of three "Bessie" (New York Dance and Performance) Awards. The most recent (1998) was in recognition of the video collages made for the monthly event, "Martha @ Mother."