Aboard the Pater Noster

Directed and produced by Daniel Conrad
Rhodopsin Productions
17:30 • 2008
Available on DVD and VHS

This collaboration between choreographer Aszure Barton and filmmaker Daniel Conrad portrays a little tribe of humans trying to make sense of their dehumanized lives, as they pass through the city of Prague. The film reflects on the state of beings so submerged in cities that the shapes and cycles of people’s lives are invisible. In the beginning, the dancers ride on a “pater noster,” a cyclical, continuous elevator in which multiple door-less cars are strung along the cables like beads on a rosary. Then they board a streetcar cycling in an endless loop. They react to the car’s wild movement and the city’s unpredictable natural light as the streetcar lurches through traffic.

Choreographer Aszure Barton has been praised by Mikhail Baryshnikov as “...one of the most innovative choreographers of this generation... fresh, arresting, and fascinating.” Aboard the Pater Noster offers new, seductive ways of looking, using variations on themes of circularity, the craving for human contact, and the sense of being simultaneously alone and together.