Laura Taler is a Romanian-born Canadian artist. Beginning her career as a
contemporary dance
Contemporary dance is a genre of dance performance that developed during the mid-twentieth century and has since grown to become one of the dominant genres for formally trained dancers throughout the world, with particularly strong popularity in ...
choreographer
Choreography is the art or practice of designing sequences of movements of physical bodies (or their depictions) in which motion or form or both are specified. ''Choreography'' may also refer to the design itself. A choreographer is one who cr ...
, she now works in a range of media, including
performance
A performance is an act of staging or presenting a play, concert, or other form of entertainment. It is also defined as the action or process of carrying out or accomplishing an action, task, or function.
Management science
In the work place ...
, film,
sound
In physics, sound is a vibration that propagates as an acoustic wave, through a transmission medium such as a gas, liquid or solid.
In human physiology and psychology, sound is the ''reception'' of such waves and their ''perception'' by ...
,
sculpture
Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable sc ...
, and
installations. Taler's films ''The Village Trilogy'' and ''Heartland'' are heralded by Dance International Magazine as marking the beginning of the dancefilm boom in Canada.
Early life
Laura Taler was born on 21 December 1969 in
Brașov
Brașov (, , ; german: Kronstadt; hu, Brassó; la, Corona; Transylvanian Saxon: ''Kruhnen'') is a city in Transylvania, Romania and the administrative centre of Brașov County.
According to the latest Romanian census ( 2011), Brașov has a po ...
,
Romania
Romania ( ; ro, România ) is a country located at the crossroads of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe. It borders Bulgaria to the south, Ukraine to the north, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, Moldova to the east, a ...
and first became involved in dance in
elementary school
A primary school (in Ireland, the United Kingdom, Australia, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, and South Africa), junior school (in Australia), elementary school or grade school (in North America and the Philippines) is a school for primary ed ...
.
Art career
In 1995, Taler made her directorial debut with ''the village trilogy,'' a 24-minute film that alludes to the millions of lives uprooted through emigration in the past century while reinterpreting the physical characteristics of early cinema. According to Gaby Aldor, "...it is as if the old language is no longer adequate, as if a new way of being, and therefore of dancing, has to be invented." The film was screened worldwide, and won three significant awards: the Cinedance Award for Best Canadian Dancefilm at the Moving Pictures Festival of Dance on Film and Video (1995),
the Best Experimental Short Film Award at the
Worldwide Short Film Festival
The Canadian Film Centre's Worldwide Short Film Festival (WSFF), founded by Brenda Sherwood in 1994, was an annual film festival held over several days in Toronto, Ontario in June, at The Annex- Yorkville area venues; including the Bloor Cinema, t ...
(1996),
and a Gold Hugo for Short Subject Experimental at the
Chicago International Film Festival
The Chicago International Film Festival is an annual film festival held every fall. Founded in 1964 by Michael Kutza, it is the longest-running competitive film festival in North America. Its logo is a stark, black and white close up of the compo ...
(1996).
In 2002, the ''
Los Angeles Times
The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the ...
critic Lewis Segal wrote: "For depth of feeling, photographic sensitivity and movement invention, the central (duet) portion of Laura Taler's 1995 'A Village Trilogy' may be the most memorable footage in the festival. ...
r mastery of choreography and direction is unquestioned."
Taler followed this up in 1997 with ''Heartland'', a documentary about the dancer and choreographer
Bill Coleman. it received the Best Experimental Short Documentary Award from ''Hot Docs'' (1998) and the Cinedance Award for Best Canadian Dancefilm from the Moving Pictures Festival (1997). In 1998, her ''Dances for a Small Screen'', a collaboration between directors and choreographers from across Canada, premiered at the
Canada Dance Festival
The Canadian Dance Festival is an annual Ottawa, Ontario event founded in 1987. Held in June, it sets the stage for Canada's most contemporary, innovative and leading edge dance choreographers and dance companies. The festival includes events at ...
. The film was nominated for five
Gemini Awards
The Gemini Awards were awards given by the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television between 1986–2011 to recognize the achievements of Canada's television industry. The Gemini Awards are analogous to the Emmy Awards given in the United States ...
, including a best director nomination for Taler, and went on to win the Gemini Award for best editing. Deirdre Kelly, dance critic at ''
The Globe and Mail'' wrote, "Dance has a reputation for being precious and esoteric, but Laura Taler wants to change all that."
Kelly described Taler's contribution to ''Dancers on a Small Screen'' as "an idea distilled to its bare essentials, a choreographed poem that would have made the symbolists proud."
Taler's ''A Very Dangerous Pastime'' won Best of Festival award (2001) for Dance on Camera Festival.
Taler was a fellow at the ICI Berlin Institute for Cultural Inquiry.
Taler's publications include ''Tension/Spannung'' (Turia+Kant, 2010); ''Revisiting Ephemera'' (Blue Medium Press, 2011); and ''Embodied Fantasies'' (Peter Lang Publishing, 2013).
Filmography
References
External links
Official website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Taler, Laura
People from Brașov
Canadian women artists
1969 births
Living people