Laura Taler is a Romanian-born Canadian artist. Beginning her career as a

contemporary dance Contemporary dance is a genre of Concert dance, 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 stron ...

choreographer Choreography is the art of designing sequences of movements of physical bodies (or their depictions) in which Motion (physics), motion or Visual appearance, form or both are specified. ''Choreography'' may also refer to the design itself. A chor ...

, she now works in a range of media, including

performance A performance is an act or process 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. Performance has evolved glo ...

, 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 the br ...

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 (, , ; , also ''Brasau''; ; ; Transylvanian Saxon dialect, Transylvanian Saxon: ''Kruhnen'') is a city in Transylvania, Romania and the county seat (i.e. administrative centre) of Brașov County. According to the 2021 Romanian census, ...

Romania Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eastern and Southeast Europe. It borders Ukraine to the north and east, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, Bulgaria to the south, Moldova to ...

and first became involved in dance in

elementary school A primary school (in Ireland, India, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, South Africa, and Singapore), elementary school, or grade school (in North America and the Philippines) is a school for primary ...

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, ...

(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 comp ...

(1996). In 2002, the ''

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' is an American Newspaper#Daily, daily newspaper that began publishing in Los Angeles, California, in 1881. Based in the Greater Los Angeles city of El Segundo, California, El Segundo since 2018, it is the List of new ...

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 English-language television industry. The Gemini Awards are analogous to the Emmy Awards given in th ...

, 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 ''The Globe and Mail'' is a Newspapers in Canada, Canadian newspaper printed in five cities in Western Canada, western and central Canada. With a weekly readership of more than 6 million in 2024, it is Canada's most widely read newspaper on week ...

'' 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