Fusing the classical style of pre-modern European architecture and design with contemporary performance, London based Argentinian artist Pablo Bronstein enriches still image in his exhibition Historical Dances in an Antique Setting, taking place at Tate Britain until October 9th 2016.

Bronstein’s practice encompasses drawing, installation and performance in a highly stylized manner, exploring the ways in which architectural styles can disguise, disrupt and express meaning within the world. This year the grand setting of the Duveen Galleries have become a stage to his continuous performance piece, where dancers move between two enormous architectural renderings, creating a spectacle that ruminates upon the qualities and restrictions of space itself.

Drawings of 17th – 19th century architecture clearly make up a substantial proportion of your work. The move into choreography for Historical Dances in an Antique Setting seems like an evolution of drawing, an enlivening of still image. How has this move affected your practice?

I’ve been making performances for over ten years now, so it feels more like the two strands of my practice run in parallel. That said, they do contaminate each other a lot. The drawings and performances both look towards a certain technical dexterity and accomplishment, but are also confrontational and weird in their own contexts. It is also nice to have a varied practice because the work can get too grinding. I don’t imagine spending all year at the drawing desk, and value engaging with performers; but likewise I need to return to drawing in order to ground my work.

What is it that appeals to you about the Baroque style in both architecture and movement?

Aesthetically, I like the curved line the Baroque employs. I like the accumulation of ornament, and the layering of meanings. It has a confrontational value within the white-cube aesthetic. In terms of space, the Baroque is an experiential art form. It is aimed at the viewer, rather than at an ideal of perfection or purity of form, and therefore is a lot more theatrical, and more human. It is pretentious and desperate and it aims to please.

Historical Dances in an Antique Setting is a captivating body of work. Clearly reflective of the past yet the gestures and movements seem conscious of the contemporary.

Have you been considering both past and present when developing the work?

Yes I have. The work is a combination or juxtaposition of two dance languages - between an interpretation of the Baroque, which has elements that are genuinely reconstructed and elements which are spurious, and the pedestrian, which has a long trajectory within contemporary dance. The dancers fall in and out of these two styles throughout the work, and remonstrate the insincerity and artificiality of the movement - of both types of movement - mannered and ‘normal’.

It is stimulating to see a live, ongoing and developing body of work in the Duveen galleries at Tate Britain. Can you tell us a little about the process of developing the dances in relation to the setting?

The dance was developed in relation to the white tape lines, which form three areas that group the dances. The first room is a formal, grand and symmetrical dance, which displays order, harmony, hierarchy. The middle space is a platform in which the individuality of the dancer is highlighted in a solo which is particular to each performer. The final space is fractured and difficult. The dancers move seemingly independent of the whole, and create an asymmetrical and slightly chaotic sequence. The work then returns to its origins, the dancers walk back to the first room and order is restored. In terms of how the performance was devised, I worked with a long-standing dancer collaborator, Rosalie Wahlfrid, who is the lead dancer and the co-choreographer. I gave a loose idea of how I wanted the work to progress, and then she and the other dancers produced material gradually, which I then looked at, amended, and re-worked. For the preparation, I brought in a Baroque dance specialist, Francesca Bridge-Cicic, who I have worked with on a number of occasions. She worked intensively with the dancers for a day and gave them a fascinating crash-course in the Baroque.

The prints of the Tate Britain architecture, of the Clore Extension and Tate Milbank Façade, within the show are of epic proportion. From a certain angle the prints are quite deceptive as they actually look like part of the room itself. Was this intentional?

Yes it was. My assistant, Skyla Bridges, spent many long days trying to do stone-colour matches. The idea was to talk about the architecture of the museum as if it were a theatrical backdrop, which it is - even the hefty architecture of the Duveens.

The ballet leggings, bright red jumpers and oversized pearls are somehow simple yet really quite striking within the setting. How did you decide upon the costumes for the dancers? And do you consider this a significant element of the work?

The costumes are visual markers primarily - hence the bold colours. They are supposed to show the dancers at a distance - so that a viewer can see a dancers line even if the gallery is busy. They are also a very cheap visual signifier for ‘people in a museum’. It is a combination of Baroque and everyday qualities. The bright red is also a very London colour.

I read that you’re interested in the architects Caruso St John. A text written by Adam Caruso and released by A+T ediciones in ’99 The Feeling of Things has been of interest to me for a long time. There is a part within the text that states:

'We are interested in making an architecture that does not rely on language. An architecture whose physical presence has a direct emotional effect.'

I felt this statement bares significance to Historical Dances in an Antique Setting in the manner that the dancers movements become a part of the space, physically enlivening the architecture. Is this something you considered when developing the work?

I think that the physical presence of dancers in the space has a huge impact on visitors to the museum. It is easy for performance work to do this within a museum context. However, there are two things which I am very happy with how they turned out. The first is the logistical aspect - it is not easy to keep a complex, choreographed performance going for so long. The second is that the viewer is in no doubt that the dancers are working within and in relation to architecture. This is I think the real success of the work. It isn’t that people just come to see dance in an art gallery - they see dance, but they know that it is talking about architecture.

What’s next for you Pablo? Are you keen to continue to work with performance?

I am designing a ballet for Rambert, called The Creation, which opens at Garsington Opera very soon and then moves to Sadler's Wells in the autumn. I am not choreographing it, but it is the first (and possibly last) time that I have been directly employed as a designer. For the next few months I will concentrate on drawing, installations and architecture, but I am slowly developing a dance film, which I’ve been wanting to do for a while. A very, very long, boring dance film.

Pablo Bronstein: Historical Dances In An Antique Setting
The Tate Britain Commission 2016
Until 9 October 2016
More info: tate.org.uk

Photography, Pablo Bronstein © 2016