FILM FRAGMENTS FROM SEXUS

This dance footage formed part of Jack Body's mixed media composition, Sexus: Everyman’s Guide to Christian Living.

Three women and three men perform for the camera, partially in a rehearsal hall, and without an audience. Two other items of footage (a doll, an abattoir) are briefly inserted.

The performance of Sexus utilised six dancers, three soundtracks, and two films - of which this is one. The film played behind [the same] six dancers when the piece was first staged, in a double bill with Stockhausen’s Kurzwellen, at the Auckland University Arts Festival in August 1972. It was reprised for two performances at Auckland’s Mercury Theatre in October of that year.

The audio is intermittent and intended to be so.

The piece conveys, as Body said of his first Sonic Circus at Victoria University in 1974, “the spirit of the times”.

Preservation of this film was funded by the Adam Art Gallery, Wellington.