Brazilian filmmakers, choreographers and dancers Rosane Chamecki and Andrea Lerner—known as ChameckiLerner—will share images from their current work-in-progress, The Collection, at The Watermill Center on June 14. As Watermill’s Spring Artists-in-Residence, ChameckiLerner will also screen their previous film Flying Lesson. The screening will be followed by an artist talk and panel discussion with filmmaker and collaborator Phil Harder and director/producer Portland Green.

With their new experimental dance/film hybrid being developed on-site at The Watermill Center, The Collection finds ChameckiLerner collaborating once more with Minnesota-based director Phil Harder and will work from a vocabulary inspired by, and appropriated from classic and contemporary paintings, sculptures and photographs depicting the human form. The Collection will question the poetry of the body, the politics of the human form, the gaze, fantasy and the ephemeral quality of the actions surrounding it. 

Filmmakers, choreographers and performers Rosane Chamecki and Andrea Lerner moved from Curitiba, Brazil to New York in 1989. Since then, ChameckiLerner have created more than 10 evening-length dances to much critical acclaim. In 1994, New York’s Dance Theater Workshop produced their first evening-length piece The Butterfly Effect.  ChameckiLerner’s dance work has been presented in various international venues and dance festivals in the United States, Brazil, Germany, Finland, Denmark, Venezuela, Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Portugal, the Netherlands, Austria and Canada. Their choreographic collaborations have received numerous grants, including support from The National Dance Project of the New England Foundation for the Arts, The Rockefeller Map Fund, The Jerome Foundation, The Greenwall Foundation, The Joyce Theater’s 2000 Altogether Different Fund for New Works, The Mary Flaggler Charitable Trust, Altria, The Joyce Dutka Arts Foundation, Meet the Composer, Arts International, The New York State Council for the Arts, a sponsorship from Siemens and a prize from The Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts. In 2001, the duo received the Bolsa Virtuose grant, awarded by the Brazilian Ministry of Culture, which allowed them to attend the New York Film Academy. In 2007, ChameckiLerner premiered Exit at The Kitchen in New York, a piece that marked the beginning of the duo’s transition from dance into filmmaking. In 2008, the two were awarded the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship to further support the transition into film and video.

The duo’s short film Flying Lesson premiered in 2008 at the Dance on Camera Festival at Lincoln Center, New York and won the Jury Award. Later that summer, it won the Best Experimental Film Award at the Brooklyn International Film Festival and was broadcast on Channel 13's acclaimed Reel New York series. It also aired on Propeller TV in the UK, SBS in Australia and Cultura TV in the Netherlands. The film continues to play the international film festival circuit and has been sold to art collectors through Roebling Hall Gallery, NY. In 2009, Flying Lesson received an Honorable Mention in the Experimental Short Film category at the San Joaquin International Film Festival, was part of Roos Arts – Meet & Cake Group show in Rosendale, NY and Discover Us! Carnival Within – An Exhibition Made In America in Berlin, Germany.

This March, ChameckiLerner premiered Borbuhlo at the Festival de Curitiba in Curitiba, Brazil, an evening-long piece for five performers in collaboration with visual artist Janaina Tschape, and musicians DJ Dolores and ChicoCorrea. A film version of this piece is planned for the near future.