Dance with Camera

Through March 21, Institute of Contemporary Art, 118 S. 36th St., 215-898-7108, icaphila.org.

by Shaun Brady

visual art/dance/film

Dance and film seem like they should be soulmates. But their courtship has been a stormy one: Dance is all about existing in space and time, while cinema's gift is the ability to fragment and manipulate both, so one medium usually ends up sacrificing itself for the other. Either the camera gets out of the way and lets Fred Astaire do his thing, or the dance is fractured by intrusive editing tricks. ICA's new exhibit is devoted to more harmonious examples of the coupling, mostly recent work where filmmaker and choreographer collaborate when they're not one and the same. Merce Cunningham bookends the show, between his 1977 collaboration with Charles Atlas, Fractions I, and Tacita Dean's 2007 portrait, Merce (Manchester).