CHRIS EMILE
hbny
Commissioned by The Getty Museum

"hbny (pronounced eh-boh-nee)" is a dance film by Chris Emile, commissioned by the Getty Museum for the exhibition "Poussin and the Dance," on view February 15–May 8, 2022. Emile’s film is one of three unique responses by Los Angeles-based choreographers to the legendary French painter’s many scenes of wild revelry, dancing nymphs and satyrs, and dramatic action drawn from classical myth. Here a new narrative is imagined for the mythic tribe of the Sabines, of whom little is known outside of their victimization by Roman conquerors, famously depicted in Poussin’s masterwork "The Abduction of the Sabine Women." Filmed in the urban wasteland of L.A.’s Devil’s Gate, Emile’s Sabines inhabit a landscape that appears ancient and contemporary at once, in which they interact with fierceness, tenderness, shared sorrow, and unbridled joy, exuding a sense of freedom and agency over their own bodies and minds.


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