In the Blink of an Eye
Canadian animator Norman McLaren claims that “animation is not the art of drawings that move but the art of movements that are drawn; what happens between each frame is much more important than what exists on each frame; animation is therefore the art of manipulating the invisible interstices that lie between the frames.” That has remained the default definition of animation since he first proposed it. Between the frames lie the alchemical transformations of animation and live-action cinema that exceed the still, photographed images. McLaren’s emphasis on the in-between may explain why his work involves stop-motion animation and was so strongly influenced by dance. Through consideration of McLaren’s collaborations with dancers in Ballet Adagio and Pas de Deux, but especially the aberrant movement and nonhuman dance of his A Chairy Tale, McLaren’s ability to animate change itself links dance’s potential for animation and animation’s ability to bring to screendance new potentials of the body.