The Shimmering Asphalt        

Promo · New York City Ballet

Pontus Lidberg’s The Shimmering Asphalt premiered at New York City Ballet in January 2017 — his first for the company, danced to a score David Lang wrote for it. The promo begins with two lines in Lidberg’s sketchbook.

From there it grows. We shot the dancers and drew on top of them: rotoscope, but not tracing, so the bodies stay real underneath while what’s drawn over them keeps changing its mind — beautiful for a while, then grotesque, then charming in a way that doesn’t quite settle. Lidberg and a ballerina are alone in an empty studio, as the sketchbook closes, dancers fill the room around them.

She dances with them. Lidberg is watching what he drew get up and move. Then it stops — the book closes, the room empties, and the two of them are left looking at each other. Neither seems sure what just happened.

2 min · 2017

Beautiful,
then grotesque

Concept

A ballerina reaches upward beside an abstract male dancer cut from bright, painted paper — The Shimmering Asphalt, New York City Ballet.
A ballerina is carried against a blue sky by an animated dancer drawn in rows of hatch marks — The Shimmering Asphalt, New York City Ballet.
A ballerina is carried through a paper room of abstract drawn dancers beneath a hand-drawn rainbow — The Shimmering Asphalt, New York City Ballet.
A male dancer in a deep lunge, his body layered with black and white feathers against a dark sky — The Shimmering Asphalt, New York City Ballet.
A ballerina is carried through a paper room by birdlike figures with feathered wings — The Shimmering Asphalt, New York City Ballet.
A darker male dancer with great black wings lunges across a gray, smudged landscape — The Shimmering Asphalt, New York City Ballet.
A ballerina is lifted by a dark, textured male figure — The Shimmering Asphalt, New York City Ballet.
A male dancer raises his arms, wings of sharp, angled black feathers spreading below him — The Shimmering Asphalt, New York City Ballet.

A world for her

Final Frames

Pontus Lidberg draws two pencil lines in an open sketchbook — The Shimmering Asphalt, New York City Ballet.
A ballerina in blue looks down thoughtfully in a rehearsal studio — The Shimmering Asphalt, New York City Ballet.
A dark, textured drawn figure stands beside the ballerina as she raises her arm — The Shimmering Asphalt, New York City Ballet.
Drawn figures tumble around the ballerina as she arches back — The Shimmering Asphalt, New York City Ballet.
Hand-drawn dancers stride across the studio as the ballerina watches — The Shimmering Asphalt, New York City Ballet.
A drawn figure's shadow falls across a page of handwritten script — The Shimmering Asphalt, New York City Ballet.
The ballerina dances with winged, drawn figures across a sketched studio — The Shimmering Asphalt, New York City Ballet.
A dark drawn figure leans close to the ballerina, cheek to cheek — The Shimmering Asphalt, New York City Ballet.
A drawn dancer lifts the ballerina as a web of lines spreads through the studio — The Shimmering Asphalt, New York City Ballet.
The ballerina reaches upward as a drawn figure curls around her — The Shimmering Asphalt, New York City Ballet.
Pontus Lidberg holds his sketchbook against a drawn wall — The Shimmering Asphalt, New York City Ballet.
Pontus stands alone in the empty studio, sketchbook in hand — The Shimmering Asphalt, New York City Ballet.
The empty studio wall, with the drawings gone — The Shimmering Asphalt, New York City Ballet.

Credits

Direction
Pontus Lidberg

Music
David Lang

Choreography
Pontus Lidberg

Animation
Jason Carpenter

Producers
Ellen Bar · Rebekka Björnsdóttir

Photography
Sam Wootton

Editing
Jacob Halpren

Sound Design
Mark Henry Phillips

Color
Nicholas Metcalf, The Mill

Next project

The Forgotten Four

Installation · Meow Wolf