Laurent Fiévet

The Ice series is structured around an ice ballet from the film Sun Valley Serenade by H. Bruce Humberstone (1941). Proposing several pieces originating from the same sequence intended to display the technical virtuosity of actress and champion ice skater Sonja Henie, the series uses the images from the film as a pretext to meditate on questions of identity, gender, and sexuality. The ensemble of pieces is organized around the video Coming Out, which invites the viewer to take this angle of approach and which brings a kind of joyous and positive resolution to the attendant questions -a resolution that, as with the use of black and white, is a departure from the tone of the videos that comprise They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, with which it nevertheless maintains a continuity through the carrying on of its rhythmic and musical logics.

From a more somber and historical perspective, the series also examines Sonja Henie’s life during World War II, during which time H. Bruce Humberstone directed Sun Valley Serenade, and puts the consequences of the political alliances the actress formed during this period into perspective.

Ice is composed of five videos, three of which are made from the same ballet sequence. They can be shown separately or together in an installation of three or five.