TRUST EXERCISES - 25min - 2020

The final film in Sarah Friedland’s “Movement Exercises” trilogy, Trust Exercises is a hybrid experimental dance film which explores the tension between the poetics of group movement and its instrumentalization for capitalist management. Amending the choreography of team-building and the visual grammars of corporate video, Trust Exercises braids together movement from three work spaces: a fictional start-up retreat, a body work session as interview, and a dance rehearsal. Movements transmit between performers across scenes, complicating the discrete goals of their choreographies and examining their portability across spheres. Dislocating the movement of the retreat to the space of rehearsal, professional dancers transform stock exercises into intimate social dances. A body work session reconfigures the office environment. Lingering after hours, movement facilitators transmute team-building games into a playful duet. Trust Exercises examines the premise and promise of the exercise: that by moving together, repeatedly, we both create and recreate the social body.

Distributed by Video Data Bank

Director & Editor: Sarah Friedland
Producers: Sarah Friedland and Gabe C. Elder
Cinematographer: Gabe C. Elder
Sound Design: Assaf Gidron
Production Design:  Stephanie Osin Cohen

Performed by: Hayward Leach and Patric Madden
Danced by Maxi Hawkeye Canion, Janet Charleston, Kayla Farrish, Brighid Greene, Aaron Loux, Kayvon Pourazar
Body Work by Paula Macali
Additional performances by: Steve Atti, Ira Camhi, Randi Camhi, Gladys Gaines, Edgar Che Garcia, Christopher Gilbert II, Marcus Giovanni, Mehr Icarus, Janet Miserandino, Joseph David Surico, and Johnny Zito
Choreography by: Sarah Friedland in collaboration with Maxi Hawkeye Canion, Janet Charleston, Kayla Farrish, Brighid Greene, Aaron Loux, and Kayvon Pourazar
Sound Recording by: Cheryl Wang
Production Assistance by: Raymond Tan
DI Facility Nice Dissolve
Colorist Joseph Mastantuono
DI Producer Pierce Varous