CALVIN KLEIN
Forty-seven years ago, Charles Atlas was an avant-garde cult figure working with Merce Cunningham on Walkaround Time, a dance work that led to many of the video works Atlas has produced over the past few decades. Now, Atlas is no less avant-garde, but, as Barbara Pollack noted in a recent profile, he is certainly not a cult figure anymore.
This week, Calvin Klein released two four-minute films directed by Atlas as part of the ad campaign for the fashion company’s Fall 2015 collection—one film for the women’s collection, the other for the men’s.
In the first, Atlas, working with Calvin Klein’s women’s creative director, Francisco Costa, shoots three women using psychedelic effects. Hot-pink and light-blue silhouettes of the women freeze as they dance across the screen to Nico’s “These Days.” (Their choreography falls into what Atlas has called “media dance,” a type of performance in which an original choreographed work exists only to be filmed.)
The second film, Atlas, here working with the label’s men’s creative director, Italo Zucchelli, has two male models running around three-dimensional structures. This film features an electronic soundtrack from Austrian musician Christian Fennesz and is less colorful than the women’s film.
Head over to Calvin Klein’s website to watch the films.