Eleanor Antin uses fictional characters, autobiography, and narrative to invent histories and explore what she calls "the slippery nature of the self." In her video works, Antin uses role-playing and artifice as conceptual devices, adopting archetypal personae—a ballerina, a king, a nurse—in her theatrical dramatizations of identity and representation. In this work of documentary fiction, an archivist attempts to put together the "lost years" of Eleanor Antinova, the once-celebrated black ballerina of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, when she returned to her native America to eke out a meager living in vaudeville and early cinema. 

 

Interview directed and edited by Peter Kirby.

 

Like MOCA on Facebook: http://bit.ly/MOCAFacebook

Follow MOCA on Twitter: http://bit.ly/MOCATwitter

+1 MOCA on Google+: http://bit.ly/MOCAGooglePlus