French dancer, deep-sea diver, and filmmaker Julie Gautier carried out a stunningly beautiful six-minute underwater choreography, gliding through the crystal-clear water of the world’s deepest pool Y40 near Venice, Italy, for the video performance project “AMA.”
The mind-boggling film “AMA” begins with artist Julie Gautier standing still, yet fully expressive, for 47 seconds in front of a camera that is struggling to focus on her face amidst heavy rain. Then Julie, dressed in black, is shown lying motionless at the bottom of the pool. When she finally rises from the floor, she effortlessly delivers beauty and grace through a weightless dance destined to provoke unsettling emotions and unease. Ophélie Longuet’s choreography, delivered in one breath by Gautier, evokes a mix of suffocating yet alleviating feelings to her viewers.
AMA speaks a story that resonates differently in each individual according to his/ her own set of previous experiences. “There is no imposition, only suggestions,” the artist confides, adding: “I wanted to share my biggest pain in this life with this film. For this is not too crude, I covered it with grace. To make it not too heavy, I plunged it into the water.” As the music of Ezio Bosso’s song “Rain in Your Black Eyes” heightens, so does Gautier’s maneuvers inside the water. The French artist finally finds her way to the surface only when she exhales.
Julie Gautier and her husband, Guillaume Néry, who is a French free-diving champion, have founded “Les Films Engloutis,” which is an underwater film company, collaborating in several interesting projects, such as the 2015 Beyoncé and Arrow Benjamin music video “Runnin.”
You can check the gifted artist Julie Gautier performing her magnificent dance routine clicking below: