soldier island

Soldier Island is a feature length screendance loosely based on the best-selling murder mystery novel And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie. In the novel, ten characters from various, seemingly unrelated walks of life are invited by an unknown host to spend a weekend at a mysterious mansion on Soldier Island. Within a few hours of arrival, the guests start to be killed off one by one. The death of the guests follow the trajectory of a rhyme that’s framed and hung in each bedroom of the house. In a twist ending, we learn that the judge, who was also one of the house guests, had set up the whole affair to carry out justice where the law could not.

Our project features 10 dancers (and a secret 11th) to represent the 10 main characters of the novel and was recorded inside a historic home. Because we were unable to rehearse together in the same room due to much of the creation period taking place during the height of COVID, each dancer has their own film within the film and lives (with some exceptions) within their own video box (similar to a Zoom layout, but with more formation changes and flexibility). Some of the dancers never even met in person, and this reflects both the new possibilities unlocked by these exceptional times and just how stratified our world has become.