Sunday 19 November 2006, 12.00

Programme duration 110 min

Oh, Misha
1999, 12  min

Ex-Romance
1987, 48 min
Atlas's fascination with 'narrative, psychology, dance and flights of fantasy,' is manifested in this dynamic video-dance musical. Here the post-modern choreography of Karole Armitage is performed by Armitage, Michael Clark and others to American pop and Latin music. Framed and interrupted by the ironic observations of two parodic 'public television' commentators, the dancers play fictionalised versions of themselves in a wry tale of contemporary romance, in which the dance literally and metaphorically advances the narrative. Atlas deftly stages elaborate dance sequences in unlikely settings – an airport lounge, a gas station, a baggage conveyor belt – that are presented alternately as fact and fantasy. Atlas manipulates the representation of truth and artifice, reality and fiction in this meta-narrative.

Because We Must
1989, 50 min
In Because We Must, Atlas continued his collaboration with British choreographer Michael Clark, the enfant terrible of the dance world in the 1980s. Based on an original stage production at Sadler’s Wells Theatre in London, this is an ironic, irreverent work that is as entertaining as it is provocative. The extravagant stylisation and burlesque humour that pervade the choreography, costuming and staging are mirrored by Atlas's focus on the theatricality of the performance and the artifice of the behind-the-scenes narrative. Clark thumbs his nose at the conventions of 'serious' dance, composing outrageously unexpected and inventive scenarios that include a nude dancer wielding a chain-saw and a psychedelic interlude, all exquisitely if ironically performed.

Tate Modern  Starr Auditorium
£4, booking recommended