Miranda Pennell


Miranda Pennell is an artist and film maker who lives in London. She originally studied contemporary dance in New York and Amsterdam, after which she started to explore choreographic ideas through film-making. While her film work has led away from the specificity of contemporary dance, an interest in the nature of performance remains central to her films. Pennell’s work looks at the choreography that can be found in the ‘real’ world, using a diverse range of subjects that has included soldiers and a marching band, teenage ice-skaters, stage-fighting, amateur dancers and currently, Rock drummers. Her films often focus on the relationship between the individual and the group, and explore rituals within private and public spheres. Her films and videos have received funding from the Arts Council of England, Film London, Channel 4, and the BBC. They have won various prizes, including from the Biennale of Moving Images (Geneva 2005), the Ann Arbour Film Festival (USA 2004), Cork International Film Festival (Ireland 2003), the Grand Prix Video Danse (France 1997), and have been exhibited across a range of contexts including cinema, broadcast and gallery. In 2006 her work was profiled at the 52nd Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen (Germany). Miranda Pennell is a visiting lecturer on the ‘Dance for the Screen’ Post-Graduate course at The Place (London), and at the Laban Institute (London).