A short dance film by Leesa Streifler & Anastasia Evsigneeva
CRONE is a collaboration between visual artist Leesa Streifler and dancer and choreographer Anastasia Evsigneeva. A short dance film with elements of animation, it explores aging, feminine identity, and the shifting relationship between youth and elderhood. Blending Evsigneeva’s dance with Streifler’s drawings, the film traces a woman’s confrontation with her older self.
Streifler’s Winnipeg-based practice has long explored women’s experiences and the cultural expectations placed on their bodies. Her drawings of aging women challenge a culture that privileges youth, opening questions of agency, memory and relationships. With a BFA from the University of Manitoba and an MFA from Hunter College in New York, she also brings more than three decades of teaching at the University of Regina to her work as an artist and mentor. In CRONE, this sustained attention to the female body enters into dialogue with Evsigneeva’s movement: drawing and dance become two ways of approaching transformation.
“To live is to age; to step forward is to move toward transformation.”
The film opens with Streifler’s drawings, evoking memory, fragmentation, and images of leafy treetops shaking in a soft breeze. From these images, it transitions to a bridge: the dancer stands on one side, an elderly, life-sized doll on the other. The space between them feels vast yet magnetic. Curiosity draws the dancer forward—not simply curiosity about the doll, but about life itself.
When they meet, their relationship unfolds fluidly between archetypes: mother and daughter, self and future self, protector and protected. The dancer rests in the doll’s lap, seeking comfort. Moments later, she supports the doll’s fragile body, guiding her steps. Care flows in both directions. Tenderness coexists with unease.
The narrative moves to a park, where the dancer travels toward the aged figure across open space. This progression becomes the emotional climax of the film. What begins as curiosity gradually transforms into anxiety. Her movements grow sharper, more urgent, as the inevitability of aging becomes undeniable. Time accelerates; distance collapses.
Interwoven into this journey are fragmented memories from an urban setting in front of a brick wall—a symbolic confrontation between generations. Seated on two chairs facing forward, like in a therapist’s office, the dancer and doll occupy contrasting postures. The edits are sharp and abrupt, shifting between daring, resistant, exhausted, and defiant positions. Streifler’s animated drawings partially overlay these moments, blurring reality and imagination.
This sequence embodies generational tension: challenge, comparison, and unspoken competition between youth and age. Each figure studies the other, the older intrigued by youth’s vitality, the younger unsettled by the elder’s stillness and wisdom.
As the park journey concludes and conflict subsides, the tone shifts. The dancer carries the doll through an enchanted forest toward the water. The atmosphere becomes serene, suspended in quiet acceptance. This is no longer confrontation, but care. The movement slows; breath deepens. It is the final passage.
At the water’s edge, the dancer gently releases the doll to float in the river. The gesture evokes a funeral ritual, an acknowledgment of mortality and farewell. Yet the act is not solely an ending; it is a transmission. As the doll drifts away, wisdom is symbolically passed forward. The film closes with imagery that returns to drawing, suggesting that memory and art preserve what the body cannot.
“Aging is not portrayed as decay but as a necessary unfolding.”
In CRONE, this unfolding holds the complexity of fear and anxiety about the end alongside the desire for more.
Credits
- Co-directors: Leesa Streifler & Anastasia Evsigneeva
- Director of photography: Tyler Funk
- Composer: Rayannah
- Doll creator: Karyn Astleford
- Visual artist: Leesa Streifler
- Dancer: Anastasia Evsigneeva