NEEDLE DANCE

Needle Dance is a conceptual art film SHOT entirely underwater. dancers entwined in brilliant red rope explore the Japanese legend of the red thread of fate: a bold meditation on autonomy, desire, and the tension between destiny and self-determination.

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MEET THE Team

MAKIKO HARRIS

Makiko Harris is a Japanese-American multimedia visual artist and filmmaker working across painting, sculpture, installation, film, and sound.

Harris' practice transforms symbols of femininity such as nails, needles, and stockings into monumental sculptures, paintings, and films that explore performative identity and the tension between agency and connection.

Selected for New Contemporaries (2026) and finalist for the Ingram Prize (2024), her work has been exhibited at Dulwich Picture Gallery, South London Gallery, and Villa Schöningen, among others.

Needle Dance is her second film after Circle Burn (which premiered at a Tate Lates event at Tate Modern London in 2023), continuing to extend the central themes of her practise into moving image.

Artist, Producer

PETER GRAY

Peter Gray is an internationally acclaimed hair stylist and film director whose creative flair has elevated editorial shoots for Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, and T Magazine, and runway looks for Hermès, Ungaro, and Dsquared. His clientele includes Sigourney Weaver, Kate Hudson, and Kat Graham.

An accomplished motion-image director, his debut Shoot Doris Day was the first music video created specifically for DVD.

With Needle Dance, Gray brings his signature blend of high-fashion sensibility and cinematic vision to Harris's underwater world.

Director

Deborah Milner is an acclaimed couture designer known for merging artistic vision with technical mastery. She consulted and then ran the Alexander McQueen Couture Studio (1997–2015), realising some of his most iconic showpieces, and has collaborated with Isabella Blow, Philip Treacy, and Nick Knight.

Her work spans haute couture, stage, and film — including the Dior-inspired gown worn by Helena Bonham Carter at the Oscars. American Elle called her "London's best-kept secret for extraordinarily beautiful designs and unconventional sculptural shapes."

For Needle Dance, Milner's shibari-inspired costumes weave fragility and strength into Harris's underwater choreography.

Costume Designer

DEBORAH MILNER

Carlos Basilisco is a composer, musician, and bandleader of Starlight Collective, a contemporary jazz ensemble based in London.

Raised in a family of artists — his father a flamenco guitarist — he grew up immersed in flamenco, classical guitar, rock, jazz, and electronic music, and has performed as a DJ for over 20 years.

For Needle Dance, Basilisco co-composed the film's percussion-driven, MIDI-infused score with Harris, crafting a genre-blending soundscape that reflects the project's fusion of tradition and modernity.

Composer, Producer

CARLOS BASILISCO

The EVENT + EXHIBITION

Needle Dance premiered in London in February 2025 to an audience of over 700 as a part of an immersive exhibition concept.

BEHIND THE SCENES

What People Are Saying

  • It's a very passionate, moving, life affirming, and beautiful short film that will have your eyes watering up.

    — Jessie Woodgate

  • Dreamlike and graceful...offers viewers catharsis for the struggle between agency and surrender.

    — Raegan Rubin for Schön! Magazine

  • Completely blown away.

    — Elina Yumasheva

  • Art meets innovation in Needle Dance, where the underwater medium becomes a metaphor for the fluid tension between autonomy and connection.

    — Made in Shoreditch Magazine

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