Dance on Camera Ezine
March-April, 2008

House on Hold

by Marcia B. Siegel

Dancer Josh Hilberman was working at a tap festival in Greece on September 5, 2007, when he got word from a friend that a water pipe connector had let go in his house just outside Boston, causing a major flood. He and his wife rushed back to the States, to find all their furniture on the lawn and the inside of the house soaked to the studs and floorboards. Their life was in limbo.         

Everything got moved into Hilberman's studio in a separate building next to the house, and the couple moved to a temporary apartment in Chinatown. With the house stripped bare and the reconstruction ready to start, Hilberman negotiated with the insurance company and fretted. The trouble was, he was booked for a one-man tap show at Arlington's Regent Theater on the first of March. He couldn't use his studio because it was full of furniture, and he couldn't concentrate anyway, because of the hulking job to be done next door.         

Hilberman is a sturdy, upbeat guy, a problem-solver with a loopy imagination. Since he couldn't work on his dance he decided to make a film, using his derelict house as the set. He took a slightly damp video camera and his tap shoes into the house and started filming himself.        

What resulted, the four and a half-minute FloodHouseDance, is neither a tap dance film nor a film with a tap story. Instead, with the ruined house and all its meanings resonating around him, Hilberman's dancing becomes a voice---a witness, a commentator, and in the end a kind of exorcist to a calamitous event.        

First off, the fixed camera stares at a blank wall with a light socket in it, and a patch of floor. You hear some attention-getting raps coming from nowhere. Then you realize that at the side of the frame there's an empty bookcase, and on top of the bookcase is a pair of feet, shouting into the empty room.        

Then, in a series of short takes, we tour the skeletal house. You hear syncopations echoing two rooms away. From behind a partition a leg reaches out, tentatively tests the floor. Big red, yellow and blue tap shoes take over the screen, dancing insistently, shaking the baseboards. Behind some studs and electrical cables, a shadowy figure whistles and scours the gritty floor with a sand dance, stomps down a hall and up some stairs. A ghostly form is glimpsed running through spaces, leaping through doorways. He's stamping in circles two rooms away, the sunlight washing in behind him. He seems to be getting angry. His blurry figure throws pieces of lumber onto the floor.         

Then the tapping gets quieter and we're looking at the culprit, a toilet on the second floor, covered with a crumpled sheet of plastic. There's a commotion behind the blueboard construction panels, and then one panel comes loose and slams to the floor. The dancer, who's pushed it over, stops his tapping and walks slowly toward the camera. Finally we see Hilberman's face, coming closer and closer, peering into the lens, until the screen goes black.                 

We're left to ponder about empty houses, spaces filled with light and the sounds of frustration, disasters we live through.        

FLOODHOUSEDANCE was shot in two days and edited in Hilberman's new Apple computer in time to make its debut at the Regent. Hilberman is back in his house now and the mess is almost gone, except for some mold under the kitchen cabinets that may never get excised.

Does dance on camera need brand therapy?

by Deirdre Towers

The Metro headline of April 2nd, “Hillary: I am Rocky,” quotes Senator Hillary Clinton speaking to the Pennsylvania ALF-CIO. That statement provoked Joey Sweeney from Philebrity.com to declare it as “a totally clueless, out-of-touch gaffe.” But the movie legend Rocky Bilboa came from Philadelphia, so Peter Madden, founder of Philadelphia branding agency Agile Cat thought it was brilliant. “It’s an immediate endearing of her and her brand to a local audience.”

Branding is all the rage these days, with consultants and firms popping up all over the US, ready to define and design your brand so that you and/or your product can bond with the groups that are key to your success.

Dance on camera is spreading around the world. But have we identified the audience that is a debatable key to our success? If we, as a group, were grooming a spokesperson, would we be able to clearly define dance on camera so that they could design a campaign around that definition and the targeted audience?

Gradually it appears that dance on camera, as an artform with a history extending more than a century, appeals to dance lovers but even more to independent thinkers, seekers of innovative forms, poets, dreamers and rebels perhaps.

In this Ezine and the printed Journal for those who requested it, you can read reflections on this issue by Festival coordinator Latika Young and a caustic review of Dance for the Camera II which suggests the the name of the DVD was misleading because the reviewer expected to see the dance she knows and loves and not the more subtle form of poetic, kinetic movement that is so often prevalent in this artform.

We invite you to join in on the debate as to whether dance on camera needs brand therapy. To comment, please visit the site of our new collaborator Marlon Barrios Solano: www.dance-tech.net/

Jonah Bokaer: Renaissance Man

by Penny Ward

Jonah Bokaer has cast his net wide. After seven years with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company and receiving several awards for his choreography and work in the media, Jonah, 26, has produced an innovative multi-media piece, “The Invention of Minus One” with an expansive use of motion capture (a technology that digitally distills and reconfigures pure motion from moving bodies), courtesy of another ex Cunningham Company member Michael Cole. This in addition to collaborating with Robert Wilson, John Jasperse, Deborah Hay David Gordon, and most recently with John Jasperse in creating the Center for Performance Research (CPR) in Brooklyn so that artists can work on larger creations involving large sets and show work without fear of incurring the huge expense that such works would necessitate if produced elsewhere in the city.

“The Invention for Minus One” with dancers Holley Farmer, Rashaun Mitchell and Banu Ogan comprised brilliantly danced vignettes with interspersed motion capture and animation. The stage setting suggested a photo shoot with attendant lights, umbrellas, cameras and racks of clothes. The dancers progress through the layered landscape of the set, led by Banu Ogan in a beaded top and silver stretch pants by Isaac Mizrahi. Rashuan Mitchell is in a military outfit while Holley Farmer is an androgynous photographer’s assistant facilitating the journey/performance.

Some sections were stronger than others, such as a sequence where all three dancers moved in unison to a robotic version of the same sequence on screen. Also the animation for the three-card-Monte section was superb. Projecting the live action onto a wall of open white umbrellas was also stunning.

An interesting sound score by Christian Marclay and video design by Michael Cole completes this event.The son of a filmmaker, Jonah has many gifts, but his choreography made up the weaker element of the performance and the vignettes did not always weave together. The piece would have been strengthened by firmer and more incisive direction. ?“False Start” Jonah’s solo at the beginning of the program is a virtuoso piece which shows off the received and returned information in human movement of motion capture.At the back of the stage, a door opened to partially reveal a richly colored animation which added to the whole mystery and disorientation of the piece. Movements which would seem awkward or impossible were given great fluidity by Mr. Bokaer’s technique. In one section he seemed like an android praying mantis.Besides being declared by writer Roslyn Sulcas to be “contemporary dance’s renaissance man,” he also has won the admiration of dance patron Patsy Tarr who published “Start” starring Jonah’s solo “False Start” designed to be enjoyed like a flip book through her 2wice Arts Foundation. But also Jonah and his collaborator John Jasperse are looking after their fellow artists by offering dirt cheap rehearsal space in their new space. And see below for yet another presentation by Jonah as part of Kinetic Cinema!

Music and the Moving Image

The University of Illinois Press, in conjunction with New York University Steinhardt School's Department of Music & Performing Arts Professions and The Film Music Society, has published Music and the Moving Image, a premiere online scholarly journal dedicated to the relationship between music and the wide spectrum of moving images, from film and television to computer and interactive performance. Music and the Moving Image will be issued three times annually (spring, summer, fall). Volume 1 (Spring 2008) was launched on February 29 at mmi.press.uiuc.edu/.

Leading an impressive editorial board of educators and music professionals, executive editors conductor/musicologist Gillian B. Anderson and Director of the Film Music program at NYU/Steinhardt Ronald H. Sadoff will consider submissions from both scholars and practitioners. All papers will be accepted for inclusion in the journal based upon a peer-review process. Individual subscriptions are available for $30 and the institutional rate is $60.

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2007 Jury Award winner Folies D'Espagne is now on tour in Paris,France, Wisconsin Film Festival and Circle Cinema.

HOLLYWOOD SINGING AND DANCING

Director Mark McLaughlin created a look at the magic of musical Hollywood in the documentary HOLLYWOOD SINGING AND DANCING: A MUSICAL TREASURE that was broadcast and shown in theatres starting this march. The two hour documentary begins with the Busby Berkeley films that lifted the spirits of audiences during the Great Depression, continuing through the patriotic musicals of the 1940s and the collapse of the studio system in the 1950s. Song and dance numbers from "The Wizard of Oz," "Gigi," "The King and I," "Damn Yankees," "Chicago" and "Singin' in the Rain," among others are included.Liza Minnelli, Leslie Caron, Debbie Reynolds, Rob Marshall, Bill Condon, Shirley MacLaine, Tommy Tune, Marge Champion, offer their thoughts about the various films.
See clip.
See another clip

Arab/South Asian Film Festival celebrates dance

Professor Joseph Massad of Columbia University and Author of "Desiring Arabs" chose five films for a sidebar of New York Arab and South Asian Film Festival, March 5 - 16, 2008 celebrating dance side bar on belly dancers in Egyptian cinema. The films spanning 1950 to 1974 star the two major belly dancers of that period Samia Gamal in "A Glass and a Cigarette" (SIGARAH WA KASS), and Tahia Carioca in "Shore of Love" (SHATI' AL-GHARAM). Two feature films reveal the lives of belly dancers in the Cairo of the earlier part of the century, including SHAFIQAA AL KOPTIYYA, starring Hind Rostom, "the Marilyn Monroe of Egyptian cinema", and BAMBAH KASHSHAR starring Nadia al-Guindi. The 1972 musical cult classic "Take Care of Zuzu" (KHALLI BALAK MIN ZUZU) starring Suad Husni, “the Cinderella of the Arab Screen,” and a much older Tahia Carioca, provides a critique of the place belly-dancers are accorded in modern culture while showcasing the belly dancing of Husni, who also sings in the film. The famed director of the last three films, Hasan al-Imam, made many more films dealing with bellydancers, an abiding interest he held throughout his long career in cinema. for more information, visit The New York Arab and South Asian Film Festival

In search of a name

by DFA Festival coordinator Latika Young

In the DFA office we have long talks about how to curate, market, of perhaps even “brand” dance for the camera. We sense that there are vast untapped audiences who either think that dance for the camera is staid, one-camera archival footage shot from the back of the house, or are completely oblivious to the genre (and all its possible offshoots). It seems that this genre suffers from a problem of expectations, in that (potential) viewers either project their own expectations on the genre so stringently that these preconceived ideas leave little room for variation, or they have so little expectation in the first place that the genre cannot even possibly be conceptualized. Much of this confusion of the genre undoubtedly stems from the lack of a coherent name. Ample discussion has been devoted in the past to the semantics of the issue and this indecision seems unlikely to be resolved any time soon and is certainly not within the scope of this article. But what is important, however, is the underlying philosophy of dance that props up the chosen rubric.

Here at DFA we tend to use the term dance for the camera, but we also throw around the words videodance, screendance, choreographic cinema, kinetic cinema, action cinema, and even films that “move.” We adopt an expansive view of what constitutes “dance,” a breadth of scope that is then also reflected in our curating decisions. We often screen films within the Dance on Camera Festival that have absolutely no conventional dance in the traditional sense. Instead we find dances that are composed through visual and sound editing that is witty and rhythmic, like the duet between bouncing boy and diving board in Toril Simonsen’s ALT I ALT, or merge with video art and installation by abstracting the body to a singular rolling movement that is so multi-layered it plays beautiful tricks on the eyes, as in Gina Czarnecki’s illusory NASCENT. We might devote an entire program to the subtle but completely choreographed movement antics of a master from early cinema, like Jacques Tati, or, an homage to a “great visual, symbolist poet,” to borrow from Anna Brady Nuse, like Sergei Parajanov. We include articles in the journal about the You Tube DIY-dance video, the big budget mainstream film with equally impressive audience appeal, and the ubiquitous dancing commercial, that showcases everything from waltzing cars to anthropomorphized basketballs. But we also love films that “dance” in the traditional sense, that evoke strong kinesthetic reactions in the viewer, films that make it difficult not to upturn our popcorn and dance in the aisles.

During the screening panels leading up to programming the festival, we often nostalgically wonder where the submissions with the astounding virtuosic movement have gone, whether it be jaw-dropping pirouette or gravity-defying headspin.

It seems we value a dance for the camera that either impresses through its sheer magnificence of movement or by its triumph of originality, one that forces the viewer that has literally watched thousands of dance films to conceptualize “dance” at least a little differently. But all of this proffers the questions, how exactly can we present the sheer diversity of dance for the camera for these audiences who obviously have such differing expectations? How do we lure the dance traditionalist to stay after the screening of a restored SPARTACUS to watch an animated graffiti-man dance his way around Paris (LA VIE EST BELLE)?

How do we provide a point of entry for the viewer who is enraptured by video and performance art who thinks he has no interest whatsoever in dance, only to discover after a program of shorts by Pierre Coulibeuf that he wants to stay for the next three screenings, buy a poster and DVD, and write an article for a future Dance on Camera Journal (which really happened this past festival!)

Is there a way to market dance for the camera that is potentially inclusive for all and is this even a feasible or worthwhile pursuit? Or should we curate a festival around themed programs so that a viewer can easily locate what she wants but perhaps never challenge herself to see something that falls outside of her own expectations?

I had a recent experience that made me understand more clearly what neophyte dance film audiences might be undergoing. There has been discussion about structuring the Dance on Camera Festival 2009 around the topic of music, by emphasizing the role of this essential element of the dance for the camera. Of course, many of the winning films and perennial favorites have dynamic scores, with finely crafted original music, tightly edited ambient sound and, at times, text and even ecstatic moments of well-placed inclusion of pop music (e.g. Cher’s “Do You Believe in Life After Love” in The Cost of Living).

One of the considerations during these ruminations was to include some music films in the next festival. I had one of those fateful moments of thinking—“what exactly is a music film?” I could only imagine a filmic take on a live convert. I had seen many great music videos that were cinematic works of art, by the likes of Michel Gondry and Chris Cunningham and others. I had not seen, however, anything that would constitute a “music film” in the sense that I understand a dance for the camera. I simply could not imagine what one might look like. This was a real “aha” moment for me, in the way it allowed me to understand this great hurdle in our efforts to woo new dance for the camera audiences.

DVD Review: Dance for Camera 2

 

 

CARGO

 

 

 

Great Expectations (crushed)
by Trina Porte

This compilation of international dance performance leaves me with many questions and foremost among them is, how has pointing a camera at someone moving become “dance?” Where is the intention? The control? The poise?

First of seven short pieces, BOY depicts a young boy on the beach playing with and in the sand. What makes this piece dance is also what ruins it; the imposition of  self-conscious dance movements intrude on the natural lyricism of the child’s spontaneity in play. But play isn’t dance, and trying to force it into an adult’s viewpoint and movement language makes it neither.

The next piece, BURST is an athletic fist-fight between a man and a woman scantily clad in bed. She kicks him into the wall, he kicks her in the back, and then the room floods when she screams. They kiss and make up under water. This is not completely offensive and ridiculous because…? Please explain.

Next we have CARGO in which a young man in a tank top and jeans writhes against, into, out of and inside his old car. His facial expressions and movements lead me to believe that he can’t decide if he’s horny or angry. My one-sentence review would have to be “he sure loves his car.” If he were a skilled performer this may have been a fun piece to watch.

CASE STUDIES needs a good editor; the section right before the end is very funny, beautifully danced, and completely in character. The bulk of this work, however, consists of silly attempts at physical humor. For example: the cause of a woman’s sleep anxiety turns out to be the fact that she isn’t as good a speller as her mother wanted her to be. We know this because she spells out words with her body while she is sleeping. And this is dance because…?

At last we have some dance! HORSES NEVER LIE is an exquisite and sensual film of a woman enacting the birth and first movements of a baby horse. For some reason, the last section shows her dancing inside a waterfall and a white tent; the only other problem is the continuous shifting of the camera angle, which breaks up the flow and pacing of the dance.

The last two works, MOTION CONTROL and THE DUCHESS have great camera work, costumes, scoring, make up, and lighting in common. More performance pieces than dance, they each depict a character going through various stages of emotional disarray. Both need an editor, and both fall back on very overused gestures. It is disappointing that such considerable efforts were expended on the high production values rather than the choreography.

Overall, this series makes me long for the days when experimental dance focused on doing less with more—on stripping the theatricalism of classical ballet down to pure movement. Even if the context was a street corner and the dancers were pedestrians, there was a respect for what the body can do, for movement on a human scale, and for relationships between or within people that depicted them with dignity. Our current cultural obsession with trivializing or romanticizing abuse, and for substituting high tech production for well thought out ideas and good dance leaves me cold.

Dance on Camera On Tour

2008 showings confirmed to date

Jan 22 ......................FilmFest Reloaded at Karl's Klipper, Staten Island, NY
Jan 26 ......................Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, PA - lecture
Jan 31 ......................NYU Tisch School of the Arts, New York - lecture
Jan 31 ......................Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia (TP)
Feb 4 ........................Kinetic Cinema, Collective:Unconscious
March 28...................Spoke The Hub Brooklyn, NY - features - 2/29, 3/28, 4/25, 5/30
Feb 16-17 .................University of Michigan Ann Arbor, MI (TP)
Feb 22-23 .................University of Rochester, Rochester, NY (TP)
March 17 ..................University of Utah, Salt Lake City - ACDFA (TP)
March 31-April 18 .....Galerie Michel Journiac, Paris, France - (TP)
April 3-6 ....................Wisconsin Film Festival, Madison (TP)
April 9 ........................Muhlenberg College, Allentown, PA (TP)
April 13-14..................Circle Cinema, Tulsa, OK (TP)
April 13.......................VIII Dance Festival Kielce, Poland (TP)
April 17.......................Washington Center for the Arts, Olympia, WA (TP)
April 25.......................Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX (TP)
April 28-29..................Southeastern Louisianan University, Hammond, LA (TP)
May 9-13...................Jacob Burns Center, Pleasantville, NY
May 16.......................Aurora Picture Show, Houston TX (TP)
June...........................Philadelphia Dance Projects, Philadelphia, PA
July 5........................ Colorado College Dance Festival, Colorado Springs
July 27-August 1........Coreografico Int'l de Danza Contemporanea Burgos-NY (Spain) TP
July (TBD)..................Oasis, Chashama series, NYC

Visit dancefilms.org/Touringmain.html for links to specific program details

Kinetic Cinema

NUDEDESCENDANCE by Jonah Bokaer

For Kinetic Cinema's April 7th program, Jonah Bokaer showed pivotal works of movement-based video art by Nam June Paik. The theme of the evening will be the thread between between video art and post-modern dance focusing on Paik's significant contributions to both art forms. As a dance artist whose work addresses the human body in relation to contemporary technologies, Jonah will be able to offer rare insights into Paik's multi-disciplinary work that overlapped with dance, visual art, media, and technology.

Kinetic Cinema explores the intersection of dance and the moving image both on screen and stage. Each month curator Anna Brady Nuse invites a special guest from the dance community to share the films and videos that have inspired or moved them. These could be films that feature dance, are kinetic-based, or have been influential on their work in some way. The guest curators come from a range of backgrounds as performers, choreographers, critics, and filmmakers. Guest curators for the Spring, 2008 are: Malinda Allen (March 3rd), Jonah Bokaer (April 7th), Levi Gonzalez (May 5th), and Kriota Willberg (June 2nd).

First Monday of every month, 7:30pm $5
Collective:Unconscious, 279 Church Street (south of White Street) New York
212.254.5277 For more information, write Anna Brady Nuse; read her blog: movetheframe.com

ADF: Screendance: State of the Art 2

The American Dance Festival, “one of the nation’s most important institutions,” (New York Times), collaborates with Douglas Rosenberg for Screendance: State of the Art 2, Curating the Practice/Curating as Practice. The conference is scheduled to take place July 10-13 on the campus of Duke University, and will overlap with the ADF’s 13th annual Dancing for the Camera: International Festival of Film and Video Dance and a shared performance as part of the ADF’s 75th Anniversary Season. Registration forms and submission details now available at www.americandancefestival.org.

The symposium invites screendance makers, scholars, programmers, and curators from across the globe to join in an international dialog on the issues of curating and criticality. Directed by video artist and dance filmmaker Douglas Rosenberg, the conference aims to facilitate an ongoing discussion about the shared concerns of dance and media, while striving to build, strengthen, and define the international screendance community. Participants will gain exposure to the field’s most cutting-edge theories, research, and observations through four days of panels, presentations, screenings, and demonstrations.

Deadline for proposals is May 2, 2008.
To attend the four-day symposium and participate in the ADF’s 75th anniversary celebrations, applicants are encouraged to submit an early registration form and fee to the ADF by Monday, May 12, 2008. For more information please visit www.americandancefestival.org. Direct questions to adf@americandancefestival.org or 919.684.6402.

DFA MEMBER NEWS and other bits

GWENDOLEN CATES: WATER FLOWING TOGETHER broadcasts the 60-minute version of her 77-minute film on Independent Lens on April 8th.

NORTON OWEN: Jacobs Pillow will present the team behind the great film BLACK SPRING June 25-29. French filmmaker Benoit Dervaux, Compagnie Heddy Maalem hits the stage in the Ted Shawn Theater in The Berkshires, Massachusetts with Maalem's bold re-envisioning of Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring."

NEW YORK CITY BALLET starts its own YouTube page to add videos from its tour. See http://youtube.com/nycballet

MIMI GARRARD just finished her 68 hour for Manhattan Neighborhood Network. Her program is shown twice a month on Channel 56 in Manhattan.
Moves 08 will show Velez October Cirles asn an installation. BBC Big Screen will show the workthrough England 5 times a day for two weeks in April.

KELLY HARGRAVES just got a new distributor, Ouat Media, for CARGO.

PBS Dance in America: Wolf Trap's Face of America broadcast on April 21st. Funded by Irene Diamond Fund, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Specialfunding for these telecasts was provided by the LuEsther T. Mertz Charitable Trust.

Good to read

"Maynard and Jennica" by Rudolph Delson, published by Houghton Mifflin in 2007, optioned for a film by Scott Rudin has a short film description that begs to be choreographed. Book starts slow and picks up around page 80. Very entertaining
www.rudolphdelson.com/maynardandjennica/

Dancing Dissertations - Tierney Lab

Dancers in the Crowd Bring Back ‘Thriller’

Opportunities:
VII INTERNATIONAL CHOREOGRAPHY CONTEST BURGOS-NEW YORK July, 2008 Address to send documentation and materials:
BC-Bu SL. Producciones de Danza.
International Choreography Contest "Burgos-New York" 2008.
C/Juan de Padilla s/n . (Junto al Laboratorio Municipal)
09005 Burgos. SPAIN
Tel: +34 619416978 +34 947216522.

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