Dance Films Association

by John Rockwell

One of the first things I did as the newly ensconced chief dance critic of The New York Times in January 2005 was immerse myself in the Dance on Camera Festival at Lincoln Center. The first thing I did in my newly retired state from The New York Times was attend the Dance on Camera Festival in January 2007.

I am writing now about one of the films I saw early this year, Thierry Knauff’s “Bare Handed.” To my knowledge, the jury did not even pick this is a finalist, let alone give it the jury award. In 2005 my taste and that of the jury (and of nearly everyone else who saw it) coincided: Lloyd Newson’s “The Cost of Living” was clearly the best entry that year, and walked away with the prize. So, I brooded, if my taste corresponded with that of the jury then, why not now?

Knauff is a Belgian with an interesting background as a filmmaker. He was born in Kinshasha in the (formerly Belgian) Congo, and has made several documentaries about Africa, including “Baka” (1995) on the Pygmies of southeast Cameroon. He also has an intense interest in dance and music, the latter seen in his poetic docu-biography of the composer Anton Webern, in which scenes from his life are evoked wordlessly (wonderful if you know the story, mystifying, I would suspect, if you don’t). That film seems to have inspired his first feature, “Wild Blue” (2000), described as a floating tone-poem collage of sounds and images.

Subsequently, in this millennium, Knauff ?the dancer-choreographer Michele Noiret. She studied at Bejart’s Mudra school in Brussels and was closely associated for a time with the composer Karlheinz Stockhausen. She is also the daughter of Joseph Noiret, a leading Belgian “revolutionary Surrealist” and founder of COBRA, an artistic collective devoted to advancing the cause of, it seems, revolutionary Surrealism.The first Knauff-Noiret film (2004) was called “Solo”, and in information distributed by Knauff’s Films du Sablier it is the first half of a “two-part variation” that also includes “Bare Handed” (2006). Despite some intriguing music by Stockhausen, “Solo” is the less interesting of the two, although pretty striking on its own terms. It is also more overtly dancey, in that it follows Noiret in a scary dreamscape but concentrates on her angular, gestural dancing.

Both films last about 30 minutes and are in black and white with stark side lighting. But “Bare Handed” is considerably more ambitious filmically and theatrically. Again, Noiret stalks and writhes about in black. But this time there are ever-present, sometimes large-than-life projections on a screen behind her and, more touchingly, an old man with quivering hands and elegant, shaky handwriting who periodically appears from behind the screen, watching silently. His words and her whispering into his ear circle back, over and over, to dreams. The old man turns out – when you read the credits – to be Joseph Noiret.

I found “Bare Handed” – the French title, “A Mains Nues,” means exactly the same thing but is somehow more sexy and mysterious – compelling from start to finish. Without knowing the tastes of the 2007 jury, I can only speculate that Knauff’s entry failed to make the cut for the jury prize because it seemed more theatrical and filmic and less choreographic – more a Knauff film than a Noiret film.

Of course this is a false dichotomy, especially in the closely-linked intersections of dance, theater and film in Europe today. But American dance critics seem still more closely wedded to “pure” dance abstraction in the Balanchine-Cunningham mode. The very notion of dance on camera suggests a marriage of those two art forms. But maybe there is still a bias here towards film as a handmaiden of dance, better serving the purposes of documentation and celebration than incorporating movement into film for more overtly cinematic purposes.

Then again, “The Cost of Living,” for all its choreographic brilliance, was plenty theatrical. So maybe this time around my taste simply differed from the Dance on Camera jury. “Bare Handed” is still worth seeking out. It’s a powerful work, whatever its genre may be.•

John Rockwell will be a member of the Dance on Camera Festival 2008 Jury,
along with Alla Kovgan, David Michalek, Gerald Busby, and Lana Wilson.

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Dance on Camera Ezine September-October, 2007

Dance on Camera Ezine
September-October, 2007