Dance on Camera
Festival Special

Study!

Dance on Camera Workshop
at Dance New Amsterdam
January 6-9, 2009
See details

RSVP requested for Awards Party

Please let us know if you plan to attend the Awards Party on January 10, 7pm at the Frieda and Roy Furman Gallery at the Walter Reade Theatre.

DFA’s 2009 Festival Jury, Tere O’Connor, Caterina Bartha, Lois Greenfield, and Madeleine Shapiro, met in the first week of December to deliberate as to what titles will be the winners from the 14 programs of the Dance on Camera Festival. Their unanimous decision is to nominate 5 shorts, including two that were commissioned by EMPAC:

Kino-Eye
Joby Emmons, USA, 2008; 8m
Choreographed by Elena Demyanenko, Kino-Eye shadows a dancer through contemporary Moscow. Immersed in an aesthetic of video surveillance, the dancer shifts in and out of glitches and static as video playback manipulates her image.

Propiedad Horizontal
David Fariás, Carla Schillagi and Maria Fernanda Vallejos, Argentina,
2008, 10m Dancers in a narrow passageway to create an elegant,
abstract, and lively piece of pure movement and form.

Of The Heart
Douglas Rosenberg/Allan Kaeja, USA, 2008; 6m
A dance camera trio set in a windblown field with heartfelt performances by David Dorfman and Lisa Race.

Bardo
Richard Move, 2007, USA; 4.52m
A hypnotic 'Lamentation Variation 2', choreographed by Richard Move and commissioned by the Martha Graham Dance Company as performed by Katherine Crockett.

Mysteries of Nature
Dahci Ma, 2008, South Korea;10m
"Torn into bits and gone with the wind."

The winner will be announced in the free Awards Ceremony to be held January 10, 7pm in the Frieda and Roy Furman Gallery of the Walter Reade Theatre, Lincoln Center Plaza. Most of the artists will be attending.In addition,

The Awards Ceremony will also recognize, for the first time, innovative uses of dance on-line. Among those recognized is the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAA) for initiating the Science Dance Contest. Open to anyone who has (or is pursuing) a Ph.D. in any scientific or related field, the participants “dance their Ph.D.’s” and submit their entries by video. Videos are posted to the website, and winners are paired with professional choreographers to further develop their dance. The initiator of the project, John John Bohannon will be on hand to tell us its story.

MANCC (mancc.org), a dance and choreographic research center housed on the Florida State University (FSU) campus in Tallahassee, will also be recognized for its contribution to dance on the web. Their website lets visitors garner a glimpse into the choreographers’ creative processes through video, audio and mixed-media, most of which has been shot and edited by Shoko Letton.

A third project, Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet’s project52 is a year-long documentary, released in one- minute segments online each week. Featuring the dancers and collaborators at the company, project52 creates intimate vignettes of the lives of performers and artists. See cedarlakedance.com.

Don't Miss !

Under the Influence of Busby Berkeley

Kriota Wilberg speaks on Saturday, January 10, 2:30pm
In the Gallery of the Walter Reade Theatre

Busby Berkeley was a great director/choreographer in his day, but what has he done for us lately? Turns out… a lot! Berkeley’s penchant for crazy camera moves, sex, elaborate staging, geometry and stream-of-consciousness editing style still influences artists today, and has been used to entertain and sell cigarettes, music, TV shows, and pharmaceuticals. How many choreographers can claim such a broad impact? Kriota Willberg presents clips from an array of independent and studio films, music videos, and television commercials, demonstrating Berkeley’s influence on cinematography and choreographic styles over the last 70 years.

In addition to a smattering of the Hollywood and Bollywood cadre, contributors in the line up include Richard James Allen, Jess Curtis and Kwame Braun, Michel Gondry, Kat Green, Jennie Livingston, Lucky Strike cigarettes, Anna Brady Nuse, Nuvaring®/Schering Corporation, Jonathon Rosen, Keith Schofield, and Kriota Willberg.

Robert Johnson leads panel on Jiri Kylian

ABT Principal Dancer Gillian Murphy and Juilliard School Dance Division Director Lawrence Rhodes join Newark Star Ledger Dance critic Robert Johnson for panel on the Style of Jiri Kylian for the last showing of Dance on Camera Festival 2009, 3:30pm

See who's coming

37th Annual Dance on Camera Festival
January 6-17 50 Artists and Curators confirmed their attendance (to date), 50 titles; 16 programs; 2 receptions; 3 Meet The Artist sessions; 2 panels; Presenters Roundtable Brunch (1/11) Town Hall Meeting (1/17);
4 classes (maybe more)... When you will coming? Let us know

Dance filmmaker Doris Chase dies

Ms. Chase died Dec. 13 from a combination of Alzheimer's disease and several strokes, said her son Randy Chase, of Seattle. She spent her final years in Capitol Hill's Horizon House after a career divided between Seattle and New York City

Born in Seattle in 1923, Ms. Chase went to Ravenna Grade School and Roosevelt High, and studied art and architecture at the University of Washington. She married in 1943, gave birth to son Gary in 1946 and son Randy in 1951. Her challenges while trying to break into the art world included a nervous breakdown after Gary's birth and coping with her husband Elmo's paralysis from polio.

Using unconventional materials that included sand and wood, Ms. Chase began painting Northwest landscapes and had her first — andwell-reviewed — solo exhibition in 1956 at Seattle's Otto Seligman Gallery. As her career flourished with solo shows around the world, her abstract paintings gradually gave way to large, abstract sculptures that featured circles and arches and were made so that people could interact with them — and sometimes climb on them.

None of this came easily. "It was frustrating," Randy recalled. "There were a few women [artists], and she fought the battle for women's rights and acceptance in the arts as being legitimate and serious her whole life. Perseverance was part of her nature."

The "Northwest art establishment ... tended to treat her like a housewife with pretensions," Ament wrote. And so, already a pioneer, Ms. Chase made another bold move in 1972: At the age of 49, she divorced, moved to New York on her own and began making experimental short films. Initially combining her sculpture with dance in the films, her mostnotable were those in a series of films about the inner lives of aging women in the 1980s. Having settled in the famous Chelsea Hotel, she also shot a 1993 documentary, "The Chelsea," about its eccentric artistic residents.

In New York, her reputation grew like it never had in Seattle. One indication of that change was Parke Godwin's 1988 novel, "A Truce With Time," a fictionalized version of Ms. Chase's life before and during herNew York years. While he was writing it, she made a film depicting her own view of their relationship, "Still Frame."

Among Ms. Chase's honors was Seattle's "Doris Chase Day," declared for the 1999 dedication of her 17-foot high "Moon Gates" at Seattle Center. She created Kerry Park's 15-foot "Changing Form" in 1971.

Randy Chase recalls his mom as "the ultimate multitasker." She worked on her art six days a week and spent Sundays on a "spiritual recharge" and a walk in the park. Her art, he said, "was her oxygen, her gasoline. She was very vibrant, articulate, and she worked hard to get what she got. There was no gifts here."

In addition to her son Randy and his wife, Nancy, Ms. Chase is survived by her son Gary and his partner, Pam, of Melbourne, Australia, and three grandchildren.

A public memorial service is scheduled for 2 p.m. Jan. 9 at the University Unitarian Church, 6556 35th Ave. N.E. Contributions can be made to the Horizon House Employee Fund, Providence Hospice of Seattle or the University of Washington Doris Totten Chase Endowment Fund.

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