Movement Media’s Fall Calendar and Programs

Movement Media is happy to announce:

• Kinetic Cinema Film Screenings each Month in 2009
• UMOVE Festival Screening & Launch Party on October 4th
• Workshops and Webinars on Filming Dance in 2009
• Kinetic Cinema Screenings and Workshops at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia.

CALENDAR of Events in NYC

SEPTEMBER 9th (Wednesday) at 7:00 7:30pm – Kinetic Cinema

“Kill the Ego” curated by Lisa Niedermeyer – Tickets $10

Location: The TANK, 354 West 45th Street, NYC  (btw 8th/9th Avenue)

Directions to The TANK.

© 2008-2009 Soundwalk, Rostarr & Label Dalbin - Photo by Ron Patane

Join us for the kick off of an exciting new season of Kinetic Cinema in which choreographer, performer, and videographer Lisa Niedermeyer curates an evening that explores a kinetic portrayal of New York City.  Conceived originally as a sound collage by Stephan Crasneanscki and Doug Winningham of the new media firm Soundwalk, ‘Kill The Ego’ draws on a decade’s worth of New York City field recordings “voices of pimps and engineers, poets and dominatrixs, visionaries and children, hope and sorrow.”

© 2008-2009 Soundwalk, Rostarr & Label Dalbin - Photo by Atsushi Nishijima

Fueled by this sound,   underground visual artist Rostarr experiments with gravity, momentum, torque and combinations of all three (break dancing on his canvases) as directors Jim Helton and Ron Patane bring to cinematic life Soundwalk’s original audio collage and Rostarr’s visual work, culminating in a uniquely kinetic representation of New York City.

© 2008-2009 Soundwalk, Rostarr & Label Dalbin - Photo by Atsushi Nishijima

View the Trailer
Soundwalk’s website

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SEPTEMBER 24th (Thursday) 1:00-2:00pm (EST) – Webinar on ‘How to Make a Great Dance Promo Video’

DanceBrazil - Promo reel by Reels4Artists

Videographer and founder of the production company Reels4Artists, Gerrit Vooren will present a live online seminar, or ‘webinar ‘ on how to produce a great promo video. Learn how to best frame and edit your work to help you acquire bookings, funding, and audience support. This one hour webinar will take place in real time, so that you have ample time to ask questions and get feedback from Gerrit.

Have a scheduling conflict? No worries, all registrants will have access to a recorded transcript of the webinar to view and listen to anytime.

Registration is limited to 50 ppl. Please contact: movementmedia@pentacle.org to register. Workshop fee $18 USD.

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OCTOBER 4th (Sunday) 7:30 & 9:30pm – The First Annual UMOVE Online Videodance Festival Screening and Launch Party.

As the First Annual UMove Videodance Festival kicks off online, join us to celebrate the launch with a live screening and party in New York City. Featuring a selection of cutting edge digital animations, 60 sec shorts, surprising combinations of dance and technology, and low budget wonders that represent the best of Youtube. Multimedia performances will entertain and inspire, and drinks and popcorn will flow!

Tickets -$40 Donation with Reserved Seating or $5 At the Door-Very Limited Seating.

To reserve a seat with a $40 donation, please go to our donate now page on our website or contact us at movementmedia@pentacle.org.

Location: The Tank, 354 West 45th Street (btw 8th/9th Avenue) . Directions to The TANK.

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OCTOBER 22nd (Thursday) 7:00pm – Kinetic Cinema

Title:   “Choreographic Portraits on Film” by Victoria Marks.

Tickets- $10 (at the door)

'Outside In on Mirror'-photo by Mark Lewis

Victoria explores ‘what moves us’ versus the specific ‘moves a dancer makes’…and the way in which this concept can be captured by the camera.  For Kinetic Cinema, Victoria showcases works which capture what she terms ‘Choreographic Portraiture’, and she offers 2 separate workshops in NYC and Philadelphia to teach others how to work with the camera to capture more intimate aspects of dance on film.

Location: University Settlement, 184 Eldridge Street (at the corner of Rivington).  Directions to University Settlement.

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OCTOBER 23rd (Friday) 10:00am-2:00pm - Workshop on Filming Dance.

Victoria Marks and dancers

Choreographer and award-winning dance film-maker Victoria Marks will teach a movement-based workshop on how to capture the essence of the dancer on film.

Open to dance and film professionals and students, registration is limited to 20 ppl. Please contact: movementmedia@pentacle.org to register. Workshop fee $35.00.

Location: HT Chen Dance Center, 8 East 1st Street, (btw Bowery & 2nd Avenue).  Directions to HT Chen Dance Center.

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NOVEMBER 11th (Wednesday) 7:30pm – Kinetic Cinema

Amy Greenfield -Flesh into Night

Cinedance pioneer Amy Greenfield presents poetic and alluring dance films.

Tickets – $10 (at the door)

Location: The Tank, 354 West 45th Street (btw 8th/9th Avenue) . Directions to The TANK.

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DECEMBER 9th (Wednesday) 7:30 pm – Kinetic Cinema

Dancer-Carlton Ward, Jody Oberfelder Dance Projects

Choreographer and dance-filmmaker Jody Oberfelder presents: The Phenomenon of Viral Dance Videos.

Tickets – $10 (at the door)

Location: The Tank, 354 West 45th Street (btw 8th/9th Avenue) . Directions to The TANK.

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CALENDAR of Events in Philadelphia

OCTOBER 21st (Wednesday) 6:00pm – Kinetic Cinema at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia

'Outside In Tango'-Photo by Mark Lewis

In conjunction with the ground-breaking Dance with Camera exhibition at the ICA, Victoria Mark’s curates a Kinetic Cinema screening in Philadelphia.  “Choreographic Portraits on Film”.

FREE

Location: the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia. Directions to the Institute of Contemporary Art.

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OCTOBER 24th (Saturday) 10:00am-5:00pm – Workshop on Filming Dance in Philadelphia.

Dance with Camera-ICA in Philadelphia

Victoria Marks is offering her workshop on filming dance a second time in Philadelphia.  Open to dance and film professionals and students, registration is limited to 20 ppl.

Please visit www.icaphila.org to register.  Workshop fee $25.00.

Location: The Institute for Contemporary Art, Philadelphia.  Directions to Institute of Contemporary Art.

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ABOUT MOVEMENT MEDIA

For more info on Pentacle’s Movement Media project and news about our upcoming Kinetic Cinema season, please check here regularly and visit our website: http://pentacle.org/movement_media.asp

ABOUT KINETIC CINEMA

Kinetic Cinema is a co-presentation of The Tank and Pentacle’s Movement Media project.  This screening series explores the intersection of dance and the moving image.  For each screening Anna Brady Nuse, Pentacle’s director of Movement Media, invites a different guest artist from the fields of dance and media arts to share a selection of films and videos that have inspired them.  These could be works for screen 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, video artists, and film-makers.

ADF Screendance Journal Available for Download

by Anna Brady Nuse

The papers presented at last year’s Screendance: State of the Art 2 Conference at the American Dance Festival have just been posted online and are available for download. It is nice to revisit the ideas around curating that were presented at that conference, as I’m in the process of planning next Fall’s Kinetic Cinema series. My paper was all about the model of artist-driven curating that I have been cultivating through Kinetic Cinema. I wrote a couple of follow-up posts on this blog about the Screendance conference at ADF last summer here and here if you would like to follow the thread of the discussion.

You can download the latest essays for the Screendance Journal on the following topics here: http://dvpg.net/screendance2008.html

Thoughts on Curating: How to Bring About a Shift in Perception

Anna Brady Nuse

“Screendance is growing worldwide. Every year more dance film festivals spring up; new courses in dance for the camera are added to college dance curriculums; and symposiums, workshops and panels take place all over the world. Despite this trend, screendance is still virtually unknown in American culture at large.”

Does Screendance need to look like dance?

Claudia Kappenberg

This is an edited version of a paper, which was first presented at the American Dance Festival, ‘Screendance State of the Art 2’, Duke University, North Carolina in 2008, and re-presented at the conference ‘Exploring the Screen as a Site for Choreography’, University of Bristol, Department of Drama, Theatre, Film & Television, April 2009, in response to debates at the Bristol event. Drawing on a wider field of visual art, film, dance and theatre studies the paper proposes a new knowledge map for screendance aiming to articulate the complexities of choreographic sensibilities and identifying a set of Screendance strategies

Curating the Practice/The Practice of Curating

Douglas Rosenberg

This paper in a slightly different form was presented at the Curating the Practice/The Practice of Curating conference at the American Dance Festival in Durham, NC, USA on Thursday July 10, 2008. Some of the ideas contained were originally posted (by Douglas Rosenberg) in a number of on-line discussions during the last year. Please use with permission. rosend@education.wisc.edu

Curator’s Notes for Linssin taka / Beyond the Lens

Sini Haapalinna

A national video dance screening program, coinciding with the dance and live arts festival Z – in – Motion, organized by Zodiak, Center for New Dance in Helsinki, Finland, and curated by freelance artist Sini Haapalinna.

The Future of Video on the Net and What You Need to Know

By Dawn Paap

Open Video is a broad based movement of video creators, technologists, academics, filmmakers, entrepreneurs, activists, remixers, and many others. When most folks think of “open,” they think of open source and open codecs. They’re right—but there’s more to Open Video than open codecs. Open Video is the growing movement for transparency, interoperability, and further decentralization in online video.  Open Video is about the legal and social norms surrounding online video. It’s the ability to attach the license of your choice to videos you publish. It’s about media consolidation, aggregation, and decentralization. It’s about fair use. In short, it’s about a lot of things, and that’s why the first ever Open Video Conference Held on June 19th and 20th here in NYC was a fascinating event for anyone in the business of producing or consuming video.

Modern or Classical? Two Opposing Styles That Seem to be Merging in New Dance Media

We are about to embark upon the fourth week of our Videodance Contest, and as always, we greatly appreciate all the creativity and effort given by the artists who have submitted so far. If you have yet to participate, we strongly encourage you to do so, or nominate the work of others for a chance to receive publicity and feedback among this burgeoning community. Scroll below for information on next week’s theme, “Summer or Winter.” Submissions are due by Tuesday June 23rd, and the contest winners will be announced here on June 26th.

Modern or Classical

This week’s theme was Modern or Classical as it applies to the styles of filming, choreography, and music. We discovered in viewing the submissions, that there were a great deal of gray areas in trying to categorize a piece under one specific style. If a piece was comprised of both choreography and music that was highly classical, but used a filming technique that was hi-tech or contemporary, which category did it fall into? What about if the dancing style was modern, but the piece was filmed using a strictly classical technique? We found that it was often tricky to determine which style predominantly overshadowed the other in each work. Out of this ambiguity one submission emerged that we felt represented both styles strongly and in equal measure.

Our winner for both categories this week is…

“Arabesque” by Peter William Holden

Arabesque

While the complicated technology used to create the kinetic sculpture in this video seems to categorize it as a modern work, other aspects of the film are highly classical. For starters, the piece is choreographed to the renowned Blue Danube Waltz by Johann Strauss. Additionally, the kaleidoscopic choreography that Holden creates with the mechanical arms and legs, as well as the aerial camera view, are reminiscent of Busby Berkley’s classic films. Holden’s innovative dance video combines classical film and choreographic styles with modern elements such as the technology needed to operate and coordinate the sculpture. Therefore, this video is both highly modern and classical.

Refreshingly, this is the first video we’ve showcased that was made by an artist from a visual arts background. We love to see artists of all disciplines working with kinetic forms and media. Video artists, animators, installation artists, and film-makers of all kinds are encouraged and invited to submit their work!

About the artist:

Peter William Holden was born in a decaying post industrial town in Northern England in 1970, and from an early age became fascinated with moving imagery, transformation and technology.

The abstract pixels of the 1980’s home computer gave him a glimpse into the wonderful world of mathematics. Early Electro and Hip-Hop with its synthetic sound introduced him to the complex dance routines of break-dance and acquainted him with the beauty of choreographed movement. These and countless more experiences are incorporated in his installations in a collage of movement, light and sound.

His work has been exhibited at various international events Ars Electronica, Linz. Technologically Expanded Dance, Lisbon. Kapelica Gallery, Ljubljana. e-Arts, Shanghai. boDig 08, Istanbul. Vooruit, Gent. Cinéma Le Miroir, Marseilles. More info: www.peter-william-holden.com

We would like to open up some questions to our audience regarding Classical versus Modern Styles.

• Do you prefer Classical or Modern Styles?
• Do you feel that you work in a particular style, or a combination of styles?
• Do you think that videos of Classical styles or Modern styles work better for online viewing?  For example, Classical dance styles often value symmetry and a balanced composition, and tend to be more story-based.  On the other hand, Modern dance styles often showcase abstract themes, such as social and political views, and movement that is based in individual expression and having the artistic product relay that intellectual or emotional process.
• Do you find more Classical style dance companies using technology to post their works online than Modern styles?  Why might there be a difference?

We would love to hear your comments.

Next Week’s Categories for Movement Media’s Online Video Dance Contest

Theme Four: Summer or Winter

Submissions are due by June 23rd.

Winners will be announced on Move the Frame on June 26th.

We felt that in honor of the first day of summer, it would be fun to explore the theme Summer or Winter, and if you live in the Northeast U.S. it is actually feeling more wintery these days than summery…This is a theme that can be very literally interpreted, but at the same time presents the potential to inspire a vast array of site-specific works. We are looking for any interpretation that you may have of summer or winter. Does a film fall into the category of summer simply because it is filmed in a warm location? Can a sense of warmth between individuals evoke a feeling of summer? Does cold weather immediately classify a film as winter? Often a site specific piece can unintentionally be classified into one of these two themes. While we created this theme with the intention of focusing mostly on the location of each film and how it is incorporated into the piece or why it is chosen, we are open to any interpretation that you may offer us. Just make sure to tell us which category the work falls under and why.

HOW TO SUBMIT

* Submissions may be made by anyone – artists, film makers, and anyone who knows of online videos that fit the weekly themes.
* The video submitted must be under 10 minutes long.
* Pick/Submit one video to represent only one of the weekly themes.
* Send the link of the video to Movement Media
* The video submitted needs to be embeddable, ie hosted on YouTube or another sharable online video platform.
* Include a short biography/artist statement (if it is your work).
* For every submission, include a short summary that describes why you have chosen a particular video for the contest and describe how it relates to the weekly theme.
* Include a brief synopsis of the video.
* Include a link to your website (if you have one)
* Include your email address
Email all information to movementmedia@pentacle.org
If your submission is chosen for the weekly contest, we will contact you directly

Impetus for Contest Participants

* Have your videos seen by an online audience who’s interested in movement-based video.
* Receive publicity for your work/work of others
* Receive comments and feedback
* Automatic consideration for live screening at Kinetic Cinema in NYC.
* Automatic consideration for Movement Media’s Online Dance Film Festival in September 2009 (information and submission guidelines to be announced in late June).

Top Ten Vlogging Tips from Boris Willis

As you know, Boris Willis was our curator for our last Kinetic Cinema of the season. The subject of his evening was dance vlogs: a video blog with dance.  As an experienced dance vlogger, Boris has many insights into the process of creating videos, performing for the camera, editing, and using the web to share his work online.  He has graciously offered some helpful information about making dance videos, and creating dance vlogs.  Check out his inspirational work and helpful tips below.

Capitol Spring 2 by Boris Willis

Boris writes:

Why should artists create a dance vlog? I believe the answer lies in the number of times we have to explain what we do and have little in our culture to point to as an example. We have an opportunity to reach out to the public to show and explain the process of what we do, why we do it and how we feel about it. Here are some tips for you to think about as you make your dance vlogs.

1. Have a vision
   Find a way to make videos that you feel express who you are and what you want to say as a dancer. That being said, don’t just turn on your camera and dance, find a way to make an interesting and exciting video. Look at commercials and other short videos as inspiration.
2. Vlogging is personal and performative
   Make your vlog about you because it is the one subject that you know more about than anyone else. Dance, talk about dance, talk about making dance while you are dancing, dance about making dance.
3. Understand how the web is used
   Just because you have twenty minutes of footage doesn’t mean you should post it all to your vlog. Generally speaking three minutes is the most someone will watch. In other words keep it short, a sixty second video is plenty. As you gain more skills you will be able to make longer videos compelling by the way you edit them. It is always better to leave them wanting more than to bore them. Make stuff that people want to see and make it short enough that they watch it all.
4. Edit
   Learn how to use the tools of video editing. There are free editing tools that come with your computer operating system, Window’s Movie Maker for Window and iMove for the Mac OS. If you want to be able to do more sophisticated editing you can get Final Cut Express for the Mac and Premiere Pro Elements for the PC. For professional level editing you will need something like Premier Pro CS 4 for the PC and Final Cut 6 for the Mac. The great thing about video is that you can take the time to get it right and make your content compelling. However, the most important edit you make is at the end of your video, use a black out when the video is over and put your credits at the end of each video without a blackout so the credits are the last thing your audience sees. That way if your video gets distributed around the web everyone will know its yours.
5. Get the best camera you can afford
   You never know what will become of your work it is always best to get the highest quality video of your original work. When you put it on the web it will get compressed and lose quality but that is what we expect from the web. Having a high quality version for showing offline is a very good idea. I also recommend that you use a camera that records to video tape so that you have a backup. I always shoot in HDV but down-convert to SD to save disk space then compress it to the Quicktime format which eventually gets converted to flash.
6. Find a video host that you like
   I have been in debates about whether it is better to put your videos on Vimeo or YouTube or Blip.tv. There is no reason not to try all three and of any number of others. Just find one that you like. If image quality is what is most important then Vimeo is for you. If ease of distribution is what is most important then Blip.tv is for you. If getting your videos seen by a large number of people then YouTube is the way to go. There are pro’s and con’s for all three services and I use all three and others as well. Once you decided on a host for your videos choose a host for your blog. Blogger and WordPress are two popular services that give you a variety of tools to enhance your content.
7. Be Consistent
   Follow your vision, update on a regular basis, make videos in manageable viewing times for your audience. You are not going to make money from advertising on your vlog but you can use your vlog as a tool to get work by showcasing your skills as a performer, choreographer, editor and artist. Let your followers know what you are up to especially when you are taking a break. People want to know that when they go to your blog there is regularly new content there that they want to see. Your dance vlog should be fun and informative. You should do it because you enjoy it.
8. Say hello
   How do you get people to follow your vlog? Email your friends, comment on other people’s vlogs, tell people you meet, get cards made. You can get free cards online from Vista Print.
9. Music
   Don’t use copy-written music. Find a musician among your friends or on the web that will let you use their music in exchange for some cross promotion. You can find plenty of music at this url http://www.archive.org/index.php Learn about Creative Commons use and credit the musicians for their work.
10. Describe the videos you make
    Write a description of the videos you post and use tags to help yourself and others find them. It is time consuming at first to describe your work but the value in doing so cannot be underestimated. Describe what you are doing in the video, give the location, who is in the video, when it was done and what the video is about.

-Boris Willis

danceaday.com

Using Choreography in Cinedance

By Dawn Paap

Given all the possibilities of dance on screen, choreographers for the camera have a multitude of ways to keep us astonished.  Fortunately, the creative interaction between film technique and dance are endless.  In the emerging field of Cinedance, filmmakers or video artists create works that use dance as raw material, and now, choreographic achievements are being made available to the video artist for artistic exploration.

At the last Kinetic Cinema screening on May 13th at Chez Bushwick, curator Victoria Murphy showed a video by Matt Tarr and Ami Ipapo entitled ‘Little Ease (Outside the Box)’ that was a screen adaptation of Elizabeth Streb’s iconic solo ‘Little Ease’. For the film version of the piece, Streb company member Ami Ipapo reconstructed the choreography off-stage in an urban landscape.  The choreography of the live piece on its own is powerful, but the film was able to capture more action and intensity in the piece. I felt more connected to the dancer by being able to hear her breathing, and see her minute facial expressions as she powerfully pushes through the movements. The film took me “inside the box” with the dancer, and I forgot that I was a voyeur watching a choreographed work, something that rarely happens when watching a live performance. My favorite element of this Cinedance was the artistry in editing together of the shots of choreography, which to me added a new specific cinematic “pulse” to Streb’s dance.

Fortunately, other dance icons are lending their choreographed works to video artists to create cinedances. For instance the Martha Graham Company recently released videos of several dances from Martha Graham’s Clytemnestra to be remashed and reedited by contestants in their Clytemnestra Remash Challenge. The contestants displayed a huge range of styles and approaches to remashing the choreographic material, and all of the contest entries are available for view on the Clytemenestra Remash Challenge website at http://clytemnestraproject.com.

I am a personal fan of taking choreographed works made for the stage out into the world to be performed, so I was very pleased to see so many  video artists take Martha Graham’s choreography and characters into new environments off stage.  To me, it made the characters more appealing and more passionate. As a result, I found myself enjoying and connecting with Graham’s work on another level.   The following submission was my personal favorite in the Remash Contest.

The winners of the Remash Contest for Martha Graham’s Clytemnestra have been announced.  Check out their videos and look at some of the other contestants as well. Voting is still open for the popular choice awards! Regardless of the winners, I am thrilled to see new film-makers responding to choreography and furthering the development of cinedance.

People all over the globe are now able to share and collaborate on artistic works over the Internet. Dance innovators would be wise to tap into these new possibilities and use today’s networked media technologies to make the works of dance masters more accessible. In so doing, like Martha Graham and Elizabeth Streb, they would ensure the cultural significance of their work over time, while also enabling to new works of art to be made and contributing to new developments in cinedance.

Creating a Lexicon for Screendance

by Anna Brady Nuse

(re)Action by Victoria Murphy

At Victoria Murphy’s talk and screening at Kinetic Cinema last Wednesday, she proposed a set of terms and definitions for classifying and identifying different forms of dance on screen. Murphy’s lexicon had similarities and differences with other proposed frameworks for screendance that have been presented and discussed at various forums and conferences in recent years. There is no doubt that this kind of discussion and debate is extremely important for the development of the genre (or some would say art form), so I would like to point out some of the main theories that exist today, and discuss how they intersect and overlap.

Screendance, cinedance, videodance, dance film… Which term to use?

In most debates about dance on screen, the first question that pops up is what is this genre called? Many different terms are in use, and in some cases they point to different genres while others are a catchall word for all dance on screen.

I think one of the best explanations of the different terms in use is by Karen Pearlman of the Physical TV company in Australia. In her article, “A Dance of Definitions” published in RealTime Arts, an Australian-based art and media blog, Pearlman reported on the dialogue at the first Screendance Conference at the American Dance Festival in 2006 around a question she raised which was: “Is dance on screen a dance art, a cinema art or a visual art?” In her estimation many of the different terms used today describe specific mixtures of two or more of these art forms at play. For Pearlman, screendance is a catchall term which could include any combination of dance and movement with “film, video, new media, installation, and future media.” The other terms are more specific in their focus. Videodance “is based in the thinking of a video art maker, a performance art maker or a visual artist will have its effect through techniques, schools, theories and premises of those disciplines.” While dance for screen “prioritises dance as its central discipline [and] will foreground the composition and exhibition of the danced movement.”

Screendance Venn Diagram by Karen Pearlman

Internet killed the Video Star: An Evening at Monkey Town

On April 24th Movement Research presented “Internet Killed the Video Star”, a night of dance video work created by performers, choreographers, and visual artists was as part of their Spring Roll Call festival at Monkey Town in Williamsburg.  All the works shown were originally submitted via internet, and the program was designed to support artistic considerations of resolution, degradation and quality within kinetic film arts. Since the Monkey Room has centrally-seated DJs/VJs who project videos on all four floor-to-ceiling screens, it offers an intense viewing experience in a cozy atmosphere. Watching the program on four big screens I was uncertain regarding the intended format of each film, and I quickly became aware of the effects of viewing different works on a small screen versus a large screen.

Some films seemed more powerful being shown on the four large screens at Monkey Town, while the film “MM2″ by Rebecca Gaffney felt overwhelming to view due to the intense strobe lights used in the film.  Later in viewing this on a smaller singular screen, it was more forgiving on the eyes, and kept me “pulled in” and interested (rather than making me want to close my eyes to ward off a pounding head ache as it did at Monkey Town).

I found Ben Pranger’s “Erased Dance” film intriguing during the screening, as it was the only silent film presented.  The absence of music seemed to soften the movements of the dancer, and the full wide shot of the dancer’s body, that was continually being erased, was very effective, especially on the floor-to-ceiling screens at the MonkeyTown.  This was a case where I found the work to be much more powerful on the large screen, rather than the small computer screen.

The remaining films presented by Movement Research seemed to work on either a computer screen or as a large projection.  Gina T’ai’s “Lumiere D’Ampoule” had a wonderful use of still images of the dancer with fabulous lighting effects.  Her work is beautiful, and it is easy to see why she was chosen as winner of the Dance for Camera 2007 student film award.

Our own Anna Brady Nuse (Pentacle’s director of Movement Media) showed “Funf ‘n’ Twist”, a fun and lighthearted look at dance on prom night.  Another delightful piece was Alex Cassal & Alice Ripoll’s “Journey to the Navel of the World”, in which action figures traveled across landscapes of human bodies.  Comedy was central in both of these pieces, which made them especially enjoyable and memorable.

You can view all of the films and videos in their “natural” environment online at Movement Research’s festival blog: http://movementresearch.org/rollcall/?p=1153.

by Dawn Paap and Anna Brady Nuse

Is it Live or Is it Cinedance?

(re)Action by Victoria Murphy

Next week, on May 13th at Kinetic Cinema, Victoria Murphy will present a provocative talk and screening in which she proposes a way to define and think about what cinedance is and is not.

“Videodance” “Screendance” “Dance for the Camera” “Cinedance”… These terms have been used interchangeably when referring to things that emerge at the crossroads of dance and media, including everything from concert dance that is videotaped, edited and shown to an audience; to films about famous dance companies, choreographers and dancers; to videos made by creating movement for the camera, then edited to create visual poetry and films that are choreographic in their structure, though the images do not include people that could remotely be construed as dancing.

Does it matter that these and other forms melding dance and media are clumped together under several terms used interchangeably? Is this an emerging art form? If so, what are the hallmarks of the form? What makes one thing a cinedance, another a documentary, another cultural anthropology, and another a form of experimental media which we have yet to name?

Featuring the work of: Matt Tarr and ami ipapo; Douglas Rosenberg and Allen Kaeja; and Victoria Murphy; among others.

Victoria Murphy is a cinedancemaker, dancer, media artist and actress. She is a member of The Living Theatre and has performed with jill sigman/thinkdance, the Alchemical Theatre, the Measured Breath Theatre Company, and is working with Cynthia Berkshire on a dance in development. Victoria is currently working on her second cinedance, (re)Action. She studied media production and computer animation at The New School, and has worked on feature and commercial film sets. Her day-job activities include tutoring dancers in Final Cut Pro.

KINETIC CINEMA

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

7:00pm

Tickets: $10 (purchase at the door)

Chez Bushwick
304 Boerum St., Buzzer #11
Brooklyn, NY 11206
718.418.4405
Directions
Google Map

Kinetic Cinema is a co-presentation of Chez Bushwick and Pentacle’s Movement Media project, and happens on the second Wednesday of each month as part of a weekly dance, visual & media arts series at Chez Bushwick.

More info

Notes from the March 25th Artist Salon: Dance for Web-an Emerging Genre

(“Maybe we all dream to be………?” by T.A.G.San Francisco, shown at the March 25th Artist Salon with Jaki Levy)

At the last Artist Salon on March 25th at Chez Bushwick, Jaki Levy, a media artist and new media consultant, discussed dance work created specifically for the web. The question of the evening was: Why should artists make dance films specifically for the web? In short, making dance videos for the web is convenient, inexpensive, and relatively easy to do.  For dance works in progress, posting videos on the web allows artists to conduct “audience test screenings”  and get feedback.  Web videos also offer artists the ability to communicate and mix media in different ways.

Jaki Levy compiled a few videos that gave us a peek into the present + future of dance, art, and technology on the web.  Some of the work was completely choreographed, others were more improvisational.  Jaki shared how videos are created for different purposes, and gave examples of what a digital performance world looks like, including live web casts, web series, and site specific performances.

For example, Tendu.TV is looking for a mass market for dance by offering high quality broadband content of dance concerts and dance for camera works. Jaki showed an example of a show produced for Tendu.TV by Marlon Barrios-Solano entitled “Dance-tech Ep. 1“. In this episode Marlon interviewed various international choreographers talking about their work and intercut the footage with excerpts from their New York performance seasons.

Troika Ranch was exploring a process of editing for their up-coming multi-media show, “Loop Diver”and shared it with their MySpace friends.  This process is called “Algorithmic editing” and it assaults the senses. In this experiment (a collaboration between Troika Ranch and Street Pictures), a simple phrase of movement is fractured into thousands of shots in various locations all over Brooklyn, New York.

3rd Rail Projects & Julie Fotheringham both used web video  to share their site specific performances with wider audiences. 3rd Rail Projects fully integrated  web activities into their recent month long performance series at the World Financial Center by posting videos online and writing about each day’s performance on their blog. In this way, the work had both an online life and a physical life that co-existed and supported each other.

Julia Fotheringham makes guerilla-style dances that interrupt normal routines and cause people to stop and observe. The video is both a document and a voyeuristic view of the performer’s journey through the city.

“A Facet of the Real” explored how performance in “first” life and Second Life can intersect, creating a trippy situation in which a live performance is viewed in real time by online avatars in a virtual venue.

Some artists make web videos for artistic purposes, others for marketing purposes, and some have both in mind.  The intention of web videos can be to develop audiences by hooking viewers online and enticing them to come to live shows or screenings, or to simply to post a personal video diary from the studio. The web space allows for both anonymous and public modalities and is as broad and rich as the physical world. What is exciting is how dance artists are starting to embrace the web for all its potential. It feels increasingly apparent that we are all media-makers now.

To see all the clips from the screening and read more commentary go to Jaki’s blog post at: http://www.arrowrootmedia.com

by Dawn Paap and Anna Brady Nuse