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.

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

Program Notes from Boris Willis’ curated Kinetic Cinema

We wanted to provide you with the program notes and videos that Boris Willis presented at Kinetic Cinema, on June 10th at Chez Buskwick.  Since his program was about dance vlogging, all the videos he showed are available online, which we have provided the links to. Coincidentally, Willis organized his videos along the theme of amateur/professional, fitting perfectly with our first Weekly Videodance Contest.

Reality Dancevision: An Intimate Screen Capture of Dance Vloggers- Program Notes and Videos

Curator’s Note:

Boris Willis by Paul Emerson

The dance vlogger it seems, is a rare person to find. It is relatively easy to find dance bloggers, dance writers and dance photographers but finding professional dancers/choreographers who use the web as a primary source for showing a dance is more difficult. We see the powerful influence of the web with the disappearance of newspapers and the emergence of e-book readers such as the Kindle, the emergence of iTunes Music Store as the world’s largest seller of music, as well as the question of whether DVD’s will soon be outpaced by movie downloads. Even in this digital age, people love dance, as evidenced by video sharing sites that are replete with videos of the latest social dances and sophisticated dance videos made by amateurs.. I think that just as reality television can take you into the lives of ordinary people, online dance can take you into the lives of dance makers. We can get an intimate look at the person, not just the performer, through online video. I can’t predict that the web will provide a revolution in theatrical dance. However, I do sense a shift by some artists who feel as I do that one does not have to wait for their two nights in the theater to share their work. For this program, I will present several works by amateur and professional dancers that reveal the artist as both a performer and a person in a way that illuminates the purpose of dance in our lives as well as acknowledge the value of web as a venue.

–Boris Willis
Enjoy…

Final Kinetic Cinema of the Season!!!

Still from danceanywhere

REALITY DANCEVISION: An Intimate Screen Capture of Dance Vloggers

Join us for the last Kinetic Cinema of the season featuring Boris Willis, a dancer, choreographer, video-maker and blogger based in Washington DC. Willis will explore the phemonena of dance vlogs (video blogs about dance) and present works by of some of the most notable and prolific dance vloggers today. In 2007-08 Willis published the vlog “Dance-a-day” in which he made and posted a dance video every day for 365 days. From his first video shot in a parking lot demonstrating effeminate gestures, to an entire month of posts about important sites of Black history in Washington DC, as well as 43 collaborations with composer David Morneau (who also posted a composition a day on his blog 60×365.com) , Willis covered the entire range of styles, experiments, and types of improvisation one can do with dance and a video camera.

Featuring the work of: Ashley A. Friend, danceanywhere, Gesel Mason, Liz Roncka, lee atwell, and Boris Willis, among others.

Kinetic Cinema

Wednesday, June 10th at 7pm

Tickets: $10 (purchase at the door)

Chez Bushwick

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

Boris Willis

Boris Willis by Paul Emerson

Boris Willis is an Assistant Professor of Computer Game Design at George Mason University and the Chief Artistic Officer of Boris Willis Moves, a movement and media based performance company. He has performed with Liz Lerman/Dance Exchange, Streb, Jacob’s Pillow’s Men Dancers and the Theatre of the First Amendment.  He recently completed work on Dance-A-Day, (www.danceaday.com) a year long daily video dance project. He has an MFA in Dance and Technology from The Ohio State University, a BFA in Dance from George Mason University and a Diploma in Contemporary Dance from the NC School of the Arts.

About Kinetic Cinema

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. 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.

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

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

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

Sports-informed Points of View at Kinetic Cinema

By Dawn Paap with Anna Brady Nuse

VESTED by Kristi Faulkner

U.S. Women's Soccer

At our last Kinetic Cinema screening on April 8th, guest curator Lisa Niedermeyer presented dance films to be seen through the lens of professional sports. She featured the work of dance film makers: Charles Dennis, Alan McIntyre Smith, Lemeh42, Miriam King, Kristi Faulkner and Sylvain White.

Alongside special guest, sports videographer Ray Wenzel, Jr., six films from the above mentioned film makers were showcased to illustrate sports elements, including speed, effort, kinetic response, spectacle, competition, and endurance.

There are many shared elements between Dance and Sports.  This screening offered several suggestions of utilizing professional sports as a lens to help see heighten aspects of dance in film.

Illusion for Movements by Lemeh42

There are a number of ways to draw in the viewer to elicit a response to movement on screen. Lisa, speaking from a performer, videographer and editor’s standpoint, felt most drawn to the aspect of kinetic response for both dance and sports on film.  For her, it is important to connect with what the performer is experiencing internally to understand the story of the film maker and she illustrated her point with the film Illusion of Movements by the Italian duo, Lemeh42. In this film a woman is filmed in extreme close-up (hands, feet, chest) while she is having [what looks like] an epileptic seizure. Through the fragmented views of the woman’s convulsing body, the viewer gets a taste of what it must feel like to suddenly loose all muscular control.

Stomp the Yard

I feel that the internal experience of the performer is important, but when I think of professional sports, I find myself drawn more to the “atmosphere” or dramatic flair of an event.  I respond to the important actions during certain moments of a sporting event, and I think of capturing speed, danger and the emotions of the spectators.  Spectacle was one of the Points of View presented in the evening, and it was illustrated by an excerpt from Sylvain White’s Stomp the Yard in which two step crews battle it out on the dance floor in front of throngs of hyped up fans. For me, of all the works shown, this piece came the closest to evoking the feelings I get when watching sports. I felt connected to the situation of the competition, to groups of performers and spectators, and to the intensity of the moment.

Ray, speaking from the point of view of a sports videographer, shared his preference for capturing images to enhance the storyline of whatever sport event he’s shooting.  With each film presented, he pointed out specific details of the film making that gave life to the stories.

DUST by Anthony Atanasio and Miriam King

One of the most compelling narratives of the evening was Miriam King and Anthony Atanasio’s DUST, commissioned by South East Dance in the UK. Here a woman in a bathing suit and googles slowly breast strokes her way through a desert landscape, battling heat, dust, and time to reach water. The film captured one of the hardest things to show on screen, the inner game that goes on inside every performer and athlete, but which lies at the heart of every great story.

Ray shared a story about a niche form of car racing called endurance racing, which he shoots every year. In endurance racing, the team that travels the greatest distance around the track in 24 hours wins. He talked about a race in Florida last year where the top two teams were only 10 seconds apart from each other after 12 hrs and only a few minutes apart at the very end. This is like crossing the country in 24 hrs, leaving from New York and ending up neck and neck at the finish line at the Pacific Ocean. For Ray, the drama lies in how well the teams work together and their ability to endure and battle fatigue to be the fastest, most efficient racers over a long period of time. This is not easy to capture on film, however it is his task as a camera-man to tell a captivating story for the viewers. He also shared ways he works to capture “behind the scenes footage” of games and races, such as the choreographed and skillful moves of a race crew changing a tire and refueling a car in 15 seconds flat, or how hockey players maneuver around the player with the puck to set up the perfect pass. All of these details are hidden gems of information that help to bring a sporting competition (or a dance) to life on screen.

Regardless of the preferences one may have for viewing sports or dance films, there are many interesting areas of overlap between the two. This screening offered insights into a few of these areas of intersection. A companion program to this screening would be to look at sports on screen from the point of view of dance. For instance the balletic leap of the wide receiver making a catch in the end zone and replayed in slow motion. Elements of grace certainly seem to come up in sports footage all the time. I’m sure there are many more lenses to find! Anyone have suggestions for the sequel: P.O.V. Dance? List them here, or relay your own experiences seeing a dance on film that evoked a response normally associated with sports viewing…

Dance Films Seen Through the Lens of Pro Sports at Kinetic Cinema

Just in time for the new baseball season, at the next Kinetic Cinema on April 8th choreographer, performer and videographer, Lisa Niedermeyer will present an evening of screen dance through the lens of professional sports. Alongside special guest, sports videographer Ray Wenzel Jr., Niedermeyer will present and discuss dance films that feature heightened Speed, Kinetic Response, Spectacle, Competition and Endurance. Featuring the work of dance film-makers: Charles Dennis, Alan McIntyre Smith, Lemeh42, Miriam King, Kristi Faulkner and Sylvain White.

Coming up next at Kinetic Cinema:

P.O.V: PRO SPORTS

Curated by Lisa Niedermeyer

Wednesday, April 8, 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

*A co-presentation of Chez Bushwick and Pentacle’s Movement Media

Kinetic Cinema that Kicks Ass! Follow up to Marya Wethers’ “Bad Ass Babes” Program

At our last Kinetic Cinema screening on March 11th, guest curator Marya Wethers showed at a different side of the screendance spectrum than our usual experimental fare: Hollywood action films that feature powerful female leads kicking butt.

T-X from Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines

The evening was arranged by character, with Marya giving background exposition about each woman and illustrating her points with key scenes from films. The characters featured in the program reflected Marya’s personal favorites, and weren’t meant to encompass the entire range and history of female characters in action films. Rather it was a personal tour of the ladies that have inspired Marya the most, and she made us all feel like we were sitting in her living room sifting through the best bits of her DVD collection.

Some of my favorites from the evening were:

Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) from The Matrix series.

Pure elegance punctuated with vulnerability. In the opening scene from The Matrix, Trinity seduces you with a slow motion leap, before giving you a sharp crack in the nose.

Trinity's Kick

Lara Croft (Angelina Jolie) from Lara Croft: Tomb Raider.

The Bungee Ballet scene combines high adventure with silk pajamas. Gotta love Lara’s McGyver-like ingenuity, using her remote car starter to blind the enemies with a garage full of headlights while making a getaway on her motorcycle.

Lara's bungee ballet workout gets interrupted.

T-X (Kristanna Loken) from Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines.

She’s an advanced cybernetic organism from the future and she kicks Arnold’s ass!

The Angels (Drew Barrymore as Dylan Sanders, Cameron Diaz as Natalie Cook, and Lucy Liu as Alex Munday) from Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle.

These ladies take teamwork to a new level. When the lights go out they tap morse code on each other’s palms to communicate. They’re also not afraid to take a punch. You see them get seriously messed up, but no mind, they just spit out the blood, pull out the glass, and keep on kicking ass!

The Angels