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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
Still of Kristin Sloan, creator of NYC Ballet's "Tragic Love" web series
At the next Artist Salon on March 25th at Chez Bushwick, Jaki Levy, founder of Arrow Root Media and new media producer for Misnomer Dance, Martha Graham Dance Co. and others, will be looking at dance work created specifically for the web. Dance on Camera has already established itself as a viable medium for showcasing dance + performance. However, there is a growing trend of artists creating and adapting work specifically for the web. For example, New York City Ballet’s Tragic Love series, or more recently, Cedar Lake’s Project 52 – all videos made specifically for the web.
Like site specific work, these (web)site specific pieces are showing that these new constraints are creating short format work, with new possibilities for distribution, creativity, and collaboration.
The Artist Salon series happens on the fourth Wednesdays of the month at Chez Bushwick and features dialogue across disciplines around various artist-chosen topics. Anyone can bring questions, stories, artifacts, or material to add to the conversation.
ARTIST SALON
“Dance for Web” moderated by Jaki Levy
Wed. March 25, 2009 @ 7pm $5
Chez Bushwick
304 Boerum St., Buzzer #11
Brooklyn, NY 11206
718.418.4405
Directions
•L TRAIN to Morgan Avenue
•Exit the BACK of the train
•Turn LEFT outside the station
•Turn LEFT onto Boerum Street
(Chez Bushwick is roughly 80 steps from the station) GoogleMap
So before we get into the pre-production goodness, there is, in the true fashion of all things dance, an update that affects, well, everything. To start, my soloist dancer Julia has a major neck injury/illness, and won’t be able to move for a while (probably somewhere around three weeks). So that’s something. Additionally (perhaps for the best) a sudden rain/snow leek at the production co’s office directly on top of my work station and computer put us behind a few days (although, wouldn’t you know it, that little G4 took the water like a pro, and is back up and running!).
So there’s that. However, while i can’t fascinate you with all the exciting post-production details that we’ve yet to discuss at our yet-to-be meeting, i can take this post to tell you about the general structure for this piece, and the side project that’s developed off of it.
For the past 12 years, Marýa Wethers, has been a major contributor to the experimental dance community in NYC as a performer, administrator, and currently as the Associate Producer at Dance Theater Workshop. What you may not know is that she is also a huge action movie fan. At Kinetic Cinema on Wed March 11th, Marýa will share clips of selected scenes from some of her favorite Hollywood action movies with a female lead or a strong female character. The clips will follow themes such as hand-to-hand combat, weapons, and car chases. These scenes go beyond silly cat fights and show some bad ass women kicking some serious butt. Wowser!
Come on out and show off your own bad ass selves. Dress up as your favorite action heroine and we’ll post pictures of the best-dressed babes here on our blog.
As part of their Wednesday night Visual and Media Arts programming, Chez Bushwick is holding an Artist Salon on the fourth week of the month moderated by different guest artists. Coming up next Wed. Feb 25th at 7pm, choreographer and media artist Sarah A.O. Rosner will moderate an evening entitled “Negotiating the Epic.”
Whether you define ‘epic work’ by it’s length, detail, or literary definition, epic work has proved to be some of the most engrossing, groundbreaking, and problematic work ever created.
The evening will feature screenings, interviews and discussion about epic work as well as an open invitation to YOU the audience member to bring in questions, stories, artifacts or material to add to the conversation.
Sarah will start by looking at a few examples of epic art across genres – Joyce’s Ulysses, the computer game ‘Myst’, and the marathon dances of Sara Rudner to name a few, and then open it up for discussion and showing.
Once the decision has been made to create an epic work, what are the pros, cons, and questions that arise out of the process that follows? Why is epic work appealing, important, or sometimes the only option? What about epic work is rendered problematic by our current modes of working and art-making structures such as funding, process, performance, and audience? What are our options for negotiating the creation of epic work in the current artistic and economical climate, and how does it affect the work itself?
To show video/media works, please email Sarah at srosner[at]gm.slc.edu with a brief description of your work. We can only show work on DVD and clips must be under 5 min in length. We look forward to negotiating the epic with you!
DATE: Wed. February 25, 2009
TIME: 7:00pm
LOCATION:Chez Bushwick
304 Boerum Street, Buzzer #11
Brooklyn, NY 11206
DIRECTIONS: L TRAIN to Morgan Avenue
Exit the BACK of the train, Turn LEFT outside the station,
Turn LEFT onto Boerum Street
(Chez Bushwick is roughly 80 steps from the station) Click here for Google map
I’ve been jonesing to write a reflective post on this blog for the past two months. Seems like it’s been all action action action ever since the New Year turned! So let the rest of my to-do list be damned, and here we go…
Illuminated by Kevin Abbott
Last week we had a great Kinetic Cinema program at Chez Bushwick. Doug Fox (blogger and founder of Great Dance and a budding animator himself) went above and beyond the curatorial call of duty to give us a real feast for the eyes with his survey of eighteen (yes 18!) dance and movement-based animations. Some how they all fit into a program that ran just over an hour long, and even more remarkable was the feeling that none of the selections dragged on too long. In fact, when Doug announced that he had one more piece in his cache, and asked us if we’d like to see it, the overwhelming response from the audience was yes! Like candy, we still wanted more, even though we were already stuffed.
Buzz is spreading about our Kinetic Cinema program tonight featuring Dance Animation picks by Doug Fox, founder and blogger of Great Dance. I’ve been lucky enough to get some advance peeks and can attest that each of the seventeen short works being shown tonight is more beautiful and jaw-dropping than the next. It’s a smorgasbord of delights for the visual and kinetically inclined…
But don’t take my word for it. Here’s what some other folks are saying:
Amber Dawn Connors interviews Doug Fox about his program on Dancing on the Edge.
Claudia La Rocco admits she’s actually hopeful and excited about seeing a “dance for the camera” program on WNYC’s ART.CULT blog.
Taylor Gordon, a young, spitfire dance writer recommends you come out tonight on her Off Center blog.
Even the animation industry is taking notice! Check out this post on the ASIFA-East Exposure Sheet blog…
Up-date 2/11 at 12:55pm – Here’s a post by The Urgent Artist’s Sarah A.O. Rosner. I think she really captures the essence of what I’m trying to do with Kinetic Cinema here, which is a great validation!
Last but not least, here are all the details to go:
KINETIC CINEMA
A Survey of Dance and Animation with Doug Fox
DATE: Wed. February 11, 2009
TIME: 7:00pm
LOCATION: Chez Bushwick
304 Boerum Street, Buzzer #11
Brooklyn, NY 11206
DIRECTIONS: L TRAIN to Morgan Avenue
Exit the BACK of the train, Turn LEFT outside the station,
Turn LEFT onto Boerum Street
(Chez Bushwick is roughly 80 steps from the station) Click here for Google map
Kinetic Cinema is a screening series of Pentacle’s Movement Media project that happens on the second Wednesday of each month at Chez Bushwick. Exploring the intersection of dance and the moving image, Anna Brady Nuse, project director of Pentacle’s Movement Media, invites a special guest from the dance and film communities to share films and videos that have inspired them. These could be films that feature dance, are kinetic-based, or have been influential on their work in some way.
Move the Frame is the official blog of Pentacle's Movement Media, a project serving to help dance and media artists make dances for screen and use media to market their dance work more effectively. Move the Frame is a locus for dialogue about the form and a clearing-house of information about all things dance and media related.
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