January 7, 2008

"Underground Dance Masters" at DFA's Dance on Camera Festival

The Dance Film Association's 36th Dance on Camera Festival is taking place now through January 19th here in New York City. I wrote yesterday about the Dance Heritage Coalition forum on "fair use" practices for dance documentary filmmakers.

On Saturday night I saw (write-up in film schedule):

"Underground Dance Masters: Final History of a Forgotten Era" (Movie website)
Thomas Guzman-Sanchez, US, 2007; 144m
"A tour de force exploration of the origin, evolution, history and the creators of the Urban Dance examples of Boogaloo, locking, Popping, Roboting, Rocking and B-boying, a previously unknown part of American Pop history. Introduced by the director."

I thoroughly enjoyed this film. Guzman-Sanchez spent about 11+ years researching and interviewing street dancers in California and New York who were the creators of many of the street dance styles and forms that emerged from the mid-60s through the beginning of the 80s. He seems partly to have been motivated by a desire to reclaim the originality and artistic creativity of the street dance scene before the commercialization of what become breakdancing and hip-hop in the 80s and afterwards.

The film was not the most professional documentary I've ever seen - the lighting and sound for the excellent interviews could have been better, for example, and the film could have definitely been edited down from its 144 minutes. But I can't say these limitations really bothered me - it was just great to see this story told; see the ample video footage from TV shows, clubs, home movies, and MTV dance videos; and get a feel for the connections among the different dance styles.

"Underground Dance Masters" is being shown again on Saturday, January 19th at Walter Reade Theater (Lincoln Center) at 3:00 PM.

And on Friday, January 11th at 3:300 PM, you can see "Program 12: Urban Dance, Part 2: B-Boys On Screen." This program of two films includes "Inside the Circle" about a grassroots hip-hop movement in Texas. Here's the trailer:

And here's the "Inside the Circle" website.

A Thought About Crowdsourcing Dance History

I've often thought about how dancers with experience in different dance forms can pool their collective knowledge to better document the connections among different genres of dance. Take salsa dancing as an example, how can we use the Internet to help us understand the relationships among different styles of Salsa dancing that have emerged in different countries and cities and how they have influenced each other? If we can come up with an answer, the same could be done, of course, for any style of dance.

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