In the online bellydance world, we refer to the weird cuts and closeups syle of filming as "MTV cam" or "monkey cam" ("monkey cam generally also includes weird panning and camera angles). It really does drain the life out of a performance.

It could have been worse though... bellydance videos shot this way often also include inapropriate close-ups of dancer's chests, abdomens, or behinds.

This is really interesting -- I was at a play last night and so couldn't watch, but taped it and will watch either tonight or tomorrow. Now I'm excited to see it! When I read Apollinaire's article I thought, fantastic, they're going to do something with the camera! Those instincts to let a camera roll -- worst thing in the world for dance. Have you ever seen ballet on video -- most of it is just awful, completely sucks the life right out of the dance form. Case in point: The Dream, starring Ethan Stiefel, Alessandra Ferri, and Herman Cornejo -- three greats of the ballet world, and bore galore was that film... Someone just set a camera near the foot of the stage and let it record everything, and the magic is completely lost. We've been having this discussion at Apollinaire's blog for some time about reasons why this may be, but I just know you cannot ever set a camera on a tripod, aim it at the stage and just hit record.

Anyway, I'm not an enormous fan of contemporary MM (like him better when he was younger and more of an upstart), but I will definitely watch this soon and let you know my thoughts! I'm glad you blogged about it!

Natalia -- I can only imagine where those shots of bellydancers must focus; I've seen the same with Carnival Samba ... it figures...

One had only to switch to the FOX network to view even ten seconds of the "So You Think You Can Dance" finale to see how dance on television can be riveting, and justly captured.

Doug, I saw the first two sections of the PBS broadcast and a fair amount of the last section. I also saw the premiere of "Mozart Dances" last year at Lincoln Center, and--speaking of the need to keep viewers awake--I was falling asleep in the theater. Like Tonya and unlike most of our colleagues, I am a heretic and do not worship at the church of Mark Morris. I'm often put off by the cartoonish undercurrents in his work, and I do not find my heart engaged by even the cleverness in his choreography. I have now watched Lauren Grant dance "Mozart Dances" twice. Her dancing is the best aspect of it, and I'm still wondering why my head says, "Yeah, that looks good, Lauren," and my heart says, "So?" But I had a somewhat different experience watching the camera's version of "Mozart Dances." I still didn't feel moved by it but I was aware of places where Morris's scampish mind and his tenderer feelings were unavoidably coming together. I think I saw some things in the way he choreographed for the men that began to make sense to me as a vision of youthful tenderness threatened by time. I guess I was looking for something from Morris, and I began to see what and where it might be. I began to follow that through the piece. The camera’s shifts, though I found some of them obvious and abrupt, did help me track this. And--I suppose in benign ignorance of the technical mistakes and missteps that your critique underscores--I was able to see things that I didn’t notice in the live performance while trying to cope with exhaustion and events spread over a large stage.

I would be more trusting of opinions on PBS’s version of “Mozart Dances” from people who do not have previous experience with Morris or with dance, for that matter, and who remain open to just looking and feeling and not just anointing the man and expecting wonders from him. The broadcast did not sell me on “Mozart Dances” or Morris, but it did give me something to start to take interest in, and maybe we need to look for more opportunities to bring people in and not be so concerned with the purity of what they’re seeing. We could start by realizing that a video of dance is in no way a literal experience of dance but that, at times, it might have its own usefulness.

I didn't see this broadcast, so I can't bash it, but in general, I've never seen a live broadcast of dance that I liked. The only way it can work is if the choreography is completely reworked and restaged explicitly for the camera. I remember they did that with Balanchine's Nutcracker with Gelsey Kirkland, and I loved that as a kid. I also remember liking the tv version of Morris' Hard Nut, but was that live? I would guess that it was a special taping without an audience, or several shows edited together, but I could be wrong. Both these examples are of narrative dance pieces that are really well known which also helps to engage tv viewers.

Like a novel, dances need to be adapted for the screen. You wouldn't take a book and use its words verbatim for the screenplay. Same with a play. A video of a theatre piece on stage is not as interesting as a film adaptation of a play.

It's really really difficult to document an abstract modern dance piece for a live broadcast. I wish PBS would spend their money producing new dance for camera pieces like Canada's BravoFACT! or BBC 4. That might actually attract new audiences to dance rather than repel them.

Okay, my review is up. My initial thoughts anyway. How dance is filmed is a really interesting issue to me and I'm sure I'll think of more!
http://www.tonyaplank.com/tonyaplank/swan_lake_samba_girl/?p=380

James Wolcott of Vanity Fair blogs in response to my post about the Mark Morris broadcast. He takes issue with my criticism of the cuts to the piano soloists:

Personally, I don't. The cutaways to the musicians reminded me of the delightful end credits to Stepping Out, where the movie tipped its beret to Shelley Winters by showing her pounding the ivories with an old trouper's addled smile on her face. Besides, it's not as if there was that much happening on stage to command one's capital attention. It was nice getting the occasional break from the oddly bland busywork of Morris's choreography, where the steps and turns seemed squeezed from a nozzle--a low-cal dessert substitute that looked like parfait but evaporated upon contact. It was like watching a dance recital that wouldn't end. Especially the protractions of part three, which set my mind wandering so far and wide I had to keep tugging my attention back to the screen.

Also, make sure you read to Tonya's excellent post about the broadcast and the comments that follow.

Thanks! I was going to tell you about the Wolcott post; I saw it last night. He's SOOOOO cool to give shout-outs to us bloggers like that :) I'm so excited that professional journalists of such high stature are really taking us bloggers seriously -- Mr. Wolcott, and Terry Teachout and of course Eva and Apollinaire! I never expected that attention when I started my blog. It's such a wonderful surprise to me and I feel so honored!

Although I did not see the broadcast in question, I think that this type of 'artistic' editing of dance for TV is a global problem, caused mainly by TV directors trying to impose their own artistic vision on dance, over-ruling the aims of the choroegraphers or originators of the work they are recording or transmitting.

Here in Russia we have a hideous record for hacking around great ballet for 'public consumption'. In the Soviet era films were made of the great ballets for TV transmission which also tried to make them 'not boring'. The results were disasterous.
Even today only too often we have transmissions from great companies such as the Mariinsky and the Bolshoi where 'artistic' camera work can ruin what is happening on stage.

So far there seems to have been little cross fertilisation of ideas between TV and Dance which strikes me as being a sad and strange state of affairs, specially wwhen you consider that, way back in 1977 George Balanchine was working with Merrill Brockway and Emile Ardolino to produce 'Dance in America'. In these PBS broadcasts the choreographer and the TV producer worked together to produce TV version of ballets such as The Prodigal Son, Stravinsky Violin Concerto, Ballo della Regina and more.

If only TV would be that farsighted nowadays. Perhaps TV directors/producers should take a look at the recordings of Dance in America (available on DVD) and see how TV and Dance CAN live together............