October 9, 2008

Upload...Download...Perform - score-sharing site for experimental performance

I just learned about this fantastic new wiki site, Upload...Download...Perform, that allows people "to share your scores, actions, rituals, choreographed movements, texts, instructions, suggestions, recipes, meditations, etc." Scores are instructions, either written, visual or oral, that delineate some sort of performance action. Many of the scores on this site are for musicians, but there are a few movement and video scores too.

My favorite score so far is Laundry Mat Music by the site's creator and maintainer, Adam Overton, that calls for a laundry mat, dryers, loose change, and any number of performers. At a designated moment, all the performers start up their dryers with one loose coin inside, and everyone sits quietly and listens to the music that ensues.

This site could also be a great resource for anyone suffering from creative blocks. When you're too tied up in mental knots to come up with your own ideas, just follow someone else's lead. No hurt egos if the work totally bombs either.

Check it out and add your movement/video/sound shenanigans to the pot!

Posted by Anna Brady Nuse at 12:29 PM - Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

October 3, 2008

Cool Workshops, Events, Screenings and More This Week!

This is one of those weeks of when the amount of cool stuff going on in the NYC area has reached a critical mass. I feel compelled to share with you the several of particular interest to dance and media lovers:

DV8 Physical Theatre on Tour!
This company, under the direction of Lloyd Newson has brought us some of the greatest dance films ever made including THE COST OF LIVING, ENTER ACHILLES, DEAD DREAMS OF MONOCHROME MEN, and STRANGE FISH. Newson's working process is generally to create a stage show and then completely re-envision it for screen. You won't want to miss their latest live work "TO BE STRAIGHT WITH YOU", only playing at two more venues in the US! See info below:

2nd - 5th October .... Kasser Theater, tix
MONTCLAIR, NEW JERSEY, USA

9th - 10th October .... Memorial Hall, UNC, tix
CHAPEL HILL, NORTH CAROLINA, USA
EMPAC Grand Opening!
The Experimental Media & Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in Troy, NY is an incredible facility with even more incredible art-making and programming happening inside of it. Come up to celebrate the opening of the new building and check out the first DANCE MOViES Commissions featuring Kino Eye by Joby Emmons and Elena Demyanenko; Nora by Alla Kovgan and David Hinton, choreographed by Nora Chipaumire; Veterans by Victoria Marks and Margaret Williams; and PH Propriedad Horizontal created by David Fariás, Carla Schillagi and Maria Fernanda Vallejos.

 

Kinetic Cinema Screening with Elizabeth Zimmer!
Elizabeth Zimmer is a renown dance writer and critic as well as the editor of the seminal book on dance for the camera: "Envisioning Dance On Film and Video." You won't want to miss this Kinetic Cinema in which she shares some of her favorite movement-based videos and talks about her interest in dance for the camera.

Kinetic Cinema
Monday October 6th, 7:00pm (and the first Monday of every month)
$5 Admission (buy tix at the door)

IRT Theater
154 Christopher Street, Suite 3B (btw Washington & Greenwich Streets)
New York, NY 10014
Phone: 212.206.6875
Trains: 1 to Christopher Street, PATH to Christopher Street
Admission: $5
 

Interactive dance/media workshop:
FREE WORKSHOP IN ACTIVE SPACE
Presented by MRX with UC Irvine

Saturday, October 18
10:00 am to 4:00 pm

Free Admission

Baryshnikov Arts Center
450 W. 37th Street
(between 9th & 10th Avenues)
New York, NY 10018

Jodi Gates - choreographer
Lisa Naugle - choreographer/improviser
John Crawford - interactive media artist
with guest artists
Patrick Corbin and CorbinDances
The Active Space is John Crawford's interactive media
environment that engages participants in a dialog of
mutual influence involving movement, visuals and sound. It supports body-centered performance practices integrated with software systems for motion tracking, live video processing, special effects and interactive music.

• Work from a somatic, open-looped structure with Lisa Naugle and experience spatial-perceptual movement techniques for whole-body connectedness in the Active Space. This session will focus on developing choice-making, dynamic flow, and dance-technology interaction.
• See new dance/media choreography by Jodie Gates, performed by Patrick Corbin and CorbinDances in the Active Space. 
• Participate in choreographic exploration based on William Forsythe's improvisational technologies combined with Jodie Gates's own choreographic and teaching methods.

SPACE IS LIMITED; REGISTER NOW:
Email info@movementresearch.org
OR
Call 212.598.0551, ext. 261

For More Information:http://dance.arts.uci.edu/nyc

Posted by Anna Brady Nuse at 10:37 AM - Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

September 21, 2008

Queens Council on the Arts Offers Online Marketing Workshop for Performing Artists

I'm continually impressed by the forward-thinking and progressive workshops being offered by the Queens Council on the Arts (QCA). Last year they had a "Dance Doc Slam" where dance artists could show their promotional/documentation videos and receive advice and critiques from a panel of presenters, funders, booking agents, and videographers. This was a really useful way of learning the perspectives of different key figures about what they look for in dance documentation videos and how our work can be conveyed more effectively on screen.

This week, on Sept. 25th, QCA is offering another great workshop for today's dance-maker:
STAGE PRESENCE ONLINE, a dynamic workshop for performing artists on how to best use the internet to capture and promote your work. Once again there will be a fabulous panel of esteemed experts including Jaki Levy of Misnomer Dance, Meghan Sprenger of Dance Theater Workshop and Tom Pearson and Zach Morris of Third Rail Projects. (Yours truly was invited, but I have my Media Sales class that night...) This is an opportunity to have your website reviewed by your peers and gain insight from professionals into the myriad options of developing a presence on the web.

Here are the details:
STAGE PRESENCE ONLINE
Thursday, September 25, 2008, 6:00 - 8:30 p.m.
Topaz Arts, 55-03 39th Ave., Woodside, topazarts.org

Admission is free. Registration is required. Space is limited.

To register, please email your name, address, telephone number, and artistic discipline to mblouin@queenscouncilarts.org A select number of performer's websites will be reviewed and evaluated at this workshop. To have your website reviewed include a url in your registration.

Also, be sure to check out the other workshops QCA is offering this fall, including a presentation by Dance Theater Workshop on Tuesday Sept 23rd at the Chocolate Factory, and one that sounds great to me:  "schmooze or loose" learn how to work a room, get new contacts and maintain professional relationships on Tues. Oct. 16th! 

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July 28, 2008

Seeking Dancers and Crew for a Videodance Shoot

In August I am shooting a new videodance entitled Fünf 'n' Twist, an abstract narrative short about a teenage couple at the prom. The prom scenes will be shot Thursday Aug 14th and Friday Aug 15th all day from approximately 8am-6pm in Washington Heights. Currently I am looking for male dancers as well as several crew positions both paid and non-paid.

About Fünf 'n' Twist: Using dance, ritualized movement, evocative sounds and imagery, the classically American rite of passage of the prom will be depicted as a metaphor for the adolescence of the country itself as it lurches clumsily towards a cultural adulthood. Last spring I shot the final scenes of the film, and you can see a rough cut study of the ending here on vimeo: http://www.vimeo.com/1134237.

Below are descriptions of the positions I'm looking for.

Talent:
3-6 male dancers for prom scene. Must be able to dance (or be comfortable moving), and could pass for a prom-goer. Having your own tux is a plus, but not required. You must be available between 9am-5pm on Aug 14th and 15th. Pay will be $75/day. Please send a current headshot/photo to anuse@speakeasy.net.

Crew positions:
Production Manager: Responsible for assisting the director/producer with pre-production planning and managing all the logistics of the production. Will coordinate cast and crew, and stay on top of the budget and time schedule during the production. Must be available 8am-8pm Aug 13th-15th as well as for some preliminary planning work leading up to these days. Fee commensurate with experience. Please send resume to anuse@speakeasy.net.

Production Designer/Art Director: For a '60's era prom scene in a short experimental dance video. Must be resourceful, and able to make magic with a small budget! Must be available 8am-6pm Aug 13th-15th and for planning meetings with the director & DP leading up to these days. Fee commensurate with experience. Please send resume and portfolio/reel to Anna Brady Nuse: anuse@speakeasy.net

Lighting Designer/Grip: Shot-specific lighting for a '60's era prom scene. Must be flexible and able to make magic with a small budget. Must be available 8am-6pm Aug 13th-15th and for planning meetings with the director & DP leading up to these days. Fee commensurate with experience. Please send resume and portfolio/reel to Anna Brady Nuse: anuse@speakeasy.net

Production Assistants: Flexible, strong, energetic, and eager to learn about the makings of a videodance! Must be available on Aug 14th & 15th 8am-6pm. Also need prep help all day Aug 13th. No pay, but a great way to gain experience and skills. You will be given credit on the film and fed!

For more info, please contact me at anuse@speakeasy.net, and if you know of others who would be good for these positions please forward this link to them! 

Posted by Anna Brady Nuse at 11:14 AM - Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

July 23, 2008

Artist-driven Curating and How it Could Help Galvanize a Screendance Movement

At the Screendance conference at ADF two weeks ago, I presented a paper that put forth an argument for the value of "artist-driven" curating in developing and galvanizing an art form.  I wanted to propose a way of raising awareness about screendance among dance communities that would help dancers feel like they can enter this art form that is new to them with a set of useable skills and knowledge already in place. In forming a strategy, I drew upon Paulo Friere's concept of praxis from his pivotal book on liberation education, Pedagogy of the Oppressed. For Freire, the way to raise consciousness among any group of people is by posing problems. This process of asking questions and raising problems, activates both students and teachers in a dialogue that brings about reflection and leads to future action.  Freire calls this pattern of action-reflection-action praxis, and it is through praxis that people engage in cognitive discovery of their lives that is transformative and empowering. From third world peasants to American dance artists, this process enables people to transform their daily realities and create lives full of meaning.

In my Kinetic Cinema screening series I posed a question to my guest curators from the  NYC dance community, "What films and videos have influenced and inspired your work in dance?" Each curator came up with a completely different way of answering that question, and the works they chose revealed their own unique thinking patterns and artistic processes. Some curators, such as Malinda Allen, chose to curate autobiographical evenings, chronicling their artistic development through pivotal works that have inspired them. Other curators, like Levi Gonzalez, chose to show work that was new to them, and investigate the commonalities and differences between screendance and dance performance. Still others such as Jonah Bokaer and Kriota Willberg, have studied the history of film and video art extensively, and for their programs they decided to delve into very specific areas of research such as feminist video art and the female body, or "bad dance" films.

Judson Dance Theater, photo Elaine Summers
Kinetic Cinema is an example of what I have dubbed "artist-driven" curating, in which artists get together and share works that have meaning to them, often in informal intimate settings. The value of this type of curating is that it sparks artistic dialogue and exchange between the "makers" in a field, which can then lead to new art movements with distinct identities and progressive agendas. There have been numerous artist-driven curating collectives in the past that have had a huge impact upon the development of dance and film. A classic example of artist-driven curating is the Judson Dance Theater that formed in the early sixties as a collective of experimental dance artists interested in pushing the boundaries of post-modern dance. They were given the meeting room of the historical Judson Church to conduct their investigations and present public performances. The work that resulted from these programs went on to fuel the modern dance community for decades to come, with generations of dancers and choreographers spring-boarding off of the ideas and breakthroughs of the original collective.

On the film side, Jean Luc Godard would never have developed his unique and influential style without his competitive and close relationship with fellow French New Wave director, François Truffaut. Although they were very different in many ways, their artistic visions were honed and shaped by the intense dialogue and exchange of ideas they had with each other over many years. The French New Wave was born out of the critical discourse started by writers and cinephiles in the film journal, Cahiers du Cinéma. These writers were seeking a new type of cinema that didn't exist in France at the time, one that married their love of low-brow Hollywood genre flicks, with more experimental, intentional, and referential nuances found in high art, all brought together by their strong vision of the director as auteur. When these writers began acting upon their critiques, and creating work of their own, the French New Wave was born, and gave rise to a new era of filmmaking that completely changed the art form in much the same way the Judson Dance Theater group did for dance.

There have never been more ways for individuals to share and distribute their media content than there are today. With the rise of the internet, and the social media of Web 2.0, today's artist-driven initiatives are less inhibited by distance or financial limitations. Some recent examples of artist-driven projects for screendance on the internet are the social network dance-tech.net founded by NY-based dance media artist, Marlon Barrios-Solano, blogs such as this one, and email lists such as the media-arts-and-dance listserv moderated by Simon Fildes. These online forums are bringing together an international community of dance filmmakers who can interact and share work and ideas with each other easily and instantaneously. The result will be a more unified and cosmopolitan screendance community, where new entrants can feel part of an existing movement.

New art movements and genres don't get made overnight, but in the case of screendance, it is crucial to raise awareness and interest in the dance community. Through curating initiatives that pose questions and engage artists and audiences in dialogue, we can facilitate praxis. This process involves leading artists to examine, critique and analyze dance in media, and also to make work of their own, thereby transforming and shaping the genre and, by extension, the world. Artist-driven curating is one proven way to galvanize an arts community and further the identity of an art movement. These artist-driven initiatives, while often underground and informal, serve as springs that feed into larger institutions, such as dance film festivals, museums/galleries, performance venues, and universities. It is in these small, seemingly insignificant ways, that we can move screendance into cultural prominence, and make dance relevant in today's mediatized world.

Addendum:
I should clarify a few assumptions and opinions I have about dance and "screendance" which came up in discussion after my presentation at the Screendance conference. First, I am coming from a dance background, and ultimately, I want my work in screendance to have a positive effect on the art form of dance in general. I learned while at the conference that this isn't a common position among everyone in the screendance field. Karen Pearlman, a dance filmmaker and co-artistic director of PhysicalTV helped us all tremendously by making a Venn diagram to illustrate the hybridity of screendance at the last Screendance conference in 2006. (see below)


What I learned at the conference is that practitioners of screendance can come from one of three different art areas: dance, film, or visual arts. Everyone's location on the diagram is different and can move around, sometimes overlapping more with dance and visual arts, other times more with film, etc etc...

I shade towards the dance circle, and am biased about wanting screendance to do something for dance in general. Not that it should always serve to directly promote live performance, but rather that I think a vibrant screendance movement can have beneficial impact on live dance performance as well.  I also feel that dance as an art form has suffered and is suffering from a lack of resources and cultural capital (meaning attention and value from the culture at large). I believe that one reason for this poverty of cultural capital for dance is due to the art form's lack of visibility in media (meaning mass reproduced and distributed moving images). After the birth of film in the late 19th century, cultural capital has shifted away from the live performing arts and towards mediated arts, such as film, television, and now broadband video. Unlike music and drama, dance has not developed a recorded media industry around it, and this has left dance artists (for better or for worse) with very few opportunities to reach a mass audience, have an competitive economic engine, or come out from behind the banners of other genres such as music videos, movie musicals, or even commercials.

I'm not interested in being part of a huge dance media industry, however I do see some benefits that other art forms have gained as a result of spawning commercial media juggernauts. Take music for instance. Over the course of 50 years of pop hits and mega record sales in the "Rock & Roll" (and then just "Rock") music genres, there was a huge influx of kids learning to play guitar, forming garage bands, and talking about music. Today, even with the music industry floundering in the digital file-sharing age, the indie music scene is flourishing better than ever with 35 million users on MySpace (many of them musicians or music lovers), magazines, books, radio shows, tv channels, films, documentaries, and blogs that feed a vibrant discussion that most Americans can engage in. Imagine if dance had this kind of relevancy to peoples' lives...Maybe there wouldn't be so many dance critics being laid off, maybe more people would be interested in the difference between modern and post-modern contemporary dance, or maybe dance classes would be as popular as sports in public schools. Being a choreographer would be as cool as being a rock star.... Actually, this is already starting to happen with popular dance competition shows like "So You Think You Can Dance"... But I digress...

So, now you know my agenda, but I'm never going to be a media mogul. I will leave it to other shrewd bean counters to figure out how to squeeze out the dollars and cents from an art form ripe for the picking.  I'm an artist who sees limitless artistic potential for dance in screen-based mediums. Alongside the commercialization of dance screen, I want to see a vibrant exploration by dancers in the dance/film/visual art hybridity called screendance. This is where artist-driven curating comes in. I believe screendance can empower dancers who decide to enter into it. The movement for screendance has been slow to happen in the dance community, and dancers in the United States at least, have not seen media as a tool for artistic empowerment and growth. Despite the rise of dance film festivals around the world, I haven't seen a comparable rise in awareness and understanding about screendance in my own dance community here in New York. The Dance On Camera Festival happens in January when the APAP conference is consuming the attention of most dancers. Even dancers who do get exposed to screendance, and then decide they want to try making a video or film of their own, usually hit a wall when they realize the massiveness of such a task. It's an incredibly steep learning curve to jump from stage to screen, requiring a completely new set of skills and collaborators who understand dance, and there is little support or resources out there for dancers who want to make this leap. What is lacking is funding for production and creative development, distributors, classes, mentorship, critical writing, and even a central repository of knowledge or easily accessible catalogue of films to look at.

Things are definitely improving however, and as I listed above, there are numerous new artist-driven initiatives that are springing up on web-based media platforms. I hope that local movements also continue to grow and multiply. I would love to see artist-driven curating collectives spring up in other cities around the US and the world. It doesn't take much to do, you just need a space, a projector and some friends to get started. Pick a question and try to answer it visually. Share what inspires you and talk about why. Have a dinner party and cater the films. In whatever fashion, we all have the ability to participate in the discussion, and help shape this unique art form of screendance into a vibrant cultural phenomenon.

Posted by Anna Brady Nuse at 12:12 AM - Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

July 18, 2008

Report on Screendance:State of the Art 2 at ADF

I'm finally home after several weeks on the road, crossing the country and then heading south for the second Screendance: State of the Art conference at the American Dance Festival. The topic for this year's conference was CURATING THE PRACTICE/CURATING AS PRACTICE. There were about 20 registered participants, coming from all over the US and Europe, and we were a good mix of artist/makers, teacher/scholars, and curators. While some of the old topics came up (like what is the definition of screendance?) the presence of the over-arching theme of curating helped guide many of the discussions into new territory, and keep us on topic.

Douglas Rosenberg, a filmmaker, scholar, and organizer of the conference started off the proceedings with a lecture about the history of curating as it arose out of the visual arts field and how this practice has gradually slipped by the wayside with the rise of the festival model in screendance. He spoke about the original premise of curating in the art world as a means of creating meaning by grouping different works of art together. This combination of art works creates a meta-narrative between the pieces and can serve to support a thesis about the art put forth by the curator. In this way curating can help shape new ideas in art.

I appreciated learning about  how curating differs from "programming", which is generally how dance film festivals work. For a long time I've felt dissatisfied by the programs at festivals, particularly the shorts programs, because they can be such a grab bag of films that seem to have nothing to do with each other. Usually these programs are billed as the "best" new dance films of the year, with the dubious value judgment of "best" being the only unifying theme. With no other underlying meaning to connect the films together, I as a viewer often find myself feeling disappointed when the films fall short of my expectations of what "the best" dance film should be. I leave most screenings feeling like the vast majority of screendance is boring and uninspired, when in reality, I just didn't have enough context to view them under.

Helping to illustrate this difference between curating and programming, there were several curated screenings during the conference as well as screenings that were part of the "Dancing for the Camera" festival. One of these curated programs was put together by Claudia Kappenberg, an artist and scholar from the University of Brighton and was entitled "Paradoxical Bodies." In her program notes Kappenberg described "Paradoxical Bodies" as seeking "to address the peculiar premise of real bodies on screen, in itself a paradoxical proposition, which mixes and purposefully confounds mental states and actual physical existence." With this introduction we watched seven experimental films that were often oblique and seemed to float in the timeless space of ritual. The program included ELEMENT (1973) by Amy Greenfield, HWRGAN (BY THE LATE HOUR) (2006) by Simon Whitehead, K (1989) by Jayne Parker, THE NIGHTINGALE (2003) by Grace Ndiritu, SAND LITTLE SAND (2006) by Becky Edmunds, IT IS ACHING LIKE BIRDS by Lucy Baldwin, and SPRUE (2004) by The 5 Andrews. Most of these films have never been shown in dance film festivals before, either because they are not generally considered "dance", or they are not the typical show pieces that would past muster with a festival's judging panel. Despite their challenging and experimental nature, I was captivated by this program. After Kappenberg's introductory statements I was prepared to grapple with the paradoxes, ambivalence, and alternative notions of the body put forth in these films, and I was freed from having to compare them to my usual standards of what's "good" and "bad". Instead, I appreciated them for what they each said to me within the framework of the program's topic.

In contrast to Kappenberg's curated program, Sini Haapalinna, a freelance artist from Finland, presented a program of shorts from her first curation for the Finnish dance film festival "Beyond the Lens" which sought to show a snapshot of "the state of the art" of Finnish screendance. This was a good example of the usual festival model of programming, which culls work from an open call for entries, and then seeks to show the best ones of the group. While it was probably meaningful for Finnish audiences to see what work is being made in their own country, for an international group of screendance experts gathered in North Carolina, the program seemed jumbled and out of context. The works were all over the map in terms of style, production value, content, and intention. The result was a muddy program that had some nice isolated moments, but was somehow lesser than the sum of its parts. While Haapalinna probably didn't get the reaction she was hoping for from the conference attendants, it was actually really useful and informative for us to see this kind of program in light of the curation model Rosenberg had just presented. Finally we were able to critically respond to the festival model of programming, and articulate about why it isn't as effective as it could be at promoting and advancing screendance to the public.

In my next couple of posts, I'll talk about my presentation on "artist-driven" curating, and summarize some of the other discussions that went on at the conference including a theory for mapping screendance by Kappenberg, how a curator's role is always political by Gita Wigro, and a modified Venn diagram for curators of screendance proposed by Martha Curtis.

To be continued!

Posted by Anna Brady Nuse at 7:34 AM - Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

June 27, 2008

Summer Travels and Videodance

I'm about to start a twelve day cross-country road trip, driving from West to East with one of my best friends who's moving back to Vermont. We'll be stopping at a bunch of national parks along the way including Crater Lake (OR), Glacier (MT), Yellowstone & the Grand Tetons (WY), and the Blackhills & the Badlands (SD). It's gonna be great, but I won't be able to post to Move the Frame for a while. There are lots of videodance activities happening around the world this summer, so I thought I'd leave you with a few things to keep you busy while I'm MIA.

As soon as I get back to New York, I will be leaving again, this time to go to the Screendance conference at the American Dance Festival in Durham, NC from July 10-13th, where I will be delivering a paper on curating. Below is the abstract for my presentation, which is titled after a post I wrote here a few months ago.

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

Screendance, while growing as a genre worldwide, is still basically unknown in American culture at large. Even within the field of dance, most choreographers and dancers in the United States believe they are unable to name a single work of screendance. The problem is that so much dance for screen is perceived to be part of another genre, be it music videos, advertisements, or experimental films. Screendance as a genre is a foreign concept to the typical viewer, but only a slight shift of perception is necessary to render it familiar and identifiable. To help bring about this shift in perception in my own dance community, I have started a monthly screening series in which I invite guest artists to curate evenings of films and videos that have inspired their work with dance. In compiling their programs, my guest curators discover the knowledge they already have about media and dance and are able to share their insights in ways that other dancers can easily relate to. This simple curated series has raised awareness for the genre in my community and is laying a seed bed for future creativity and experimentation in the form. Like the Judson Dance Theater, Jonas Mekas' New American Cinema Group, and more recently Richard Linklater's Austin Film Society, forming an artist-driven curating collective for screendance has the ability to galvanize a community, inspire new work, and further the boundaries of the art form.

Those of you who have followed my blog for a while will recognize my thought processes on curating as I've written extensively about them in my posts about the Kinetic Cinema screening series for the past six months. I'm excited to listen and talk to the other presenters at the conference this year about this very important topic for videodance.

The other presentations at the conference will be:
"Screendance: Curating the Practice" (Opening Talk by Douglas Rosenberg)
 "Does Screendance Need to Look Like Dance?" by Claudia Kappenberg, Senior Lecturer at the University of Brighton, UK.
 "Tutus and Bonfires" by Gitta Wigro, a freelance programmer from the UK.
 "Beyond the Lens III" Sini Haapalinna, a freelance artist from Finland.

Also Meredith Monk will be honored for her work in film and give an intimate discussion with the Screendance participants. There will also be two curated programs during the conference in addition to the Dancing for the Camera Festival taking place at the same time, which is open to the public.

If you can't get down to North Carolina this summer, then those of you in Europe should head to the Cinedans Festival taking place July 3-10th in Amsterdam, The Hague and Utrecht.

From the Cinedans website:

This sixth edition of the Cinedans has an exclusive collection of national and international dance films in store for you. Films from a new generation of dance film makers will be screened from over fifteen countries. Six documentaries allow you a glance into the dance kitchen of locally operating dancers or internationally renowned choreographers and William Forsythe and Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker compiled a varied selection of their favorite dance films. In addition, Forsythe presents filminstallations, exciting crossovers of performance, film, dance and installation.

Janine Dijkmeijer, the director of Cinedans and Annelyke van den elshout, the program manager, were both at the first Kinetic Cinema screening in January as part of the Dance On Camera Festival. I was happy to see that they have started their own artist curating initiative this summer with their Carte Blanche program, in which they asked choreographers William Forsythe and Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker to put together an evening of films and videos that have been influential on them personally and artistically. These kinds of artist-driven curating programs are so easy to do, and they give such wonderful results in terms of generating interest, dialog and connections for artists and viewers alike. I'm glad the idea is spreading, and I wish I could be there to see these programs! If anyone reading this is able to go, please send me your report and impressions!

Finally, I'm happy to report that I will be finishing production on a new videodance this summer called Fünf 'n' Twist. There will be many more postings about the creative process of making this work in the near future. In the meantime, you can watch a study of the ending of this piece that we made last spring here in HD on Vimeo!

Posted by Anna Brady Nuse at 5:37 PM - Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

May 5, 2008

A Great Week for Dance Film Lovers (especially in NYC)

Yes, that's right! There is a lot going on this week that you should know about...

Screening:
First, you won't want to miss Kinetic Cinema tonight (5/5) curated by downtown dance fav Levi Gonzalez. Levi has brought out a bunch of friends to share cutting edge dance videos and talk about experimentalism in dance and film. Come see new videodances by Melanie Maar, Sarah White, Theo Angell, Yasuko Yokoshi, Hedia Maron, ChameckiLerner, and much more! 

Posted by Anna Brady Nuse at 12:16 PM - Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

April 23, 2008

A Little Shameless Market Research (for a good cause)

Click here to take a survey on Move the Frame!

Hi Everybody,

I'm conducting a little survey to collect information about YOU - my dearest readers - and your perceptions of Move the Frame blog and videodance in general to improve this blog (hopefully), and make it more useful to you and the videodance community (most definitely!). Also, I'm writing a case study on Move the Frame for my Media Management class on branding at The New School, so it's a good time to take stock and get some comprehensive feedback on what I've been doing.

The survey is really short. It should only take a few minutes to complete, and your feedback will be sooo sooo helpful for me. I've loved all the comments I've gotten on this blog, and I hope that everyone, including readers who are normally too shy to post, will participate in this survey to make your voice heard. Don't worry if you don't know what videodance is, or have only glanced at this blog a couple of times. All information is useful information.

Many many thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts.

Yours in moves and frames,
Anna

Click here to take the survey


Photo: J Why

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April 15, 2008

Miss Behavior: Video Art and the Female Body at Kinetic Cinema

What I love the most about my guest-curated Kinetic Cinema series is that I'm constantly exposed to new art and ideas I would never have run across otherwise. Last Monday's (4/7) program was no exception. Jonah Bokaer, dancer, choreographer, media artist, and community-builder extraordinaire surprised even me, by scrapping his original program of Nam June Paik videos, to show an evening completely devoted to feminist video art from the 60's and 70's, entitled "Miss Behavior: Video Art and the Female Body."

I only wish I'd had more time and resources to market and promote this evening, because it is so fascinating, rare, and exceptional to see works by such luminaries as Dara Birnbaum, Joan Jonas, Martha Rosler, Carolee Schneemann, and Hannah Wilke. It was a bold choice for Jonah, as a male dancer and media artist, to dedicate his evening to the accomplishments and advances of women in the male-dominated video art world. It was also a very interesting program show to an audience of dance people, who come from a field shaped by a very different gender dynamic from media arts. In media arts, the numbers of women participating are just generally low, however in dance, the gender diagram is shaped like a pyramid with a majority of females making up the base as dancers, students and teachers, and an increasing concentration of males populating the limited positions at the top (DanceNYC, "The Gender Project", Updated Research 2003). While women are not a rarity in the dance world, female leadership and artistic success (as measured by touring, commissions, and funding) is, given the huge ratio of women to men in the field.

Issues of the female body are also a constant undercurrent in dance performance. During the time period of the videos in this program, the dance world was undergoing its own post-modern investigations, and it seemed that choreographers and performers were trying to question and challenge all the common associations of the dancing body, particularly a female one, with sex, suggestiveness, and sensuality. Could a body be just a machine, or an object like any other prop? Could a female body be a blank slate, like a male body is? Are the bounds of femininity and gender stereotypes something to push against and destroy, or revel in and enunciate? The videos shown on Monday addressed these same questions from a number of different angles.

Dara Birnbaum's Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman (1978-79) was an early precursor to the common YouTube mash-up video of today. Using what was cutting edge video editing technology of the day, she spliced together hundreds of clips of Lynda Carter's TV character twirling into and out of her Wonder Woman persona. At the end of the video, a sexy disco song about Wonder Woman plays while plain typed lyrics scroll up on a blue screen, seeming to ironically underscore the song's suggestiveness. Jonah described how Birnbaum encourages her work to be pirated and played in different contexts including clubs, theatres, and installations. The work is still remarkably fresh and fun even now, and this makes sense when you think about the fact that Birnbaum has been embracing the web 2.0 spirit for over 30 years!

Here is a very short clip from Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman:





Joan Jonas' Duet from 1972, is a performance-based video documenting a vocal duet between Jonas and her screen double. The two women howl like wolves at the moon, with the live Jonas' face in profile in front of a tv screen of her luminous face in extreme close-up. If viewed on its own, I may not have read this video from a feminist perspective, but given that the entire program was about women in video art, I started to think about "bitches" as slang for women and female dogs, and the archetypal connection of the moon with the female principle. The piece did not imply anything good or bad, it was simply an interesting composition that invited many interpretations and possible meanings.

Martha Rosler's Semiotics of the Kitchen (1975) shows how powerful simple task-based compositions can be. Delivered with deadpan wit, Rosler methodically goes through the alphabet showing and demonstrating common kitchen objects "Apron, Bowl, Chopper...". Despite the familiar surroundings, Rosler's kitchen is not warm and cozy. Instead she imbues each object with danger and violence through gestures that turn them into weapons rather than cooking implements. For "Chopper" she picks up a hand chopper and violently bangs it down into the bowl. For "knife" she picks up a long carving knife and jabs it sharply towards the camera. Even "spoon" isn't an implement to feed, instead she scoops up invisible liquid and hurls it out to the side. I love double meanings, and in this case Rosler juxtaposes gesture with words to break-down our assumptions and associations with women's work and the domestic realm.

When I think of Carolee Schneemann, the first thing that comes to mind is her famous Interior Scroll piece in which she pulled a scroll from her vagina and read a report of sexism. Beyond that, I know little about what else she has done. For this program Jonah selected a video that was neither erotic nor sexual. It was a 10 min 16mm film of a performance she did at St. Mark's Church in the Bowery called Water Light/Water Needle (Lake Mah Wah, NJ) (1966) in which the filmmaker was one of the performers. The result is a fragmented chaotic film of a performance that involved 8 tightrope walkers suspended over the ground and lots of paper and detritus everywhere. What I liked about it was the impression it gave of what it must have felt like to be inside the piece. With its inside view, the camera was able to convey the essence of the work - instability, tenuousness, balance - rather than capture a cold, impersonal document of the performance.

The last piece of the program, Through the Large Glass (1976) by Hannah Wilke was the most sexual in content, and for that reason perhaps still the most controversial today. In this film, Wilke performs a strip tease behind Marcel Duchamp's famous Large Glass, also known as The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even. I didn't know the alternate title of Duchamp's work, and was glad Jonah mentioned it in his introduction, because by knowing this reference it made Wilke's performance a bold commentary on female objectification in Western art. Dressed in a white pants suit with a white fedora hat, Wilke struck different poses as she undressed, alternating between personas and genders. To me she was representing both the bride and the bachelors, sometimes feminine and coy, other moments defiant and haughty. Throughout the piece her gaze was fixed out on us, the audience on the other side of the glass (and the camera), making me feel like a subject as well. Generating a feeling of self-consciousness on the part of the viewer seemed to be the objective of Wilke's piece, and as a result it called attention to the male point-of-view implicit in most other Western art.

I'm very happy Jonah shared these works, and I hope there will be more chances to examine feminist motif's in Kinetic Cinema in the future. Many thanks to EAI (Electronic Arts Intermix) for access to these films, as well as Chez Bushwick and the Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual Arts for support of this screening.

Next month at Kinetic Cinema - Levi Gonzalez on May 5th with a program on "What makes a dance or film experimental?"

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April 14, 2008

Internet Rights and Responsibilities workshop hosted by Dance NYC

Dance/NYC and Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts are teaming up this Thursday on April 17th to host a workshop about intellectual property issues on the internet. This is a hot-button topic we all need to think about in today's remix culture. If you're in NYC come check it out! A link to RSVP is below.

From Dance/NYC:

• Do you have a website with video clips?
• Do you post on YouTube, Facebook or MySpace?
• Do you blog?
• Do you secure music rights for performances?

Did you know there are legal requirements for all of the above activities? You and your organization might be at risk if you are not legally complying with state and federal law.

Come meet with legal experts from Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts and find out the facts to protect yourself and your company.  RSVP HERE!

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March 26, 2008

Strategies and Tips for Making Dance Web Videos

On Monday night I attended a panel seminar on web marketing at the Joyce Soho as part of their "Free Advice" series. The panelists were all familiar dance blog acquaintances and friends: Doug Fox (my fabulous host on GreatDance.com), Kristin Sloan of The Winger blog and the Director of New Media at New York City Ballet, Jaki Levy an interaction designer and New Media Director at Misnomer Dance Theater and Chris Elam, Artistic Director of Misnomer. The collective knowledge of those four panelists was very rich and insightful, and got my mind working.

What the evening made me think about most was how to enlist video in a dance company's overall web marketing strategy. To me, the video element of a dance company's web presence is super important. Nothing can come closer to showing someone what your work is, short of witnessing it live. However, making a highly effective dance video is a very different process from making a highly effective dance for the stage. Not just that, but a dance video should be catered specifically to the type of screens it will be viewed on. Different media platforms have different characteristics, and a brilliant documentary film on your new work for 1500 dancers won't necessarily be interesting viewed on a small patchy YouTube screen.

Here is a short list of tips for making effective dance videos for the web.

1. Set intentions for your videos.
What do you want your videos to do for you? Do you want to get more bodies into seats at your next concert? Are you trying to build audiences for the future, or do you want to test out some ideas you're working on for feedback? Whatever you want, be specific about it and align your video efforts around that intention. Kristin Sloan talked about the different marketing intentions behind NYCB's video campaigns. In their marketing department they make promotional videos for each program in their up-coming season with the sole intention of getting people to buy tickets. At $80/ticket, video previews help people decide whether to splurge and go to a concert. In Kristin's new media department, the intention is to grow a future audience base for NYCB. Here they make videos that allow people to encounter the company in different ways, such as through intimate glimpses behind the scenes or interviews. These videos get distributed around the web and help increase the visibility and recognition of NYCB in demographics outside of their core audience.

2. Keep them short and streamlined.
People don't spend much time on any one thing online. They browse and flit about. Just think about your own behavior online. I know I'm all over the place sampling one thing that links me to someplace else. So, if someone comes across your video, you need to capture their attention in the first 10-15 seconds and then complete the thought in 1-3 minutes. Aggressively edit your videos and cut out all the fat. By that I mean unless you are telling us something new and relevant in a scene, leave it out. Have other people look at your video and watch them as they watch. You can see where they fade out or are trying too hard to get it.

Here's an example of a dance video that's short, simple, and streamlined.

Video by Nagi Noda



3. Make it personal and informal.
The web is about making connections with other people in ways that wouldn't be possible offline. The more human and relatable your video is, the more people will connect with your work. Some of the most popular dance videos on the web are of awkward teenage boys in their livingrooms trying to outdo each other with bad dance moves. For professional dancers, this means stripping away the make-up and the stage dressing, and giving a glimpse into the processes, joys and pains behind your work. Kristin Sloan did an amazing job of this in her series on the making of NYCB's Romeo + Juliet. Anaheim Ballet has also made a great video podcast series that gives viewers a back-stage pass into the workings of their company.

4. Make different videos for different viewing formats and contexts.
You may have a great promo video that you send out to presenters to get gigs, but it has lots of different clips that go all over the place and wouldn't draw in the average viewer. Or maybe you have a great video of a performance you did, but the wide shots make the dancers look like little white blobs when you watch it on YouTube. In these cases, you should re-edit your video with footage that looks good in a small box (use more close-ups or mid-shots). Focus on one excerpt or idea from your piece that has a beginning, middle and an end. Or shoot an informal interview with a collaborator and put in short clips of footage from the concert to highlight something they said. Behind-the-scenes stories and rehearsal footage can also be very compelling for a web format.

Here is a link to a couple good examples of web videos made from dance concert footage by Misnomer Dance Theater (edited by Jaki Levy).

5. Make them easy to share.
In many cases the intention of a web video is to have it be seen by as many people as possible. This means you should make it easy for users to share your videos, comment on them, and embed them into their own websites and blogs. Chris Elam and Jaki Levy described the web as a place where information is spread not from one central broadcasting place, but through dozens of individuals that spread it through their own niched networks. The more niches your video shows up in, the better its chances are to become viral and spread. Social networking sites and bloggers can help facilitate this type of distribution very effectively.

6. Make lots of videos, and experiment!
The great thing about the web is that it's cheap and results come very fast. So just jump in and try stuff out. You will know almost instantly if your strategy worked or bombed. Then go back to the drawing board, tweek things and try again. The risks are low and the potential rewards in eye balls, ticket sales, and supporters are great. So go for it! And be sure to share your videos here with me. I'll do my best to blog about them!

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March 10, 2008

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

This summer the American Dance Festival (ADF) will be hosting the second Screendance - State of the Art  conference. Once again dance filmmakers, curators, educators, and critics will come together on the Duke University campus to discuss the art form and exchange ideas. This year's topic is curating and its relationship to screendance. I'm quite passionate about this topic, so I can't resist taking a stab at  a paper proposal to submit to the conference. The deadline for paper proposals is April 11, 2008. For more info, click here.

I credit almost all of my understanding of what screendance is, to watching curated programs at various dance film festivals. The genre is very hard to describe, because dance for the camera could mean anything really. The very definition of film and video is moving pictures, and dancing is only a slightly more specific word for moving. Creating special programs of films that are organized around a specific idea helps to provide a lens for viewing work in a different way. By grouping films under a new name, you can embue them with meanings they didn't necessary have before. For instance if I put clips of Jim Jarmusch's Mystery Train, Sergei Parajanov's The Color of Pomegranates, and Maya Deren's Ritual In Transfigured Time all together in a program entitled "Films as Visual Poetry, Great Symbolist Poets of the Silver Screen," what happens to the way you look at these films?


Films as Visual Poetry: Great Symbolist Poets of the Silver Screen

clip from "Mystery Train" by Jim Jarmusch



clip from "The Color of Pomegranates" by Sergei Parajanov



"Ritual in Transfigured Time" by Maya Deren



Perhaps you have seen all of these films before in different contexts, but now you are seeing many similarities and connections between them you have never thought of before. The through-line of a poetic approach to film making becomes very obvious, and yet, you may not have thought about this connection if you hadn't read the program's title.

This ability to create new meanings and connections between things is especially important for promoting a relatively obscure genre like screendance. In order to educate viewers and attract new audiences we need to give them a window for entry and help them connect with the form. We are a media savvy culture, in which the average viewer can identify the genre and conventional structures of any given media clip in a matter of seconds. Screendance is just different enough to feel strange and foreign to the typical viewer, but only a slight shift of perception is necessary to make it seem familiar and identifiable.

Bringing about this slight shift of perception should be the goal of all curated programs. For my monthly Kinetic Cinema series, the goal is to help make dancers and members of the New York dance community aware of the role media plays in their artistic work. We are all bombarded with media images and messages everyday. This constant deluge of information has to filter down into the work of dancers and choreographers too. I wondered why the dance community in New York seems to be lagging behind our European contemporaries in embracing media with dance, and I realized it may be because dancers here just haven't thought about it consciously. With Kinetic Cinema I invite different members of the dance community to curate programs and draw upon their own media interests and influences. In this way the curators discover the knowledge they already have about media and dance, and can present their ideas in a way that other dancers can relate to.

By these standards, Kinetic Cinema has already been successful. Many of the curators I've invited have never curated a screening before, and yet their programs have blown me away. February's curator, Brian McCormick, displayed a knowledge of video art and new media platforms like Second Life that far surpasses my own. This month, Malinda Allen presented one of the most entertaining and inspiring programs of dance films and videos I've ever seen, and she has never seen the work of Maya Deren before (a filmmaker widely regarded as the mother of modern dance film). Each of these artists presented programs that gave me and all the members of the audience new perspectives on dance and media we had never had before. Bringing about new perspectives and thought connections makes a seed bed for creativity. I believe that these programs will inspire more dancers to make work for the camera, and the artistry and sophistication of their work will be higher, because they are connecting consciously to their own knowledge about media and how it works.

A guest curator series is just one way to bring about a shift in perspective for a particular audience. I'd love to hear of other examples. Please share your ideas and experiences here, and help us brainstorm more ways to bring screendance to the fore of the media landscape!

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February 26, 2008

Malinda Allen Goes Off the Wall at Kinetic Cinema March 3rd

On Monday March 3rd, don't miss the next kick-ass Kinetic Cinema!

Sharing the work of her favorite choreographers and filmmakers, guest curator Malinda Allen hosts a night filled with ideas for the aspiring dance filmmaker.  Her evening will include stories and behind-the-scenes info about film and video projects from the popular to the avant-garde and underground. Local artists on the program include Jonah Bokaer (who will be curating KC on April 7th) and Akim the Funk Buddha, as well as a screening of Malinda's own experimental short, "Other Games."

Kinetic Cinema
Monday March 3rd, 7:30pm (and the first Monday of every month)
$5 Admission (buy tix at the door)

@ Collective:Unconscious
279 Church Street
(just south of White Street)
New York, NY 10013
Trains: 1 to Franklin; A, C, E to Canal
www.weird.org
212.254.5277


Still: Malinda Allen "Other Games"

Kinetic Cinema explores the intersection of dance and the moving image both on screen and stage. Each month curator Anna Brady Nuse invites a special guest from the dance community to share the films and videos that have inspired or moved them. These could be films 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, and filmmakers. Upcoming guests include Malinda Allen (March 3rd), Jonah Bokaer (April 7th), Levi Gonzalez (May 5th), and Kriota Willberg (June 2nd).

Malinda Allen creates works of body-based theater with collaborators including HBO Def Jam artist Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai, and poet/violinist Alicia Jo Rabins from the punk rock Klezmer band, Golem. She's been presented at Dance Theater Workshop's Fresh Track Series, Moving Men and Chez Bushwick at Dixon Place, the East Village HOWL Festival at PS 122, and the Movement Research at the Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance, among others.

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December 24, 2007

Introducing Kinetic Cinema (and reflecting on 2007)

Before introducing my latest videodance venture starting in the new year, I feel the impulse to reflect on 2007 and share some of the experiences that have led me here to the brink of a new jumping off place.



Last January I was the festival coordinator of the 2007 Dance on Camera Festival. I spent several intense months from Sept-Dec 2006 soliciting and receiving entries, coordinating prescreenings, watching almost 200 submissions, and practically living at the Walter Reade Theatre during the first two weeks of 2007. It was a very rewarding experience, but I found that that very few dancers from my community, the New York modern dance community, came out to see the amazing work we were showing. There were many reasons for this, one being that the timing of the festival is right after the holidays, and it always bumps right up on APAP, the biggest gig-getting event of the year in New York. It's hard to compete with a dancer's chance to drum up some income, but I felt that more could be done to bring awareness to dancers of the power of dance for the camera.

In an attempt to address this, I curated a special program of videodance shorts by American artists at Galapagos Art Space in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. I did this because the work of local and US based artists is generally under-represented in the Dance On Camera Festival outside of the documentary category, and I wanted to attract local audiences by showing work by people they knew. The strategy worked. We had more people than we could squeeze in standing, and we even had to turn some away at the door! This showed me that the community was interested and hungry to see dance for the camera, we just needed to involve them more.

In the spring, Zach Morris (of the Dance Film Lab) and I decided we wanted to build upon the momentum of the Galapagos showing and start a bimonthly dance film screening series. We had huge ideas for programming from showing the greatest videodances we knew of, to programs that showed the entire history of dance film. In May 2006 we produced "Wicked Cool Dance Films" featuring all our favorite films and had a rousing discussion with the audience and filmmakers after the screening. We seemed to be off to a good start. The only problem was that we had no money or time. Galapagos was cheap but it wasn't free, and Zach had too much on his plate to continue. I wanted to keep it going, but I knew that I couldn't do it on my own.

Fast forward to this fall. I started blogging on Great Dance which seemed like the perfect way to spread the gospel of dance for the camera without needing much to get it going. So far Move the Frame blog has been an incredible experience and has opened up many new networks and distribution opportunities for me and my mission. I've made oodles of friends from all over and love the interactivity the blog platform allows. But despite the new connections, I still feel like I haven't been able to address one of the issues closest to home: how to get the New York dance community turned on to videodance.

In October Zach forwarded me an email. It was from Caterina Bartha, the director of Collective:Unconscious a theatre and screening space in Tribeca. She was looking for a curator for a monthly dance film series they wanted to launch in 2008. She had been talking to Deirdre Towers at the Dance Films Association about doing a screening for the Dance On Camera Festival there, but she wanted to continue this as a regular event. Zach declined because his work had taken off in a big way, but he recommended me for the position. My gut reaction was "Yes! This is exactly what I've been wishing for." They were offering free space, a projectionist, admin support, and a regular time slot to do whatever I wanted. But at the same time I was worried I couldn't make the time commitment. I'd be in school part-time, working almost full-time, blogging, and trying to work on my own videodances. Still I felt like this was too good to pass up.

Then I got an idea. What if I took the web 2.0 approach, and made this a user-generated series? If I wanted to attract dancers from my community, maybe I should give them the reigns and let them bring in the work? What media is turning them on? How has it shown up in their performance work? If I could get dancers to think about these questions and share their own ideas perhaps they would see the value of integrating videodance into their dance practice. The idea of Kinetic Cinema was born.

Kinetic Cinema explores the intersection of dance and the moving image both on screen and stage. Each month I will invite a special guest from the dance community to share the films and videos that have inspired or moved them. These could be films that feature dance, are kinetic-based, or have been influential on their work in some way. The guest curators will come from a range of dance backgrounds as performers, choreographers, critics, and filmmakers. Upcoming guests include Brian McCormick, Jonah Bokaer, Levi Gonzalez, and Kriota Willberg, to name a few.

To kick off the series I'm taking a slightly different tack because it is being held in conjunction with the Dance Films Association's 36th Annual Dance On Camera Festival.  On January 7th, 2008 at 7:30pm, Kinetic Cinema will present a special program of seven international dance film shorts I have selected from among 200+ festival entries. These films and videos represent some of the freshest new visions by leading dance filmmakers today. The program includes "1, 2, 3, 4" a catchy music video by Feist with choreography by Noemi LaFrance (who will introduce her film), "PANORAMA ROMA" a rotating timelapse film shot over 24 hours in the center of Rome by Italian choreographer Anna de Manincor, and "NOT ABOUT IRAQ" a dance film that questions the relationship of words and experience, government rhetoric and reality by choreographer Victoria Marks with dancer Taisha Paggett. (click here for the full program)

On February 4th dance critic and founding board member of nicholas leichter dance, Brian McCormick, will present a program of videos and films that have been integral to his life with dance. Brian is particularly interesting because he comes from a background in video art which led him to dance. His first introduction to movement-based arts were through the experimental videos of Bill Viola, Mary Lucier with Elizabeth Streb, Shirley Clarke, and Joan Jonas. I've haven't explored this type of work very much myself, and I'm looking forward to learning just as much from his program as the audience will.

Although the series hasn't started yet, I already feel like it is fulfilling an important mission that began for me over a year ago with the Dance On Camera Festival. By galvanizing the local community and linking our efforts with the world community via the web and other forms of media, some large scale shifts can happen. The revolution will not be televised, but I will do my best to blog about it, and hopefully all the small actions by dancers and filmmakers happening around the world will link up and become a great wave of change sweeping the dance world into the 21st Century!

If you are in the New York area on the first Monday of the month, please come see what's playing at Kinetic Cinema. Screenings will start at 7:30pm. $5 admission.

Collective:Unconscious
279 Church Street (just south of White Street)
New York, NY 10013
www.weird.org
TICKETS: 212.352.3101
VENUE:212.254.5277

Kinetic Cinema is part of The Collective for Loving Cinema Series, a weekly themed-film series curated by Anna Brady Nuse, Stephen Kent Jussick, Matt Kohn and MM Serra and presented by Collective: Unconscious. Each week of the month has a specific theme: Week 1 - Kinetic Cinema (Dance on Film), Week 2 - Experimental Queer Film (MIX @ C:U), Week 3 - Speakeasy Cinema (a mystery film with post screening talk back with various film luminaries!) and Week 4 - Jewels and Gems (the best of the Filmmakers Co-Op) . The Collective for Loving Cinema Series is supported, in part, by the New York State Council on the Arts and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.

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December 4, 2007

Dance Film Lab next week! (and other happenings)

Hi All.

I apologize for the sparse postings the past couple of weeks. I've been slammed with school work at the end of the semester (I'm studying Media Management at the New School). I'll share some of the wealth of my newly acquired knowledge soon, but in the meantime, here are some dance film/video events coming up this month.

Next Tuesday, December 11th
Dance Film Lab
@ South 4th Bar in Williamsburg
90 South 4th Street @ Berry
Subways: L at Bedford, J,M,Z at Marcy Ave.
Phone: 718.218.7478
8pm, free

The bi-monthly Dance Film Lab is a friendly gathering of folks interested in dance for the camera. People share their works (in any stage of progress) and get constructive feedback from the group. We all get to share who we are, what we're doing, and what we need (which often gets miraculously granted!). And our gracious moderator Zach Morris (of Third Rail Projects blog) always makes everyone feel very warm and welcome. So come out, but shoot an email Zach first just so he knows you're coming.

Last night I attended the DANCE MOViES Commission workshop run by my friend Hélène Lesterlin, dance curator at EMPAC (Experimental Media Performing Arts Center) in Troy, NY. It was a very inspiring presentation about the commission and the possibilities for creative experimentation in dance and media at EMPAC. The ratio of commission awards to applicants is very low, however I think it is still well worth applying to, for the process alone, and also to show the funding community that there are a lot of American artists out there that want to make dance for screen. Eventually other funders will sign on and join EMPAC's efforts to support this fantastic genre. So Viva EMPAC and DANCE MOViES!

There is a wonderful festival in the Netherlands this month that I wish I could attend, called Dancing on the Edge: Confronting Dance from the Middle East. It's a dance festival with a dance film component curated by Cinedans. The dance films are all from the Middle East, or made by artists from there, and tackle many topics from "West Bank Story" - a remake of the famous musical with competing Falafel stands and a taboo Israeli Palestinian love affair - to  "Horizon of Exile" a breath-taking installation about two Iraqi women torn between their country and their need to escape. Incidentally "Horizon of Exile" will be shown this January in New York during the Dance On Camera Festival. I can't wait to see it!

So if you are in the Netherlands or thereabouts I highly recommend you check this festival out.

Dancing on the Edge
Confronting Dance from the Middle East
Amsterdam: 12-16 december
Rotterdam: 13-18 december
Groningen: 11-12 & 18-19 december

And to leave you with some moving images to muse over, my friend Hope Hall, a filmmaker, and occasional dance filmmaker, hipped me to this blog, La Blogotheque, where she shot one of their videos in the TakeAway Series. Essentially they shoot a band performing in some non-traditional space all in one take, and then post the take on their blog. Seems like a great idea for a videodance series too.

This is one of those TakeAways, and while it's really a music video, it does have some adorable dancing, and it'll make you want to move. So take it away!

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November 2, 2007

Chair Dances for the Video Age

If any of you have studied dance at an institution of higher learning than you will be very familiar with the most popular dance composition assignment ever: the chair dance. Even if you never went to school for dance, I am pretty sure you have seen a chair dance at some student concert you were dragged to. The most common type you will see is the angsty chair dance. Usually performed by a soloist, in this particularly virulent strain the dancer pours every fiber of her being into communing with the source of her greatest pain and sorrow, the empty chair. I have made and endured watching many a chair dance in my day, and it got to the point where if I saw another one, I thought I might possibly slit my throat.


However, now I'm all grown up and I don't get to spend gazillions of dollars to dance six hours a day and come up with angsty dance compositions with furniture. Instead I find myself dancing less and interacting with chairs more and more. I've got my office job where I deal with numbers and spreadsheets and many other things of importance that I never studied in school. Then I come home to sit at my computer and surf youtube, edit videodances and post to my blog. It got me kind of longing for some chair dancing...
So today for all those poor dancers trapped in cubicles, I present some excellent chair dances. I encourage you to try these at home or at work, but be sure to check your workers' comp policy first.

Chair dance # 1 comes from Lando, a Youtube vlogger who made a New Year's resolution to make a dance video a day. Her motto: Dance Your Ass Off. I guess this quickly devolved to making a videodance whenever she felt like it, but she's still made 74 so far, which is pretty impressive. (For a superstar in the daily dance video world check out Boris Willis and his "Dance-a-day" blog.) I was impressed with her cinematic approach to her videodances. Often she plays with the edges of the frame and the videos' colorings to make them look old, retro or distorted. In this one she also makes good use of off-screen/on-screen space and the curtain back-drop, which has a different effect for camera than stage.


Day 2 of Dance 365 - How to Ridin Dirty Office Chair dance by Lando


Chair dance #2 could be a spin-off of the Hipster Olympics. Brooklyn filmmaker Jill Beale makes a case for the under-represented sport of Chairing, which seems quite similar to the experimental modern dance scene in New York. Perhaps our two groups should join forces and take the world by storm, or at least wheel our way off the L line.


chairing by Jill Beale


Chair dance #3 follows the chairing phenomenon but takes it one step further to become Office Chair Skating. Instead of endurance and speed, it's about artistry and grace. You're allowed to have off-screen helpers push you in to avoid showing any clumsy foot scoots, and having smooth floor surfaces are essential.


Office Chair Skating by Rhett and Link


Chair dance #4 is a futuristic fantasy where a flying carpet is replaced by a flying arm chair soaring to the timeless anthem of Aha's "Take On Me". The guy who made this cast his dad in the lead role. As a moonlighting chair dancer, he's really great. No embedding allowed on this one, so you'll have to click the link.

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October 29, 2007

Free DANCE MOViES Commission Workshops

In follow-up to my post about EMPAC's fabulous DANCE MOViES Commission, below is a new announcement from Hélène Lesterlin, EMPAC's Dance Curator, about a series of free workshops she will be holding in LA, Buenos Aires and New York in November and December. These workshops are designed to help artists prepare strong proposals to EMPAC and other grant-making foundations to fund new dance film/video/installation projects. With so few grants specifically earmarked for videodance, this is a rare opportunity every dance filmmaker in North and South America should take advantage of.



November:  DANCE MOViES Commission WORKSHOPS
led by EMPAC's Dance Curator Hélène Lesterlin Free and open to artists interested in applying to the commission. No need to register, just come!

Topics covered:  How to apply, what makes a strong proposal, information on the facilities of EMPAC, issues related to installation-based works, examples shown, followed by a Q&A and discussion.

BUENOS AIRES  Thursday, November 8th, 2:30 - 4:30 pm
Videodanza Festival International de Buenos Aires
For information and location: http://www.videodanzaba.com.ar/index.htm

LOS ANGELES  Wednesday, November 28th, 7:00 - 9:00 pm
18th Street Arts Center
1639 18th Street, Santa Monica, CA 90404
In the main gallery space.
www.18thstreet.org

NEW YORK CITY  Monday, December 3rd, 7:00 - 9:00 pm
Dance Theater Workshop
219 West 19th Street, New York, NY 10011
Take the elevator to the third floor.
www.dtw.org

----

OPEN CALL FOR PROPOSALS - deadline Feb 15, 2008
The EMPAC DANCE MOViES Commission supports the creation of new works in the field of experimental dance for the screen made by, or in collaboration with, a choreographer or movement artist based in the Americas. Up to 3 commissions will be awarded in the range of $7,000 - $50,000. Artists may apply to create works in conjunction with the Artist-in-Residence program, taking advantage of EMPAC's spaces, technology, infrastructure such as computer-controlled rigging or large-scale immersive studio environments. 

-- guidelines, application and info:  empac.rpi.edu/commissions/DMC
-- questions:  dancemovies@rpi.edu or 1.518.276.3918
-- deadline:  2/15/08

Backed by the Jaffe Fund for Experimental Media and Performing Arts, the DANCE MOViES Commission supports experimental works for the screen including film, video, installation and other audio-visual formats.

About EMPAC
EMPAC - the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center - is a place and a program where the arts challenge and alter our technology and technology challenges and alters the arts. Founded by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY, EMPAC is an arts institution that draws strength from being part of a great research university. It operates nationally and internationally: attracting innovative artists, both renowned and emerging, from around the world; offering artists, researchers, and audiences opportunities that are available nowhere else under a single roof; providing unsurpassed facilities for creative exploration, and for research in fields such as visualization and movement capture; sending new artworks onto the global stage.

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October 25, 2007

Is it live or is it videodance?

Last night I attended DanceNYC's Townhall event "Does Dance have a future? Implications of a Technological World". The panel, consisting of Doug Fox (my patron saint) of Greatdance.com,  Doug McLennan of ArtsJournal.com, and Jonah Bokaer of Chez Bushwick communicating via webcam from Australia, helped stir up the ideas, but what was really great about it for me was that there were all these amazing people there that I got to meet in the flesh after much online dialogue. Everyone who came is doing such great things in the dance world, and the progressive thoughts that got passed around before, during, and after the meeting were really inspiring and up-lifting.

I finally got to meet bloggers Tonya Plank of Swan Lake Samba Girl, Kristin Sloan of The Winger and The (Inter)mission, and Jeff Weinstein a dance and theatre critic whose blog Out There is on ArtsJournal.com. Clare Byrne was there, a choreographer I've heard so much about and whose work I've only seen online despite the fact we both live and work in NYC! Linda Lewett is a video producer that I met last January at EMPAC in Troy, NY who's done tons of dance video work for years. Marketing people from several dance companies were there including Susan Marshall &  Co., Alvin Ailey, New York City Ballet and Pascal Rioult Dance Theatre. Plus I met some wicked cool independent choreographers who are foraying into the digital world, Kimberly Young of dance-elephant.org and Malinda Allen of Allen Body Group. This is just a partial sampling of the people I got to talk to. I had no idea that there were so many people right here in NYC sharing the same thoughts as me that dance needs to have a compelling, fabulous, and engaging mediatized form! This primarily means making great dance videos and encouraging and fostering audience engagement online.

One topic that was raised, and that I have very strong views about, was live vs. video. Are the two incompatible or compatible, and do we need to fear video overcoming live? In my mind I was screaming video has already overcome live!!! In terms of cultural capital this was happened back in the 1920's with the rise of the film industry. The dance world has been deluded for almost 100 years that live performance reigns supreme. The answer is so clear that economically and culturally speaking new forms of media technology have crowded out live performance to an alarming degree. However, this doesn't mean live performance is going to die, obviously we're still around despite several media dynasty shifts (film to tv to internet/video with mobile phones on the horizon). The question isn't if we need to embrace media to improve our existence, it's a matter of how.

For any disbelievers still out there, I highly recommend a book by Performance Studies professor Philip Auslander entitled Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture (Routledge; 1999). If you can't read it all, just read the introduction, he spells everything out right there.

 
From the Amazon book description:

Is it live or is it Memorex?

In his provocative new book, performance critic Philip Auslander explores live performance and asks what relevance it has in contemporary culture dominated by mass media. Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Society begins with an overview of live performance and reveals that media technology has encroached on live events to the point where many, like concerts and sporting events that feature jumbo video screens, are hardly live at all. Auslander offers a way of understanding the history of this development based on an analysis of the relationship between early television and theatre.

 

This book has pretty much shaped my entire vision behind promoting videodance.

For some good news about how to harness media to better the existence of live performance read my post "Madonna Shows Us a New Move." For more discussion of the Town Hall meeting read Doug Fox's Dancing in to the Future posts here, here, and here.

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October 22, 2007

Videodance-making 101

When I started making videodances in 2002 I had no idea what I was doing. I was a dancer who had seen a few great dance films by Maya Deren, and decided I had to work in that medium. When I got a video camera it was a process of experimentation and seeing other people's work that led me to a basic understanding of how to compose movement for the camera and edit it into a videodance. Over the past few years I've heard more and more dancers say they want to start making videodances, but they don't know where to begin. It's a daunting leap from stage to screen, and requires a completely different set of skills and artistic intentions. Luckily there are more and more resources out there to help guide the novice videodance-maker. One great development in the U.S. is the emergence of videodance classes in college dance departments. Right after I graduated from CalArts in 1999 my friend and former classmate, Francesca Penzani began teaching video for dance courses there. She has produced a steady crop of videodance-makers whose work I showed on Move the Frame TV show, and has also been featured at various dance film festivals around the world. Ellen Bromberg at the University of Utah was one of the earliest advocates of dance film pedagogy and her program has been at the cutting edge of technology and dance innovations. Another west coast school devoted to this form is UC-Irvine under the direction Dance/Media Professor John Crawford. All of these schools host dance film festivals and expose their students and communities to the best new work from around the world.

For those of us in NYC, not in college and wishing we had access to all that great equipment, information and resources which were only available when we were in school, an amazing opportunity is coming. On Nov. 2nd & 3rd (Friday and Saturday) Movement Research, as part of its Movement Research Exchange (MRX) Program, in collaboration with the University of California Irvine (UCI), will be hosting a free showing and workshop featuring the Active Space interactive media system, at

Baryshnikov Arts Center

450 W. 37th Street

(between 9th & 10th)

New York, NY 10018

Friday evening at 7pm will be a free screening of dance for the camera and work made by UCI students including a live multi-media performance. Saturday afternoon from 1-4pm will be a free workshop in Active Space, an interactive physical environment that engages participants in a dialog of mutual influence involving movement, visuals and sound. My impression is that this interactive media system is used primarily for creating live multi-media performances, however the technology sounds super-cool, and it could be very instructive in how to work with a video camera to frame a dance.

Another school that is helping to educate the world about videodance is Florida State University through their ChoreoVideo Project. Created by Associate Professor Tim Glenn with Andy and Dionne Noble, ChoreoVideo.com is a website that breaks down the techniques and tools for making a videodance and provides super-fine HD video clips as examples. This is a wonderfully simple manual that's well organized and easy to digest. The site is peppered with inspirational quotes from veteran dance filmmakers, and there is an extensive list of resources for further reading and information.

A great book to check out is Katrina McPherson's Making Video Dance: A Step-by-Step Guide to Creating Dance for the Screen (New York: Routledge Press, 2006). This is the first published guide of its kind, and it thoroughly explains the differences between choreographing for screen vs. the stage while providing in depth advice on how to create a videodance from concept through post-production. McPherson, along with Simon Fildes, is also one of the co-creators of the world's most compact videodance-making production kit called the Move-me booth. Set up in public locations, the Move-me booth is like a passport photo booth, but inside participants are given instructions to dance before a video camera. The resulting video is posted to move-me.com for everyone to see. Currently it's touring in Europe, but perhaps a US tour will start up soon!

I'm really glad that there are so many more resources for videodance-makers now than there were just five years ago, and I hope that anybody who has been thinking about working in this form feels more informed and confident to start!

One last word of advice: assist on other people's shoots. It doesn't matter what kind of film/video/tv show it's for. Nothing beats real hands on experience. Even if you are just fetching coffee and donuts, you will learn loads about the production process which will come to bear when you start to plan your own shoot.

How did other people start making videodances? And if you're just starting, where have you found inspiration and guidance?

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