September 26, 2008

Move the Frame Turns 1 year old!

It's Move the Frame's birthday! I can't believe it's been a year already. Looking back on my first post, I tackled the unanswerable question of what this genre/medium/interdisciplinary hybrid thing should be called, and 78 posts later, I'm still not sure. If anything I've gotten a little less sure, and am not using the term videodance as much. Screendance still sounds boring and dry to me, but I've got more respect for the inclusiveness of the term. I like the idea now of a multiplicity of terms, and saying: hey, we all have different interests in dance and media, just call it whatever you want.

To celebrate a year's worth of late nights putting off much-needed sleep to pursue a very bizarre obsession about a very bizarre subject, here are few of my "Greatest Hits", one for each month of this year.

Phillipine Prisoners Resurrect Busby Berkeley. This was my second post ever, and probably my best to date! I wish I could pull an article like this out everytime I sit down to write!

Viva la dance dance revolution! This was my wild idealist phase :)

Papelbon Dance I'm actually a Yankee's fan, but the fact that Jonathan Papelbon has increased dance appreciation around Red Sox Nation is blog-worthy in my book.

Project Bandaloop Straddles Different Definitions of Performance. I liked this strange merging of the commercial world with avant gard performance.

Introducing Kinetic Cinema (and reflecting on 2007) My screening series, Kinetic Cinema became a recurring topic of critique and reflection in 2008.

Second Life: A Puppet Play for the 21st Century. I'm still wrapping my brain around real-time performance in Second Life.

Thoughts on Curating: How to Bring About a Shift In Perception. This article was the genesis of my paper at the Screendance Conference at ADF this year.

Miss Behavior: Video Art and the Female Body at Kinetic Cinema. Thoughts after viewing very cool feminist video art presented by Jonah Bokaer at Kinetic Cinema.

Godard and Waters do the Madison I wrote this for Ferdy On Films' Dance Movie Blogathon. Later my investigation into these two directors' use of dance showed up in my new videodance, Fünf 'n' Twist when I shot the prom scenes this summer.

Bad Dance, Good Cinema, and Why It's All Better Than Boring Kriota Willberg's Kinetic Cinema program, The Worst of the Best was very stimulating!

Artist Driven Curating and How it Could Help Galvanize a Screendance Movement. Thoughts and ruminations provoked by my participation in the Screendance: State of the Art2 Conference at ADF this summer.

The Making of Fünf 'n' Twist A new videodance I'm making about a teenage couple and their rite of passage at the Prom. Weird and wonderful! Check out the photos and clips.

"PRIME MOVER" Screening Raises Questions of Merit & Worth of Dance Films Reflections on the most recent Kinetic Cinema program, and the difference between visual arts-based dance media works vs. cinema-based dance media.

That brings us pretty much to the present! I think I've matured and gotten a little more serious over the course of the year. Maybe I need to bring back some more Papelbon and Phillippine Prisoners. What do you think?

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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.

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June 17, 2008

Kenneth Anger and Amy Greenfield Heat Up Anthology Film Archives this Weekend (June 20 & 21)

Two renown experimental filmmakers, Kenneth Anger and Amy Greenfield, are being featured at Anthology Film Archives in New York this weekend. The event, called "Cinema Dance Eros" will will be comprised of two programs of shorts that examine the erotic and sensual movement themes in both filmmakers' work.

CLUB MIDNIGHT by Amy Greenfield
Amy Greenfield is a pioneer of cinedance and videodance, and for the past decade has embarked on a series of shorts about exotic dancers and strippers that were recently compiled in collection called CLUB MIDNIGHT. In these sensual films, the female subjects are the embodiment of ancient female archetypes. Under Greenfield's treatment, female strippers become goddesses reincarnate, who carry out rituals of mythological proportions. In DARK SEQUINS dancer Andrea Beaman becomes Salome, performing the dance of the seven veils for a single man in an empty theater. In WILD FIRE four women whirl like the elements, whipping up energy into a hot frenzy.


Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome by Kenneth Anger
Kenneth Anger's work is not usually associated with dance, but nevertheless, his wordless films are highly attenuated to movement. According to the curators of "Cinema Dance Eros", Anger trained as a dancer in his youth, and one of his unfinished projects was a film of a Jean Cocteau ballet (Oh, if only we could see that!). The programs this weekend will feature some of his most famous works including FIREWORKS (which first garnered him attention from Jean Cocteau) and INAUGURATION OF THE PLEASURE DOME.

These two programs are sure to fan the flames of any lover of mythology, magic, and eroticism! Don't miss it!

Here are the details:

CINEMA DANCE EROS
Featuring filmmakers Kenneth Anger & Amy Greenfield
June 20th & 21st
Amy Greenfield in person!

ANTHOLOGY FILM ARCHIVES
32 SECOND AVENUE
NEW YORK, NY 10003
phone (212) 505-5181 fax (212) 477-2714

PROGRAM 1:
Amy Greenfield DANCING IN FRONT OF THE DARK (1980/1992, 4 minutes, video)
Amy Greenfield DIRT (1971, 3 minutes, 16mm)
Amy Greenfield ELEMENT (1973, 11 minutes, 16mm)
Kenneth Anger FIREWORKS (1947, 15 minutes, 16mm)
Kenneth Anger MY SURFING LUCIFER (2007, 4.5 minutes, video)
Amy Greenfield TIDES (1982, 12 minutes, 16mm. Photographed by Hilary Harris.)
Kenneth Anger EAUX D'ARTIFICE (1953, 13 minutes, 16mm)
Kenneth Anger RABBIT'S MOON (1950/1971, 16 minutes, 16mm)
Kenneth Anger PUCE MOMENT (1949, 6 minutes, 16mm. With Yvonne Marquis.)
Amy Greenfield CLUB MIDNIGHT (2006, 8.5 minutes, 35mm. With Bonnie Dunn & Andrea Beeman. Poetry by Charles Simic, spoken by Dennis Hopper.)
Total running time: ca. 100 minutes.
-Friday and Saturday, June 20 & 21 at 7:00.

PROGRAM 2:
Kenneth Anger PUCE MOMENT (1949, 6 minutes, 16mm. With Yvonne Marquis.)
Amy Greenfield DARK SEQUINS (2005, 13 minutes, 35mm. With Andrea Beeman.)
Amy Greenfield LIGHT OF THE BODY (2004, 11 minutes, 35mm/video. With Francine Breen. Music by Marilys Ernst.)
Amy Greenfield WILDFIRE (2003, 12 minutes, 35mm. With Andrea Beeman, Francine Breen, Bonnie Dunn, Cynthia DeMoss. Music by Philip Glass.)
Kenneth Anger INVOCATION OF MY DEMON BROTHER (1969, 11 minutes, 16mm. With Kenneth Anger. Music by Mick Jagger.)
Kenneth Anger INAUGURATION OF THE PLEASURE DOME (1954, 38 minutes, 16mm. With Samson DeBreer, Cameron, Curtis Harrington, Anaïs Nin, and Kenneth Anger.)
Total running time: ca. 95 minutes.
-Friday and Saturday, June 20 & 21 at 9:30. 

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June 5, 2008

Bad Dance, Good Cinema, and Why It's All Better Than Boring

Kriota Willberg's program, "The Worst of the Best" for Kinetic Cinema Monday night was extremely entertaining. She proved beyond a doubt that examining truly bad dance film is fun, inspiring, and highly effective at eliciting an emotional response from the crowd.

For all of you who thought about or responded to Kriota's earlier online poll "What's the Worse Dance Film Ever" you may be interested to see what made the cut in the end. Here is the list of the films she discussed Monday night and a short summary of why they were chosen:

The Mothering Heart (1913), Dir: DW Griffith
Reason: MADE BAD AND STRANGE BY HISTORY

Spectre of the Rose (1946), Dir: Ben Hecht, Dancer: Ivan Kirov, Chor: Tamara Geva
Reason: MADE WORSE BY THE BACKSTORY
 
Torch Song (1953), Dir: Charles Walters, Dancer: Joan Crawford and ensemble, Chor: Charles Walters
Reason: OFFENSIVE = BAD (Cast was in black face in 1953!!)

Staying Alive (1983), Dir: Sylvester Stallone, Dancers: John Travolta, Finola Hughes, Cynthia Rhodes, Chors:  Dennan and Sayhber Rawles
Reason: DRAMA!!!!

Center Stage (2000), Dir: Nicholas Hytner, Dancers: Amanda Schull, Sascha Radetsky, Ethan Stiefel, and ensemble, Chor: Susan Strohman
Reason: THE SAFE CHOICES AREN'T ALWAYS THE BEST CHOICES

Showgirls (1995), Dir: Paul Verhoeven, Dancers: Elizabeth Berkley, Gina Gershon and ensemble, Chor: Marguerite Pomerhn-Derricks
Reason: DRAMATIC! OFFENSIVE!  MADE WORSE BY BACKSTORY!

Preceding the bad dance films, Kriota also discussed the difference between BAD and BORING and illustrated it with a montage of boring dance film and video clips she culled from the web (actually her poor assistant, Gretchen culled them from the web!). The interesting thing about the difference between bad and boring is that it often comes down to money. Apparently the "have nots" aren't really capable of making truly bad art, only dull art. As Kriota explained, when a filmmaker has over a million dollars to make a dance movie, and it turns out to be boring, then we are outraged, "Is that all that you could do?" and that automatically bumps it into the bad category. Whereas when a low budget video of, say, a naked man flapping around on the floor in a puddle goes on and on, it's just dull and we feel like we are wasting our time.

I'd never thought of this difference before, but in terms of my emotional response it's true, I'm more outraged by a squandering of resources and opportunities than watching a boring video on YouTube. I guess jealousy has a big role to play in what makes something bad or just boring, which is also proof positive of the irrationality behind all demarcations of good and bad. Who can really judge these things beyond a reasonable doubt? No one, but at least Kriota has taken a stab at defining her standards for judgment, something all of us curators, presenters, and critics should do!

Amy Greenfield, a cine- and videodance pioneer, was also in attendance Monday night and had some interesting insights to share...

"Thoughts on Monday. Great premise btw  - most thought-provoking program so far. That's GREAT.  BAD ISN'T BORING!

It was also so enjoyable because except for the boring tapes, cinematically this "bad" filmdance was the best cinema of the season - Hollywood films! I love the contradiction and feel it needs to be recognized. Also realized Monday that "dance people" and "laypeople" looking at them will have very different reactions cause most people look at the film as film first, and in context with the rest of the film as they were features. Yeats asked 'How do you tell the dancer from the dance?' Monday night's delightful, insightful show made me ask 'How do you tell the cinema from the dance?'

Some of my own thoughts on Monday PM: 
I've seen The Mothering Heart and it's an important silent film by the great film pioneer, DW Griffith. I love the film and never noticed the dance moment screened. The actress in the foreground is Lilian Gish, one of the great silent film actresses. Notice her restraint vs the dance. Lilian and her sister Dorothy were sent by Griffith to study dance at Denishawn. The ACTING in these films was good filmdance. (What's good filmdance and whats good dance put on film is there a difference?) Griffith used Denishawn dancers including Martha Graham in his masterpiece, Intolerance.

Ben Hecht who made Specter of the Rose was one of the great Hollywood screenwriters who obviously didn't know anything about dance. The dance in Spectre massacred influences from Deren's Study In Choreography For Camera and more especially Cocteau's Blood Of The Poet. The two 'good film good dance' moments had to do with real action, and the film actor's dictum - don't act, re-act: when the dancer lays down the knife at the sleeping woman's neck, and when he lept out the window, shattering the glass and going into non-existence as Nijinsky did on stage. That last moment was GREAT and worth all the previous BAD dancing.

Staying Alive was REALLY good cinema and I didn't think it was bad dance either though I just couldn't separate the film from the dance until the unfortunately stupid climax which went over the top - and tellingly, was the only part not shot close-up, fast cuts, and wasn't such excellent cinema.

The Stroman [Center Stage] was bad dance and bad cinema. Interesting how bad cinema can ruin good dance by Amanda Schull."

Amy

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May 29, 2008

Worst of the Best at Kinetic Cinema June 2nd

Don't miss the last Kinetic Cinema before we break for the summer!

"Staying Alive" dir. Sylvester Stallone, "Showgirls" dir. Paul Verhoeven

On Monday June 2nd, choreographer and dance filmmaker Kriota Willberg will host The Worst of the Best, a tour of inspiringly bad dance films from the early 1900's to the present. Truly awful dance is powerful art.  We react strongly to it as an audience, we relate our horrible experiences to our friends and warn them away from it, we laugh, we seethe, we remember it far longer than "good" dance, and possibly longer than "great" dance.   Join us for film and discussion as we chase that ethereal muse, Badness, through the work of generations of dance film artists.

Kinetic Cinema
Monday June 2nd, 7:30pm
$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
http://weird.org/films.htm
212.254.5277
MORE INFO: www.movetheframe.com
 

Kinetic Cinema at Collective:Unconscious 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. In the fall upcoming guests will include Elizabeth Zimmer (Oct 5th),  Maya Ciarrocchi (Nov 3rd), and new films by Anna Brady Nuse & friends (Dec 1st).

KRIOTA WILLBERG has danced and choreographed in Germany, Chicago, and New York. In addition to working with her company, Dura Mater, Willberg choreographs for commercial, theatrical, and other dance productions. Dance choreography for film includes The Bentfootes  (dir. K. Willberg and Todd Alcott), Grasshopper  (dir. Todd Alcott), Dreamgirl (dir. Robbie Busch), and On The Road With Judas (dir. JJ Lask). She has passed her basic proficiency tests in Single Sword and Broadsword techniques from the Society of American Fight Directors (SAFD) and occasionally includes fight choreography in her own work and for others. Her article on dance and stage combat was published in the SAFD magazine, The Fightmaster. Her ballerina tattoo was featured in Dance Magazine.

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May 12, 2008

Kriota Willberg asks: What's the Worst Dance Film Ever?

1.  WHAT, IN YOUR OPINION, IS THE WORST DANCE FILM OF ALL TIME, EVER?  It can be a full film or just an excerpt, and any style or type of dance at all, but it has to be on film.

2. WHY?

Please submit your answers in the comments section below by Friday May 16th.

The reason I'm asking is that I'm putting together an evening of "Bad" dance film clips.   As many of you know, I've been studying bad and mediocre dance for a number of years.  As I put the program together, I am organizing examples of different categories of Bad  (offensive, inept, confusing, etc.) from the early 1900's to the present.  As an acknowledgment to the highly personal perception of bad dance, I'd love to get your input.  Below is the description and particulars of the night.

Thanks for your time!

Best,

Kriota Willberg

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May 7, 2008

Godard and Waters do the Madison

There is something about the Madison, that grand-daddy of line dances, that has continually captured the cinematic fancy of great film directors. The most notable of these are Jean-Luc Godard who created a famous dance scene based on the Madison in his 1964 film Bande à Part, and John Waters who depicted the dance in a scene in the original 1988 Hairspray. For both directors this dance, with its post-modern use of repetition, accumulation, and cultural references, was a perfect vehicle to suspend the plotlines of their films and delve into the inner workings of their characters.


Dance scene from Bande à Part


In Bande à Part, the famous dance scene comes after the equally famous "minute of silence" scene in which two of the main characters, Arthur and Odile, decide to be silent in a café. After the silent spell is broken by Franz, Arthur and Odile decide to get up and dance (and are soon joined by Franz). In a way, this dance continues the pause begun earlier with the minute of silence. There has been a rent in action, the world is still not normal. People do not normally just get up and dance in cafes where no one else is dancing. Also, we don't know if there is actually music playing in the room because it drops out occasionally when a narrator speaks, but we still hear the dancers' foot shuffles and claps. Could they actually be dancing in silence? At the same time, the narrator's voice brings in yet another level of reality as he tells us what each character is thinking about while they dance. This scene, while appearing to be so simple, is actually a very sophisticated example of how film can reveal many layers of reality at once. We see the "normal" world of the cafe around the characters, the familiar dance style of the The Madison being performed out of context, and then the shifting reality of the sound and narration telling us about things we can't see. No wonder this scene has been so influential on numerous other movies, Hal Hartley's dance scene in Simple Men being a prime example.


Dance scene from Simple Men


Unlike many other filmmakers that made dance scenes in the footsteps of Godard, Waters' Madison scene in Hairspray was a completely different take. First of all, Waters is a connoisseur of '60's dances. In addition to bringing the Madison back to greatness, he also reacquainted us with "The Mashed Potato," "The Fly," and "The Bump." It is clear however, that "The Madison" was one of his favorites, by virtue of the length of the scene and the many variations lovingly depicted.


Excerpt of the Madison scene in Hairspray

Like Godard's scene in Bande à Part, this one takes a long and sultry pause in the action and we learn a little more about how the characters really feel. The heroine, Tracy Turnblad cuts in between Link Larson (her love interest) and the prissy Amber von Tussle (Link's girlfriend). Link shows interest in Tracy, and Amber shoots her with disdain. All the while, the hypnotic rhythm and swing of the dance continues, turning the characters about and giving them actions which belie their feelings and motivations. I love the choreography of this Madison. It's complex but supposed to look easy. The call of the DJ instructs the dancers about what to do next, and each repetition of the dance adds a new gesture. The names of the moves are really great too, including "T time", "The Basketball (with Wilt Chamberlain)" and the "The Rifleman".

According to Wikipedia and the Columbus Music History website, the Madison developed in Columbus, Ohio in 1957. It was popularized by Count Basie in 1959, and quickly spread as he toured across the US and Europe. Apparently Waters' depiction of the dance is accurate, and Godard's is not (although he never calls it the Madison in the film, that was just what the actors called it). Nevertheless, it is clear that this dance has a certain something that is especially well suited for the silver screen. Maybe it's the mesmerizing repetition, or its ability to unify a motley cast of characters, or maybe it's just 'cause it swings, but whatever the case the Madison has been a catalyst for new innovations in film, and has undoubtedly inspired many generations of filmmakers to use dance in novel and sophisticated ways.



This article is part of Ferdy On Films' Invitation to the Dance Movie Blogathon happening May 4-10, 2008 all over the blogosphere...

Many thanks to Levi Gonzalez whose program at Kinetic Cinema on Monday night (5/5/08) inspired me to write about Godard's dance scene in Bande à Part.

*********************
Update 5/22/08:
Bande à Part (Band of Outsiders) is playing at Film Forum in NYC this weekend - Thurs-Sat 5/22-5/24. Click here for ticket info.

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November 26, 2007

Videodance Gift Ideas

Now that we're over being thankful (in the States at least), and have shifted into consumer overdrive for Christma-channu-kwaan'stice, I thought I'd list some good gifts ideas for videodance fanatics (like me!). It's hard to find gifts related to dance for the camera, so before you fruitlessly Google search, here's a list to get you started:

Video compilations and DVD's:

Dance for Camera Vol. 1 & 2:

First Run Features has taken the lead in producing high quality video compilations of recent dance for camera shorts. I loved Volume 1, and refer to it constantly. Some favorites from this collection are Pascal Magnin's Contrecoup and Annick Vroom's RIP. Vol. 2 looks promising too with Motion Control by the Brit team Liz Aggiss and Billy Cowie, and Mitchell Rose's hilarious Case Studies from the Groat Center for Sleep Disorders.

Mystic Fire Videos puts out great collections of past dance film innovators. This is the place to brush up on your history. I recommend:

Maya Deren Experimental Films The complete collection of all of Maya Deren's shorts. A must-have for dance film aficiondos.

The Films of Hilary Harris Four short films by Hilary Harris including his Academy Award-winning "Organism." His film techniques are still remarkable today, and of special interest is his "9 Variations on a dance theme" featuring a beautiful young Bettie DeJong (of Paul Taylor).

Unseen Cinema: VIVA LA DANCE, The Beginnings of Ciné-Dance
Part of Anthology Film Archives' incredible Unseen Cinema 7 disc box set.
The entire box set is a treasure for cinephiles, but VIVA LA DANCE
features dance in early cinema (1894-1946) with 33 films including some
of the earliest films ever made! This DVD will blow your mind!

Books:

Anarchic Dance by Liz Aggiss, Billy Cowie This book compiles the history of performance & media dance makers Liz Aggiss and Billy Cowie. In addition to the full color book, there is an accompanying DVD featuring excerpts of their work both on stage and in film. Very entertaining and inspiring for videodance enthusiasts!

Making Video Dance: A Step-by-Step Guide to Creating Dance for the Screen by Katrina McPherson A simple and comprehensive manual on how to make videodance. Great for dancers new to processes of film and video production.

Maya Deren and the American Avant-Garde edited by Bill Nichols As you can tell, I'm obsessed with Maya Deren. That said, this is a really intriguing compilation of essays by other film and dance artists about the importance of her work in history. It also includes a reprint of one of her treatises "An Anagram of Ideas on Art, Form and Film" that is priceless.

Gadgets:

I'm not much of a gearhead, but I do lust after new toys to make videodances with. Here are a couple that have caught my attention lately:

Canon HV20 HD Camcorder $899 (after rebate) I got hooked on HD video after borrowing a HD camera from my friend to shoot "Fünf 'n' Twist" last spring. Even the little consumer HD camcorders deliver an incredible image, and they are getting cheaper and cheaper! I've usually gone with Sony, but this Canon has been getting good reviews, and I like that it takes hd minidv tapes, which is easier to handle than a hard drive.

Glidecam 4000 Pro Stabilizer System I found this while looking for a steadycam to rent online. This is a low budget alternative to a steadycam, and lets you do choreographic handheld shots. I also found some fun demo videos on the AllMobile video site. I would call this a videodance!

I realize I'm missing editing software suggestions. Any editors out there? Help us out and give us your wish list for videodance thingamajigs.

Posted by Anna Brady Nuse at 12:30 AM - Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (1)

October 19, 2007

Madonna Shows Us a New Move

I've always loved Madonna, maybe because I intuitively knew she was more of a dancer than a musician, or maybe because her music is made to dance to. In any event, the recent news of her move to leave her record label and sign a lucrative deal with the concert promoter Live Nation, struck me as a something that we dancers should perhaps take note of.


The music industry has officially come full circle with recordings. Before recording technology existed the music business was completely based on live shows and sheet music. Recordings changed all of this as major record labels grew to control the field and artists toured mostly to promote and sell their records, not the other way around. Now in the age of digital downloads, the exchange of recorded music has become ubiquitous and uncontrollable to the point where recordings are literally worth nothing. As Michael Arrington of Tech Crunch theorized "unless governments are willing to take drastic measures to protect the industry (such as a mandatory music tax), economic theory will win out and the price of music will fall towards zero." He goes on to say that this is opening up a lot of new lucrative revenue streams for music including sales of live music tours, limited edition physical recordings (box sets and the like), and merchandise. Now we are in the midst of a huge sea change in which music recordings have no intrinsic value besides being a great promotional tool for live acts. Madonna's move to bank on her kick-ass touring show with Live Nation over a tenuous record deal with Warner Brothers is the latest proof of this trend. (And this at the age of 49! Dancers in particular can't help but respect this woman.) So how does this relate to videodance and dance? Well there has never been a gigantic recorded dance industry, so we won't feel the pains of a huge paradigm shift of power and revenue like our musician friends. However, that doesn't mean we can't learn from them and get a running start on the new wave of the digital future. Booking dance would not be so difficult if the public had a concept about all the great dance companies out there. How can you give them a taste of who you are? By making a fabulous video of your work and getting it on everyone's computer screen, ipod, cell phone, and tv. Videodance can be a powerful promotional tool for touring dance companies, and if you give it away for free, and market it right, live dance could see a major resurgence like the music industry is experiencing today.

Already some of the biggest viral video hits on Youtube have been dance videos. The Anaheim Ballet video in particular came out of nowhere and instantly put this small local ballet company on the global map. There have been many blog posts about their breakout Youtube hit, but what I didn't know is that this was just one part of a brilliant web marketing strategy AB has been growing through a weekly video/audio podcast, a myspace page, and a youtube channel. Between 2005 and 2006 their private contribution revenue quadrupled, and their overall revenue rose 26% [Guidestar.org]. Their regular podcasts didn't even begin until the end of 2006, so I wouldn't be surprised to see their revenue make an even larger leap in 2007. A remote ballet outpost has hit upon a winning strategy that every dance company should be observing.



From the Material Girl herself, there is no denying that our day in the sun may be dawning. Do you want to be like the record labels or the artists? It's time to give away the media and raise the value of the live experience for all.
 
Get into the groove!

Posted by Anna Brady Nuse at 9:00 AM - Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

October 18, 2007

An open letter to the videodance community

I have just started the 3rd week of Move the Frame blog, and I am completely amazed at the impact and reach it's already had. It's exhilarating and a bit nerve-wracking having an open forum like this, but I can tell by the comments I've received that it is a much needed outlet about a subject many people have passion for.

On Tuesday I received a few more amazing comments on my post "A Wiki barn-raising for videodance." Those, along with all the other comments I've received thus far, have sparked a conversation that is fueling the growth and advancement of this form. This dialogue among all members of the community - new and old, experienced and novice, amateur and professional, viewer and artist - is exactly what I hoped to achieve with this blog. If I appear to have any sort of agenda, I hope this is it: I want to see videodance flourish both on small scales and large scales, above ground and underground, be made and enjoyed by all people. Ultimately this vision is a subsidiary of my greater hope, which is to help move dance as a whole into a position of greater prominence, participation, and presence in the cultural landscape. What is so exciting (and perhaps frightening) about these times is that hopeless idealists like myself have at their disposal one of the biggest social networking platforms ever: the internet. Like everyone else, I'm just experimenting with what one can do with this incredibly powerful tool, but what continually amazes me is how quickly things can manifest here. A week ago when I posted "A Wiki barn-raising for videodance" I was wondering where does the average person go to find out information? How can we make ourselves (this community and art form) more available and accessible to this person? Already my call has been answered, and news is spreading throughout the established videodance community. I am thrilled about this, and to hear that it will be addressed at the next Opensource:{video-dance} 2007 Symposium in Scotland. Details about this fantastic gathering of artists, academics, curators and producers can be found at the Video Dance Forum Blog.

This form (videodance/screendance/dance film/whatever you call it) has been around for a long time, and was present at the very birth of the motion picture. I don't know at what point in history practitioners of the form became aware of what they were doing as a separate facet of film from other genres. This moment is shrouded in mystery for me and I would love to know if anyone out there that has done the research has an answer. It seems to me that the key to our future and our ability to tell the world what we do is to know our origins. This is why I wanted to propose to the community to create an article on Wikipedia. Right now I see many new people encountering videodances and becoming curious about this form. It is a wonderful thing to see, however I also see many of them unaware of the legacy of the form, especially when they pick up a video camera and start to experiment themselves, innocently trying to reinvent the wheel.

I'm very grateful for the comments I've received and the great suggestions proposed. I encourage you all to go to the Wikipedia article I've started and make your edits! If we all chip in with our knowledge, research, and connections we can build a comprehensive, informative, and educational article of great value both to our established community and new people just encountering the form. I'm sure there is much debate and hashing out of ideas still to be done, but I look forward to joining the dance and seeing where this moves us all.

With great respect and thanks,
Anna

Posted by Anna Brady Nuse at 12:50 AM - Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

October 12, 2007

Wiki barn-raising for videodance Pt. 2

The village barn dance [music] by Mollie King -- Montreal Delmar music, c1909

Let the shindig begin!

Briefly, I'm happy to announce that I've framed out an article about Videodance on Wikipedia. The barn-raising has begun! It is by no means finished, but at least the basic foundation and frame is there. Please help put up some posts and beams in there! You can just nail in a shingle, or board up the whole outside. Whatever you feel inspired to do is wonderful.

Some info and tips about using Wikipedia:
As Shosana of Dancespiration observed, Wikipedia is a complicated beast. First you will need to register and sign all your rights away to any material you put up there, and then you need to promise that you will not plagiarize or use anyone else's content without their consent. Even then that may not be good enough, so just get used to screen after screen of expository legalese as you first get initiated to the Wiki program.  All this is in the name of the free-flow of information, so it's cool... Then, when you get initiated, you can edit any material you want, however you will need to get used to their formatting system which is a form of text code. I recommend keeping their tutorial window open as you go about making your first edit. It will save much time and frustration.

When you go to the Videodance article you will see at the bottom that I classified it as a "stub". This means that it is an incomplete article in need of expansion. You can just click on that line to get to an edit window for the whole article, or you can click on the [edit] links at the end of every section in the article.  We should keep the article classified as a stub for a while until it is completely constructed and decked out with references, notes and links. Once she's roofed and shingled then we can have a good ole contra dance!

 
"Barn Dance" from Seven Brides for Seven Brothers

It is good to internally link to any names or items that may have articles in Wikipedia (many things do, so just use the [[double brackets]] and preview to see if it links). If it does it will show up as blue, if not it will show up as red.  Also, if you state a fact, they like it if you provide an end note and reference your source at the bottom under "Notes".  Any external links you make should also be listed at the bottom under "Links".

Oy, now after all this defining and polemical thought, I've got to go study my media management coursework... No rest for the weary, but I'm feeling productive today!

Posted by Anna Brady Nuse at 5:45 PM - Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

October 8, 2007

A Wiki Barn-raising for videodance

If you are interested in learning about something where do you go first? In my case and for millions of others, we look it up on Wikipedia. Just about everything in the known universe that anyone has ever cared to think about is there. Being a user-generated site, the more interest there is in a subject the more comprehensive the Wikipedia articles on it will be. And the theory goes that this makes their encyclopedia more trust-worthy, up-to-date, and objective than any other reference source around, because it's constantly being checked and edited by its users.

So I decided to look up my area of interest which is videodance.  Immediately I ran into a problem, because while I call this genre videodance, there are at least 5 other names it is known by (see my first entry "What's in a Name" for further discussion on this dilemma).

I decided to go with my first pick anyway, and I looked up videodance. Results: One entry for the Thessaloniki Video Dance Festival in Greece. That's cool, but it only tells me about one festival of about 150 that show videodance work. I still don't know what videodance is. At the bottom of that entry the only link for further information is the film festival's official website. I'd hit a dead end.

Now my cockles were up. Do so few people care about this type of work that there is only one article on Wikipedia, and it's not even about the art form, it's a promotional blurb for a film festival? Why is there no information about this genre which is as old as film itself, has a huge and illustrious body of work from some of the world's most prestigious filmmakers and choreographers, and could possibly revolutionize the entire art form of dance for the 21st Century?!

Before spontaneously combusting, I looked up the other known names for the genre (dance film, screendance, cinedance, kinodance, dance for camera). These also produced very poor results. "Dance film" and "Dance for camera" were the only searches that came up with any real articles and they both seemed to be written by single authors who have very obvious
agendas.

OK, my mission was becoming clear. It was time to put my wiki where my mouth is!

I'm proposing a Wikipedia barn-raising for videodance.

We need to get some info up there and quick!  I will start an article on "videodance" and post a link to it here on this blog. I encourage every one of you who has ever worked in this form, or had an opinion about it to comment here with your suggestions and thoughts. Once the article is started please go up there and edit it (or start one under your own genre name of choice, but be sure to link to the others), share your
knowledge and keep this going until we get a full, comprehensive, coherent, evolving, and useful set of articles up there that anyone with a spark of interest in this subject can refer to and get some answers.

Please help raise this art form up and spread the word!

As inspiration, below is one of my favorite videodances which always puts a smile on my face and reminds me of why I think this genre is so f***king phenonemal...

"Weapon of Choice" Fat Boy Slim, dir. Spike Jonze

Posted by Anna Brady Nuse at 1:04 AM - Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (0)

September 28, 2007

Philippine Prisoners Resurrect Busby Berkeley

As a videodance artist, I have to comment on the viral video sensation of the Philippine Prison dances that have rocked Youtube as of late. These massive stagings, in which up to 1600 prisoners dance to pop hits in perfect unison, are as awesome and powerful as they are campy and scary. Byron Garcia, a security consultant for the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Centre started the dance fitness program as a way to improve inmates' behaviour and increase their participation in exercises. However the inspiration to start filming the routines came when Mr. Garcia saw prisoners exercising in the prison courtyard and noticed patterns and waves in their movement which piqued his inner Busby Berkeley. The result was a string of videos and a gigantic Youtube hit with "Thriller" performed by 1500 prisoners and featuring inmates Crisanto Nierre as "Michael Jackson," and Wenjiel Resane as his "girlfriend". "Thriller" has been viewed over 6 million times now on Youtube. The popularity of the videos have become a huge source of pride for the inmates, and now the CPDRC is becoming a veritable production house of grand spectacle dance films, the likes of which haven't been seen since the heyday of American movie musicals in the 30's and 40's.

"Thriller" (original upload)

While one side of me is thrilled about this phenomenon of using dance as a therapeutic, community-building, grand-spectacle-making means, at the same time there is something so creepy about watching hundreds of incarcerated men in orange uniforms dancing in formation. It immediately evoked images for me of concentration camps, Maoist rallies, and Nazi propaganda films. It seems to be the embodiment of Fritz Lang's industrial age nightmare in "Metropolis" in which the masses of humanity are reduced to nothing but machine like drones toiling underground in obscurity.

"Metropolis" - Molochmaschine (Moloch machine)

Still, upon further reflection I realized that my reactions were very much mired in a Western Anglo-American value system where individuality is prized above all else. In many parts of the world, including Southeast Asia, collective dance, music and ritual is a powerful, sacred thing. I had the privilege of studying Balinese Monkey Chant (kecak) at CalArts with the master dancer/musician I Nyoman Wenten. Performing in this incredibly complex group ritual was one of the most amazing artistic experiences of my life. To lose one's sense of self even for a few minutes and to become just one cell in a greater organism is an awesome state of being which the Western world has become very afraid of. We've seen it lead to unfathomable destruction with two World Wars and countless hate crimes. However, we've forgotten that there is equal evidence of collective ritual being used to transcend despair and destitution and to heal and empower whole communities of people.

Kecak scene from "Baraka"

Ultimately I applaud the dance videos of the CPDRC inmates. Not only is the act of dancing having a powerful effect on these people's lives, but their ability to share their work with the entire world through video transforms what they are doing into an act of artistic expression. They may be caged within four prison walls, but collectively they have reached farther and made deeper connections with the outside world than most of us "free" individuals ever could.

Now I'll leave you with a little dream from the greatest collective choreographer of them all...

"Spin a Little Web of Dreams" (Busby Berkeley)

Posted by Anna Brady Nuse at 8:00 AM - Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)