October 29, 2008

Kinetic Cinema Skips a Month, Other November Happenings

Unfortunately, due to difficulties finding space, there will be no Kinetic Cinema screening in November (normally it would be on the first Monday of the month). To make up for it, we will be back on the first of December with a fantastic double program with the sister dance/film duo Sasha and Kerrie Welsh and myself, featuring new works-in-progress, live dance, rare films, and more! Stay tuned for more up-dates.

Everyone's got the pre-election jitters, and while it may be hard to think about anything past November 4th, there are some other things to look forward to next month including the following dance film and media events.

First, it was hinted on Tendu.tv's blog (an excellent source of dance/media/tech information by the way), that Tendu.tv will launch its dance channel on Tidal TV potentially as early as next week, airing Battleworks' "Overture" performed at the Joyce. Other programs coming to the channel will be Jonah Bokaer's "The Invention of Minus One", performed at Abrons Arts Center last year, and Episode 1 of "Dance Tech" - a long form program based on the social network Dance-tech.net created by Marlon Barrios Solano. While the official launch date is not confirmed, I've already gone ahead and registered on Tidal TV's website, so I can be ready to stream Tendu.tv's channel as soon as it arrives.

With the recent technological breakthroughs in broadband video, the media playing field has been leveled somewhat, giving dance-makers opportunities to enter the mass broadcasting industry. I'm really excited to see what happens as Tendu.tv and other dance channels develop. Will they be able to cross over onto regular TV? Will the audience demand for dance programming grow? How will it impact attendance for live performance and live screenings? I'll be writing more about all these issues as events unfold!

Another screening event coming up in New York this month is a program of dance on camera presented by the Dance Films Association at the New Museum of Contemporary Art on November 7th at 7:30pm & November 8th at 3:00pm. The program will feature two silent dance films accompanied by live music, the first is SURFACE directed by Patrick Lovejoy (STOMP and Cirque de Soleil) with music by Grammy Award-winning saxophonist Jay Rodriguez (of Groove Collective fame), and Ben Dolphin's ARISING with music performed by his New Tribal Ensemble. Other films presented will be Pontus Lidberg's THE RAIN (Sweden), Klara Elenius' INSYN (Sweden), and Gabrielle Lamb's QUIZAS, QUIZAS, QUIZAS (Canada). New Museum of Contemporary Art is located at 235 Bowery Street (at Prince Street between Stanton and Rivington Streets, one and a half blocks south of Houston), New York City. For more info go to: http://www.newmuseum.org/

Appropriate for the coming winter, here's a trailer for Pontus Lidberg's THE RAIN:

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October 6, 2008

Reminder - Elizabeth Zimmer at Kinetic Cinema Tonight!

Tonight's Kinetic Cinema program, curated and hosted by dance critic Elizabeth Zimmer is not to be missed! She will be showing two rarely seen documentaries, including 1987's "The Way Things Go,"  showing a fascinating Rube Goldberg-like kinetic sculpture by Swiss artists Peter Fischli and David Weiss, and a 2007 documentary on six downtown dance artists moderated and interviewed by Zimmer.
Please note the new location below:

Pentacle Movement Media & Collective:Unconscious co-present:
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
Space is extremely limited, so get there early!

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September 29, 2008

Kinetic Cinema with Elizabeth Zimmer

Next Monday, Oct 6th you won't want to miss veteran dance critic Elizabeth Zimmer at Kinetic Cinema. As the editor of the seminal book "Envisioning Dance On Film and Video" (Routledge, 2002), Elizabeth Zimmer has researched and grappled with issues of mediatized dance extensively. For her Oct 6th program she will show two documentaries that offer very different approaches to movement for screen.
The evening will include "The Way Things Go", an award-winning film by Swiss artists Peter Fischli and David Weiss, that documents the chain-reactive performance of a 100 foot long kinetic sculpture made entirely of common household objects (click here for a teaser on YouTube). The second half of the program will  feature two rarely-seen volumes of a documentary project Elizabeth Zimmer appeared in and assisted on entitled "Downtown Dance-New York 2007". The footage includes interviews with downtown dance favs Ivy Baldwin, Trajal Harrell, Keely Garfield, Larry Keigwin, RoseAnne Spradlin, and David Parker, shows samples of their work, and has brief introductions by Elizabeth.

Pentacle Movement Media & Collective:Unconscious co-present:
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

Kinetic Cinema explores the intersection of dance and the moving image both on screen and stage. Each month I 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 come from a range of backgrounds as performers, choreographers, critics, and filmmakers. Next month on Nov 3rd, the collaborative duo, Kerrie Welsh & Sasha Welsh will show films and videos that have influenced their new multimedia performance "Trace Decay."

Kinetic Cinema is part of Movement Media, my new project at Pentacle that provides screenings, consulting services, and online interactive programs for dancers about dance and media. More information will be available soon online at pentacle.org.

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September 10, 2008

"PRIME MOVER" Screening Raises Questions of Merit & Worth of Dance Films

On Monday night, Kinetic Cinema kicked off it's fall season with a program of films at Chez Bushwick called "Prime Mover: Dance on Camera From Chez Bushwick." The program was originally curated for the Centre for Contemporary Arts in Glasgow last May, and was shown in a slightly shortened form for us here. The selections were incredibly varied, from 3-D animation studies to installation art to dance for the camera to performance documentation, and the overarching premise was that it was all movement-based media created by artists associated with Chez Bushwick.

After the screening, a lively discussion ensued among the audience about what we had just seen. Because the program was so varied in its scope and content, the discussion immediately headed into, what is dance film, and can all of these works fit under this one heading? It's a discussion that comes up at every screendance/dance film event I go to, and like all the others, this one also headed into the dangerous area of what is "good" and "bad" dance film. Rather than slipping down this slope, I hoped to lead the debate more into the direction of "mapping" the genre, as Claudia Kappenberg describes in her paper Does Screendance Need to Look Like Dance?  presented at Screendance:State of the Art2 at the American Dance Festival last July. In this way we could get a sense of where individual works are located in the intersection of media arts and dance, rather than make subjective value statements.

The work that spurred the most controversy was a video of a performance by choreographer Ann Liv Young called "Snow White Paris." The video was basically a straight ahead documentation of the live performance, with one camera set up at the back of the theater in a fixed wide shot the entire time. The curator for CCA-Glasgow made edits and pulled out 10 minutes of excerpts from the full performance. The reason why the work was chosen for this program was that Ms. Young - who rejects the title of video artist for herself - makes DVDs of almost every performance she does and sells them at the hefty price tag of $55 a pop. In this sense she seems to have adopted an art world business model in which she documents her performance art and then uses the documentation to create value and revenue for the work. Still, despite this unique relationship Ms. Young has to media, many of the audience members at the screening objected to the inclusion of "Snow White Paris" in this program. To some, it had no value because it said nothing about the cinematic potential of dance on camera, and one audience member felt like performance videos sully the reputation of screendance and turn people off to the genre.

In Kappenberg's paper she proposes a map for screendance based on the Laban Effort Graphic that distinguishes between works that are oriented towards the visual arts and those that are oriented towards cinema. While it seems like a small thing, this distinction has surprisingly important ramifications on audience members' expectations when watching screendance. The audience on Monday was primarily made up of dancers and dance filmmakers whose expectations were to see works that displayed cinematic values, ie. a distinct camera viewpoint, a narrative arc, and sophisticated editing. If "Snow White Paris" or some of the installation-based videos had been shown in an art museum as they were in Glasgow, the audience response would have been very different. In the visual arts a work's value tends to be based on overall visual composition, documentation (of time-based works) without camera manipulation, and an open point-of-view that leaves more space for the viewer to make decisions and create their own interpretations of the work.

If anything, Monday's screening emphasized for me the importance of curators to help audiences understand where the screendance works they are showing are located on the greater map. Context is everything. We have to assume that audiences will come with expectations and pre-conceived notions about what they will see. It is the curator's job to make sure that their own expectations are made extremely clear, otherwise audiences will not know how to interpret the material presented, and subjective value judgments will continue to fly. I don't believe performance videos like Ann Liv Young's should be excluded from screendance programming, but I do believe that they need to be shown in the right setting and with the right contextual information surrounding them. I'm glad this piece was included in the Chez Bushwick program, and for the discussion and illumination it provided us. Many thanks to the great audience members on Monday, and to Jonah Bokaer, founding director of Chez Bushwick, for bringing us such a provocative and stimulating program!

Let me know what you think! Have you been frustrated by works you've seen at dance film screenings and festivals? Would your feelings about these works have been different in a different setting, ie a gallery or art museum, or installation? 

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September 5, 2008

Kinetic Cinema is Back! Monday Sept 8th

I'm very pleased to announce the start of a new season of Kinetic Cinema, with the first screening happening at 8pm on Monday Sept 8th at Chez Bushwick. As you might of heard, our original presenting partner, Collective:Unconscious unexpected lost their space in Tribeca this July when their basement was flooded and they were forced out by their landlord. It is a sad and all too familiar story of endangered affordable art spaces in Manhattan. Luckily Chez Bushwick has stepped in and saved the day for this program, and their director, Jonah Bokaer has curated a fabulous selection of films drawing from Chez Bushwick's constituency of dancers and choreographers.



"PRIME MOVER: Dance on Camera From Chez Bushwick" is a program of works created to represent the diversity of artists working in movement-based media. Filmmakers and choreographers featured on the program will be Charles Atlas, DD Dorvillier, Jillian Peña, Dean Moss, Samuael Topiary, and Ann Liv Young.

Pentacle Movement Media presents:
Kinetic Cinema
in collaboration with Chez Bushwick
Monday September 8th, 8:00pm (and the first Monday of every month)
$5 Admission (buy tix at the door)

Chez Bushwick
304 Boerum St., Buzzer #11
Brooklyn, NY 11206.
Phone: 718.418.4405
URL: http://chezbushwick.net/
Trains: L to Morgan Ave
Admission: $5

In addition, we also wish to recognize and support Jillian Peña, a choreographer and filmmaker on this program who was hit by a car three weeks ago and sustained very serious injuries and hospitalization. The driver was unlicensed, and Jillian, like many artists in our community does not have health insurance. Her dear friend and colleague, Miguel Gutierrez has set up a paypal account to receive financial donations to alleviate the financial hardship that Jillian and her family are experiencing at this time. In addition, there will be opportunities to make donations for her at the screening. Please consider making a donation on her behalf. ANY amount, any number of times that you can give it, will be invaluable for her and for her family.

To donate online, go to paypal.com and sign up for an account (takes literally about 2-3 minutes) and then go to the "Send Money" tab and make the donation to:
donations4jillian@gmail.com

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. Past programs have included fresh new shorts from the Dance On Camera Festival, a survey of the history of mediatized movement curated by Brian McCormick, dance films from the popular to the avant-garde curated by Malinda Allen, feminist video art curated by Jonah Bokaer, explorations in experimentalism with Levi Gonzalez, and a tour of inspiringly bad dance films curated by Kriota Willberg. Next month on October 6th, dance writer and critic Elizabeth Zimmer will curate.

This screening of Kinetic Cinema also marks the first event of Movement Media, a new project I am directing at Pentacle that provides screenings, consulting services, and online interactive programs for dancers about dance and media. More information will be available soon online at pentacle.org. In addition to producing Kinetic Cinema, Movement Media will soon become the home of Move the Frame. Stay tuned for more announcements!

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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 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!

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June 24, 2008

A Review of the 'Worse of the Best' at Kinetic Cinema

Latika Young of the Dance Films Association wrote a great article about Kriota Willberg's last program for Kinetic Cinema in DFA's member ezine:

The Worst of the Best:
Kinetic Cinema Gets Down

by Latika Young

Before taking a hiatus for the summer, Kinetic Cinema, the dance films screening series curated by Anna Brady Nuse, went out with a bang! "The Worst of the Best," a night of "bad" dance film, as selected by guest curator Kriota Willberg, featured an array of clips and excerpts that had the audience at Tribeca's Collective:Unconscious in stitches. With everything from undulating nude males to jete-ing serial killers to an over-the-top 80s spandex extravaganza, there was something in the selection to please even the most well-versed bad dance connoisseur.

The night began with a little live dance, as Nuse exploded onto the stage in a frenetic version of the classic dance from "Flashdance" complete with gold metallic hot pants and matching shoes. A perfect entrance, it warmed up the audience's belly laughing muscles and set the tone for an evening of the dance cliché as encapsulated on film.

Willberg, co-director of THE BENTFOOTES, which premiered at Dance on Camera Festival 2008, has been interested in bad dance for some time. She used to host bad dance film screening parties at her apartment for fellow dancer and choreographer friends (what better way to build a supportive dance community--we may be struggling in our own careers, but at least we are not making dance like that!).

Willberg developed somewhat tricky criteria that determined her selections for this "tour of surprisingly bad dance films from the early 1900s to the present." As she explains, there is a difference between "bad" dance and just "boring" dance. Bad dance necessarily "provokes a strong emotional reaction" in the audience, and, as Willberg points out, these are more often than not the dances people end up discussing fervently with friends. Boring dance, on the other hand, "is just dull" and is easily forgotten. Where it gets tricky is with the question of production values. For Willberg, even boring dance, with a big enough budget, becomes bad dance by virtue of the unrealized potential of its grandiosity. Any otherwise boring dance film with a large enough budget enrages Willberg to the point that it has elicited a strong emotional response and thus qualifies as a truly bad dance.

The screening began with a video montage of clips culled from the internet of dances intended to demonstrate "boring." All low production value, the clips may have come from YouTube or artists' personal websites, but they certainly were not from Hollywood blockbusters. The original videos likely go on for what must feel like many very long minutes, but edited down into a quickly paced montage, they were not really that boring after all. Instead, the curatorial process of cramming them side by side and positing them into humorously crafted sub-categories, such as "Women and Their Hands," "Semi-Clad Undulating Duets," and my personal favorite, "Nude Men Kinetically Recumbent," highlighted their humor rather than their boredom. Fortunately, though, the audience was saved from having to watch any of the clips in their entirety. Anyone who has sat on a dance film festival pre-screening committee can undoubtedly understand.

The bulk of the offerings, however, were clips from films released on the big screen and each example was selected to provide a more nuanced understanding of Willberg's definition of bad. The gem of the night, glittering in decadent ridiculousness, was Ben Hecht's 1946 film SPECTRE OF THE ROSE. Choreographed by Tamara Geva, Balanchine's first wife, the two dance scenes presented were performed by Ivan Kirov. An attempt to combine a murder mystery with classical ballet, the result, at least to modern eyes, comes across more as camp than refinement. In the first scene, the male ballet superstar (Kirov) has been confined to bed for two years after killing his first wife. Suddenly feeling better, he is inspired to dance, performing ebullient feats of jete and pirouette that are made that much more incredible (and farcical) considering his extended period of inactivity (perhaps, instead, we should feel relieved he did not join the ranks of the "kinetically recumbent nude male" as we witnessed earlier). The second scene has our star re-entering a state of insanity and struggling with his desires to kill his second wife. Fortunately, derangement does not deter our protagonist from his dancing tour de force and, with knife in hand, he catapults about the room, balletically crashing into walls, before leaping with pointed feet through a glass window, to his certain death below. This is a bad dance film made so by both its delicious anachronistic ballet moves (likely quite magnificent for the time but which seem highly dated to the modern viewer) and its equally ridiculous backstory.

Other choices from the evening included THE MOTHERING HEART, the 1913 D.W. Griffith film that features background dancers, undoubtedly quite common on the vaudeville stage of the time, who appear as gallivanting Isadora-nymphettes and a leopard skin toga-ed couple who awkwardly perform Lindy aerial moves, STAYING ALIVE, the sequel to SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER, as directed by Sylvester Stallone (and, yes, Travolta does wear a very Rambo-eque headband), and scenes from the film everyone loves to hate, Paul Verhoeven's 1995 SHOWGIRLS, which is just bad in so many divine ways.

Willberg wants to know, "What is the worst dance film ever?" To share your favorites, or most hated, e-mail her at info@duramater.org and be sure to tell her why. After a summer break, Kinetic Cinema returns in October. E-mail Anna Brady Nuse at mtf@straighttothehelicopter.com to get on the mailing list.

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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 22, 2008

New NYC Videodance Artists and Events

There is a well-spring of videodance activity bubbling up in New York City recently. It seems like every day I see or hear of a new artist or event happening. In the next few posts I'll give a run down of the latest news, and will share more in the coming weeks.



NYC Dance Artists in Kinetic Cinema
First, a report of the Kinetic Cinema screening that happened on May 5th, curated by Levi Gonzalez. This screening was eye-opening for me, because I didn't realize there were so many choreographers in my midst that are working in video so extensively now. The evening included videos by Sarah White, Melanie Maar, Theo Angell, Yasuko Yokoshi, Hedia Maron, and ChameckiLerner.
Sarah White's "Interference" is an experimental study on perspective showing two people moving at the junction of a wall. Sometimes the camera is upside down, making it look like the duet is on the ceiling, other times it is right side up and superimposed with the upside down image to create a quartet. The piece has a very consistent and almost relentless quality: the only sound is the constant drip of water, the image is grainy and blown out, and the space gritty. I liked the feeling of the piece, but it was a little long and rambling for a sit down screening. It could probably work well in an installation setting.

Melanie Maar's "Lower" is a video adaptation by filmmaker Eric Breitbart of a live solo piece she performs. The solo is about a rare psychosomatic brain disorder that makes movement disjointed and uncontrollable. For the video, Breitbart decided to depict Maar as the silent film Vamp, Theda Bara (see picture). The combination of the severe black & white Theda Bara character with Maar's quirky and spastic movement was surprisingly poignant and emotional.

Theo Angell's video "Piscean Anomalite" was inspired by mutant and deformed fish he saw while on an artistic retreat in the wilderness. The resulting film is beautifully constructed with haunting Native American chanting, images of rushing water, and disturbing shots of the mutant fish superimposed over moving human bodies. It was eery but cool...

Yasuko Yokoshi showed a 20 min documentary of her latest performance project "Reframe the Framework DDD", which was made and shot over two years with nine high school students from Brattleboro, VT and was recently performed at the Kitchen at the end of April. Now I really wish I had seen the performance, because the documentary was completely riveting. Yokoshi set out to remake David Gordon's 1984 piece "Framework" and place it in the context of today from the perspective of the Vermont teens. Every moment of their process was documented on video, and the candid drama of their everyday lives, emotional upheavals, and sometimes life-threatening concerns felt heart-breakingly real. Part of the emotional thrust of the piece comes from the self-consciousness of the participants. The strange set of circumstances that brought a downtown experimental dance artist from Japan to work with rural teens is not lost on the participants, in fact it's discussed openingly and thoroughly. At one point Yokoshi says to the girls "I'm not afraid to piss you off." And one of the girls asks Yokoshi "Why did you want to make this piece with us?" Over the course of the process everyone undergoes an amazing transformation of self-awareness and discovery, routing through pain and fear and coming out stronger and more mature in the end. This is a brilliant example of the positive aspects of experimentalism.

Hedia Maron's "Untitled" and "Dance Dance Dance" both looked like artifacts found in someone's attic. "Untitled" actually was found footage of a friend's mom performing with a dance company outdoors sometime in the '70's. The grainy 8mm film is silent, and seems like a strange flickering beacon from the past. "Dance Dance Dance" was shot by Maron in 2007 on 8mm black and white film, and depicts a modern club kid dancing in his dorm room in stocking feet. Again, the footage is messed up to look old and grainy, and in silence, making the familiar YouTube-esque scene look distant, like a strange relic from bygone days.

The final piece of the evening was Roseane Chamecki and Andrea Lerner's "Flying Lesson" made in conjunction with filmmaker Phil Harder. This piece was shown in January at the Dance on Camera Festival where it won the Jury Prize, and if you have seen it you will understand why it deserves major props. The film has a simple plot, two women show you how to fly, but the way to do it is extremely difficult. All you need is a still camera, and very strong legs, because you will need to jump about 10,000 times and take a picture at the top of each jump. Then you go to an editing studio and put all the picture frames together to make them animated (film rate is 24 frames/sec, video rate is 30 frames/sec), and viola! you are flying! Chamecki & Lerner make it seem easy with their cute wings and colored boots breezing up the city sidewalks and frolicking in the park, but trust me, don't try this at home!

Stay tuned for up-coming events, new submission opportunities, workshops, social networks, and more great things for videodance artists to take advantage of here in New York City!

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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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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! 

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April 29, 2008

Levi Gonzalez at Kinetic Cinema May 5th

On Monday May 5th at 7:30 pm, Kinetic Cinema will feature choreographer and dance artist, Levi Gonzalez. The theme of his evening will be experimentalism in dance and film. I'm delighted by his topic, and feel like it may be a good way to continue a debate on this blog several months ago, in which I railed against experimental dance artists dissing their audiences.

Levi's statement:

"Experimentalism in both dance and film is often seen as an affront to its audience or an insular exercise in personal indulgence. Yet the perception of experimental work is fluid - it often changes with time, and each time period re-evaluates past work in a different light. It also has the power to change or highlight perception over time as the ideas filter, and become digested into the public consciousness. I find that experimentalism often runs the gamut from difficult to pleasant, angry to accessible, deeply introspective to communicative, self-involved to incredibly vulnerable. In short, no monolithic definition applies. This evening will highlight just a few strategies of experiementalism in the overlapping areas of dance and film - some that have occurred in the past and some that are currently being undertaken by contemporary artists - in an effort to point out the divergent approaches artists take in questioning their mediums and the myriad ways they affect our perceptions."

 A highlight of the evening will be a special screening of ChameckiLerner's "Flying Lesson", winner of the 2008 Dance On Camera Festival Jury Prize.

>> Also in celebration of Cinco de Mayo - be one of the first 10 people in the door and get a free Corona! <<

Kinetic Cinema
Monday May 5th, 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
Phone: 212.254.5277

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 Levi Gonzalez (May 5th) and Kriota Willberg (June 2nd).

Finally, many thanks to all who completed the Move the Frame survey online. If you haven't taken it yet, it's still not too late! Click here to spend 5 minutes helping Move the Frame improve!

¡Hasta La Vista!

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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 1, 2008

Jonah Bokaer at Kinetic Cinema April 7th

On Monday April 7th, don't miss Chez Bushwick founder and dance/media phenom Jonah Bokaer at Kinetic Cinema!

For his program, Jonah will show pivotal works of movement-based video art by Nam June Paik. The theme of the evening will be the thread between between video art and post-modern dance focusing on Paik's significant contributions to both art forms. As a dance artist whose work addresses the human body in relation to contemporary technologies, Jonah will be able to offer rare insights into Paik's multi-disciplinary work that overlapped with dance, music, visual art, media, and technology.

Kinetic Cinema
Monday April 7th, 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
http://weird.org/films.htm
212.254.5277

Here's a glimpse at Nam June Paik's work with multiple television screens.



Kinetic Cinema explores the intersection of dance and the