Archive for May, 2009

By Dawn Paap

Given all the possibilities of dance on screen, choreographers for the camera have a multitude of ways to keep us astonished.  Fortunately, the creative interaction between film technique and dance are endless.  In the emerging field of Cinedance, filmmakers or video artists create works that use dance as raw material, and now, choreographic achievements are being made available to the video artist for artistic exploration.

At the last Kinetic Cinema screening on May 13th at Chez Bushwick, curator Victoria Murphy showed a video by Matt Tarr and Ami Ipapo entitled ‘Little Ease (Outside the Box)’ that was a screen adaptation of Elizabeth Streb’s iconic solo ‘Little Ease’. For the film version of the piece, Streb company member Ami Ipapo reconstructed the choreography off-stage in an urban landscape.  The choreography of the live piece on its own is powerful, but the film was able to capture more action and intensity in the piece. I felt more connected to the dancer by being able to hear her breathing, and see her minute facial expressions as she powerfully pushes through the movements. The film took me “inside the box” with the dancer, and I forgot that I was a voyeur watching a choreographed work, something that rarely happens when watching a live performance. My favorite element of this Cinedance was the artistry in editing together of the shots of choreography, which to me added a new specific cinematic “pulse” to Streb’s dance.

Fortunately, other dance icons are lending their choreographed works to video artists to create cinedances. For instance the Martha Graham Company recently released videos of several dances from Martha Graham’s Clytemnestra to be remashed and reedited by contestants in their Clytemnestra Remash Challenge. The contestants displayed a huge range of styles and approaches to remashing the choreographic material, and all of the contest entries are available for view on the Clytemenestra Remash Challenge website at http://clytemnestraproject.com.

I am a personal fan of taking choreographed works made for the stage out into the world to be performed, so I was very pleased to see so many  video artists take Martha Graham’s choreography and characters into new environments off stage.  To me, it made the characters more appealing and more passionate. As a result, I found myself enjoying and connecting with Graham’s work on another level.   The following submission was my personal favorite in the Remash Contest.

The winners of the Remash Contest for Martha Graham’s Clytemnestra have been announced.  Check out their videos and look at some of the other contestants as well. Voting is still open for the popular choice awards! Regardless of the winners, I am thrilled to see new film-makers responding to choreography and furthering the development of cinedance.

People all over the globe are now able to share and collaborate on artistic works over the Internet. Dance innovators would be wise to tap into these new possibilities and use today’s networked media technologies to make the works of dance masters more accessible. In so doing, like Martha Graham and Elizabeth Streb, they would ensure the cultural significance of their work over time, while also enabling to new works of art to be made and contributing to new developments in cinedance.

Daft Bodies

Starting Friday June 5th, Pentacle’s Movement Media will showcase winners of  a new weekly online videodance contest here on Move the Frame blog.

Video is exploding as a medium on the Web, and the web video format for dance and kinetic-based films is erupting within the media arts. Movement Media’s goal is to showcase these new works and assist Internet audiences in finding artist’s videos on the web which are specifically dedicated to movement and dance. Therefore, we are seeking interesting blends of dance and kinetic-based films which explore the range and scope of this burgeoning genre.

The first submission deadline for Movement Media’s Weekly Online Videodance Contest is June 2nd, with the winners to be showcased here on  Move the Frame on Friday June 5th.   A weekly Theme will structure the format of the submissions. You do not have to be a video-maker to submit a video. You can also nominate other people’s work if you think it fits the weekly theme and otherwise complies with the submission requirements.

Submission Requirements

• Submissions may be made by anyone – artists, film makers, and anyone who knows of online videos that fit the weekly themes.
• The video submitted must be under 10 minutes long.
• Pick/Submit one video to represent the theme identified.
• Send the link of the video to Movement Media (movementmedia@pentacle.org).
• The video submitted needs to be embeddable, ie hosted on YouTube or another sharable online video platform.
• Include a short biography/artist statement (if it is your work).
• For every submission, include a short summary that describes why you have chosen a particular video for the contest and describe how it relates to the weekly theme.
• Include a brief synopsis of the video.
• Include a link to your website (if you have one)
• Include your email address

Email all information to movementmedia@pentacle.org
If your submission is chosen for the weekly contest, we will contact you directly

Impetus for Contest Participants

• Have your videos seen by an online audience who’s interested in movement-based video.
• Receive publicity for your work/work of others
• Receive comments and feedback
• Automatic consideration for live screening at Kinetic Cinema in NYC.
• Automatic consideration for Movement Media’s Online Dance Film Festival in September 2009 (information and submission guidelines to be available here in late June).

The Irrepressibles' IN THIS SHIRT by Shelley Love

Online Video Contest Themes

Theme one:  Amateur or Professional
Submissions due by June 2nd.  Weekly contest winners announced on June 5th.

Submit one video that represents either a amateur or professional video.  Movement Media is dedicated to celebrating all levels of artistry by film makers.  Movement Media’s blog will address important differences, and offer feedback and recognition to the artists of the works chosen from the pool of submissions for this weekly theme.

Theme two:  Improvised or Choreographed
Submissions due by Monday June 9th.  Weekly Contest winners announced on June 12th.

Theme three: Modern or Classical
Submissions due by June 16th.  Weekly Contest winners announced on June 19th.

Theme four: Summer or Winter
Submissions due by June 23rd.  Weekly Contest winners announced on June 26th.

Theme five: Rehearsal or Performance
Submissions due by June 29th.  Weekly Contest winners announced on July 3rd.

*Future themes to be announced at a later date.*

DRIVE by Jane Osborne and Jeff Pelletier

About Movement Media

Pentacle’s Movement Media provides services, strategies, and opportunities for dance artists to make works for screen. The core activities of Movement Media are screenings, consulting services, workshops, and interactive media publications (blogs, social networks, online videos etc). These services address a growing need for dance artists to engage with media, particularly online and on new media platforms, in order to reach audiences, grow artistically, and stay relevant in today’s media-saturated world.

For more info on Pentacle’s Movement Media project, please visit our website: http://pentacle.org/movement-media.asp

We look forward to showcasing your work!

by Anna Brady Nuse

(re)Action by Victoria Murphy

At Victoria Murphy’s talk and screening at Kinetic Cinema last Wednesday, she proposed a set of terms and definitions for classifying and identifying different forms of dance on screen. Murphy’s lexicon had similarities and differences with other proposed frameworks for screendance that have been presented and discussed at various forums and conferences in recent years. There is no doubt that this kind of discussion and debate is extremely important for the development of the genre (or some would say art form), so I would like to point out some of the main theories that exist today, and discuss how they intersect and overlap.

Screendance, cinedance, videodance, dance film… Which term to use?

In most debates about dance on screen, the first question that pops up is what is this genre called? Many different terms are in use, and in some cases they point to different genres while others are a catchall word for all dance on screen.

I think one of the best explanations of the different terms in use is by Karen Pearlman of the Physical TV company in Australia. In her article, “A Dance of Definitions” published in RealTime Arts, an Australian-based art and media blog, Pearlman reported on the dialogue at the first Screendance Conference at the American Dance Festival in 2006 around a question she raised which was: “Is dance on screen a dance art, a cinema art or a visual art?” In her estimation many of the different terms used today describe specific mixtures of two or more of these art forms at play. For Pearlman, screendance is a catchall term which could include any combination of dance and movement with “film, video, new media, installation, and future media.” The other terms are more specific in their focus. Videodance “is based in the thinking of a video art maker, a performance art maker or a visual artist will have its effect through techniques, schools, theories and premises of those disciplines.” While dance for screen “prioritises dance as its central discipline [and] will foreground the composition and exhibition of the danced movement.”

Screendance Venn Diagram by Karen Pearlman

Read the rest of this entry »

On April 24th Movement Research presented “Internet Killed the Video Star”, a night of dance video work created by performers, choreographers, and visual artists was as part of their Spring Roll Call festival at Monkey Town in Williamsburg.  All the works shown were originally submitted via internet, and the program was designed to support artistic considerations of resolution, degradation and quality within kinetic film arts. Since the Monkey Room has centrally-seated DJs/VJs who project videos on all four floor-to-ceiling screens, it offers an intense viewing experience in a cozy atmosphere. Watching the program on four big screens I was uncertain regarding the intended format of each film, and I quickly became aware of the effects of viewing different works on a small screen versus a large screen.

Some films seemed more powerful being shown on the four large screens at Monkey Town, while the film “MM2″ by Rebecca Gaffney felt overwhelming to view due to the intense strobe lights used in the film.  Later in viewing this on a smaller singular screen, it was more forgiving on the eyes, and kept me “pulled in” and interested (rather than making me want to close my eyes to ward off a pounding head ache as it did at Monkey Town).

I found Ben Pranger’s “Erased Dance” film intriguing during the screening, as it was the only silent film presented.  The absence of music seemed to soften the movements of the dancer, and the full wide shot of the dancer’s body, that was continually being erased, was very effective, especially on the floor-to-ceiling screens at the MonkeyTown.  This was a case where I found the work to be much more powerful on the large screen, rather than the small computer screen.

The remaining films presented by Movement Research seemed to work on either a computer screen or as a large projection.  Gina T’ai’s “Lumiere D’Ampoule” had a wonderful use of still images of the dancer with fabulous lighting effects.  Her work is beautiful, and it is easy to see why she was chosen as winner of the Dance for Camera 2007 student film award.

Our own Anna Brady Nuse (Pentacle’s director of Movement Media) showed “Funf ‘n’ Twist”, a fun and lighthearted look at dance on prom night.  Another delightful piece was Alex Cassal & Alice Ripoll’s “Journey to the Navel of the World”, in which action figures traveled across landscapes of human bodies.  Comedy was central in both of these pieces, which made them especially enjoyable and memorable.

http://www.vimeo.com/2575596
You can view all of the films and videos in their “natural” environment online at Movement Research’s festival blog: http://movementresearch.org/rollcall/?p=1153.

by Dawn Paap and Anna Brady Nuse

(re)Action by Victoria Murphy

Next week, on May 13th at Kinetic Cinema, Victoria Murphy will present a provocative talk and screening in which she proposes a way to define and think about what cinedance is and is not.

“Videodance” “Screendance” “Dance for the Camera” “Cinedance”… These terms have been used interchangeably when referring to things that emerge at the crossroads of dance and media, including everything from concert dance that is videotaped, edited and shown to an audience; to films about famous dance companies, choreographers and dancers; to videos made by creating movement for the camera, then edited to create visual poetry and films that are choreographic in their structure, though the images do not include people that could remotely be construed as dancing.

Does it matter that these and other forms melding dance and media are clumped together under several terms used interchangeably? Is this an emerging art form? If so, what are the hallmarks of the form? What makes one thing a cinedance, another a documentary, another cultural anthropology, and another a form of experimental media which we have yet to name?

Featuring the work of: Matt Tarr and ami ipapo; Douglas Rosenberg and Allen Kaeja; and Victoria Murphy; among others.

Victoria Murphy is a cinedancemaker, dancer, media artist and actress. She is a member of The Living Theatre and has performed with jill sigman/thinkdance, the Alchemical Theatre, the Measured Breath Theatre Company, and is working with Cynthia Berkshire on a dance in development. Victoria is currently working on her second cinedance, (re)Action. She studied media production and computer animation at The New School, and has worked on feature and commercial film sets. Her day-job activities include tutoring dancers in Final Cut Pro.

KINETIC CINEMA

Chez Bushwick
304 Boerum St., Buzzer #11
Brooklyn, NY 11206
718.418.4405
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Kinetic Cinema is a co-presentation of Chez Bushwick and Pentacle’s Movement Media project, and happens on the second Wednesday of each month as part of a weekly dance, visual & media arts series at Chez Bushwick.

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