On Sunday May 6th 2012, a crowd of 100+ people came out to The Wild Project in the East Village for a screening and dance extravaganza by the Girl Walk//All Day community.

Opening the show was a performance by the flex group Street’s Finest with a guest appearance by Anne Marsen (star of Girl Walk//All Day). Sporting new pink hair, Anne danced fiercely along side the six guys in the group, who popped, locked, and dropped it as soon as they walked onto the stage. In black preppy outfits with red sneakers, they danced to some of today’s hottest songs including Ellie Goulding, Starry Eyed. In between each song mix, a comedic voice would transition into the next song keeping the audience members on their toes. Throughout the performance were movements of slow motion, acrobatics, tutting, and freestyle clumps. One particular moment that stood out was when one male dancer supported all of his weight from his arms while being on top of another partner’s back. The audience embraced the high energy of this group with their comedic styles and facial gestures. At the end everyone got to their feet to applaud. Who knows maybe we will see them on America’s Best Dance Crew?!

Following the performance the noisy crowd started to settle down and take their seats as the film began. Girl Walk//All Day is a feature-length music video that follows three young dancers across the city of New York. In 12 chapters, this music video of epic proportions showcases some of the most fascinating places in New York City, while capturing the lives of average people. As the popular beats of Girl Talk’s music echoed through the hall, young adults in their 20’s began standing and bopping. As the upbeat music continued, more people began to stand and the knee pounding turned into full on jovial dancing. With beers in their hands, the crowd enjoyed the entertainment and continued to do their own thing. At funny moments in the film such as when Anne Marsen lays anxiously on the street in a white sign displaying, “Dance With Me,” audience members laughed, clapped, and hollered at the big projection in front of them. As the 12 Chapters were wrapping up, five young adults boogied their way onto the stage. Within seconds, a majority of the audience members were standing, skipping their way down the stairs and landing themselves on the open dance floor. As the end credits began pouring down the screen, the entire crowd eagerly clapped and roared and continued to dance wildly to the pulsating music.

After a while the crowd became smaller but some still continued to dance onstage including the film’s star, Anne Marsen. With her pink hair radiating off the overhead lighting, I made my way to her eager to ask some questions. Upon greeting the magenta colored hair-do girl, I realized Anne was one of the most down-to-earth people you will ever meet. In her black button down shirt, she stood before me still bouncing to the music and smiling. With the music still roaring out of the sound speakers, I asked her, “How does dancing make you feel?” Anne smiled and leaned forward simply stating that dance makes her feel, “alive and free.” I proceeded to ask her the most memorable aspect of shooting the film. Pondering for a second, Marsen commented, “pretty much everything” She later commented on the sections where she was filmed on Wall Street and with all the shopping bags. She continued to explain to me when walking with all the shopping bags, she would plow through people as if she was someone important. Not afraid to act snobbish and get a reaction from average humans, she would bump their shoulders and separate groups who were in conversations. As we laughed about what the people must of thought, I left her with one final question, “What could you say to someone who wants to follow in your footsteps?” She answered by saying, “get a camera and just do it.” She mentioned that finding friends and working together is a great way to get started. Thanking Anne for her time, she humbly smiled and continued to dance on the stage as her pink hair glistened across the theatre. Stepping away, I wondered what’s next for this upcoming star.

New York City watch out for Girl Walk//All Day. Not only is it showcasing some of the area’s best talent but it’s keeping the passion of dance alive for generations to come.

Check out all of Girl Walk// All Day videos on vimeo.

Filmmaker Amy Ruhl is fascinated by the body in film, particularly when it becomes mutated, dismembered or perverted by the cinematic medium. For her Kinetic Cinema program presented this past Monday at Uniondocs in Brooklyn, she focused on the rich history of the female body in film, especially that most intriguing of female archetypes, the femme fatale.

In her first short film, “How Mata Hari Lost Her Head and Found Her Body” Ruhl reimagines the famous courtesan and spy as if she lived her life the way it ended (by execution with her body donated to science and her head put on display at the Musée d’Anatomie). Ruhl’s Mata Hari is quite literally a person split in her allegiances – between mind and body, warring countries, sexualities, high and low art. There was no reconciling her contradictions, and in trying to have everything both ways, she enraged the very public she was trying to seduce and was destroyed.

While Mata Hari’s career was spent mostly in the service of men, she really yearned for artistic legitimacy and coveted the role of Salomé (played by many lesbian performers of the time). Ruhl showed the ‘Dance of the 7 Veils’ from Alla Nazimova’s Salomé and explained the allure of the part this way:

“This clip illustrates my favorite part of the [Oscar Wilde] play, which is that everyone in the play is looking at another character and desiring them, but that character never looks back at them… King Herod is looking at Salomé very lecherously and his wife [Queen Herodia] is saying ‘Don’t look at her!’…Salome is looking at John the Baptist, who won’t look at anyone but up toward God, because he has this annoying piety…I think that it’s a really amazing, on Oscar Wilde’s part, critique of the sexual roles going on at that time in Victorian England, where nobody gets to have what they actually want…and this role really spoke to a lot of lesbian performers.”

In addition to Ruhl’s film and curated selections, two other experimental filmmakers, Amy Greenfield and Kerrie Welsh showed shorts and took part in the discussion.

Amy Greenfield’s Wildfire was made from footage shot of a multimedia, avant gard strip show. After looking at the footage of the show, she wanted to show a thread between her work and the early films Thomas Edison made of female performers dancing in the style of Loie Fuller, the most famous of which is Annabelle Dances. Made in 1894, Annabelle Dances is of Annabelle in a costume of billowing fabric that she swirled and moved in undulating and serpentine ways. The film was hand tinted in different colors to simulate the lighting effects of live stage shows. Greenfield opens her film with footage of Edison’s Annabelle Dances and dissolves into her modern version with nude women whirling fabric. The video was also hand tinted in a similar way to the early film and the rapidly shifting edits make the images whirl past the viewers eyes giving a spinning sensation to the watcher.

Kerrie Welsh’s Peter, Peter… draws from the aesthetic of home movies in the 1950s, and starts out showing a typical nuclear family in a nondescript suburb where everything is “hunky dory”. The mood quickly shifts as the pretty wife has an extramarital affair and the father goes into a jealous rage.  A dark retelling of the children’s rhyme, “Peter, Peter Pumpkin Eater, had a wife and couldn’t keep her. He put her in a pumpkin shell, and there he kept her very well,” Welsh’s film shows everything that would never be included  in a  typical family home movie, and incases it all in a shell of normalcy.

Kerrie Welsh, Amy Greenfield, Anna Brady Nuse (moderator), and Amy Ruhl

The three filmmakers shared a mutual interest in the history of feminism in film, and a desire open up roles for women (and ways of interpreting those roles).

Greenfield commented, “What interests me, is living through 1980’s feminism, that what we’re doing, using the female erotic, not rejecting any aspect of the female and cinema, was a no no then – I was very persecuted. But audiences are coming around again to my films and it’s a wonderful time for seeing films like this.”

Kerrie Welsh replied, “One of the things I think is interesting [about Ruhl’s film], is the way it is engaging with all of these historical moments in a way that is also engaging with the film medium. So when you talk about the female erotic, I feel like [Ruhl’s Mata Hari] is really using performance, she’s using her own body, in a way that is referencing not some natural female eroticism, but all of these difference modes of performance that have been naturalized  or associated with sexuality in various ways. I think the questioning of that in this really funny weird way is what speaks to me about the film.”

Ruhl explained that while Mata Hari never worked in film herself, she became a rich subject for other great actresses who depicted her on screen, including Theda Bera, Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich.

“What really interested me [about Mata Hari] was that she really defined this subset of femme fatale.”

Related articles:

• “Mata Hari, the Technologized Body: A Conversation with Amy Ruhl” by Kerrie Welsh, On-Verge
• http://www.uniondocs.org/2012-05-07-kinetic-cinema-with-amy-ruhl/
• Amy Ruhl on Vimeo
• Amy Greenfield articles in Move the Frame
• Flesh into Light: The Films of Amy Greenfield, by Robert Haller Intellect Press.

The event includes a screening of Greenfield’s pioneering cine-dance and video-dance works that span 40 years and features the premiere of BODYSONGS, a work commissioned by WGBH TV in 1979 and made in collaboration with cinema verité filmmaker Richard Leacock. At the time Greenfield and Leacock shot a clothed version and a nude version of their film, but both ended up being banned from broadcast. When Leacock passed away in 2011, Greenfield revisited the nude video dance footage, restored it on today’s technology, and found in it a new concept of timeless nude duets as moving image art: BodySongs.

Other films on the program include MUSEic Of The BODy (2010), edited from Greenfield’s 1994 multimedia performance with video art pioneer Nam June Paik, the underground classic Element, and Wildfire from Greenfield’s acclaimed Club Midnight film cycle.

Greenfield and Haller will be present to answer questions and sign Flesh into Light at the reception following the screening.

In Flesh Into Light, Haller articulates the essential principles of cine-dance through Greenfield’s films, which re-invent dance as fundamental human motion not just for the camera, but as and inseparable from cinema. “For Greenfield, the body moving with and against the close-up camera can be the concrete image of inner human nature, an instrument for its expression and a vessel containing images and actions that crystalize the meanings and mysteries of experience: movement and memory, the past and the present moment.” – Robert Haller, Flesh Into Light

Admission is $9. No reservations required.

Anthology Film Archives
32 Second Ave. (@ 2nd Street)
Manhattan, New York.

Click here for more information on tickets.

Also of Note: Amy Greenfield will be present at Movement Media’s next Kinetic Cinema event on May 7th at Uniondocs, screening her film Wildfire and taking part in the discussion.

PORCH STORIES, Photo: Gary Tacon

Marta Renzi’s Kinetic Cinema program “Let Me Entertain You” presented at Gibney Dance Center on Thursday March 22nd had a political and moral message behind it’s light title – Making an audience laugh is just as important and necessary a function of art as making them cry, or question, or think.

The evening was centered around a quote from Preston Sturges’ iconic 1941 film “Sullivan’s Travels” in which a Hollywood filmmaker sets out to make a “serious” film about poverty in America during the Depression. After a series of mishaps, the hero is believed to be dead and he ends up in jail, where he truly learns the dehumanizing oppression of poor people. The only light in the whole experience comes when he watches a movie with his fellow inmates, and he finds himself laughing tears of joy at the antics of Disney characters (just the sort of trite entertainment he was critical of when he set out on his journey). At the end of the film he tells his producers he wants to make a comedy, and leaves us with this unforgettable last line: “There’s a lot to be said for making people laugh! Did you know that’s all some people have? It isn’t much, but it’s better than nothing in this cockeyed caravan! Boy!”

For filmmaker and choreographer Marta Renzi, this sentiment can be seen throughout her thirty years of art making, in which she has worked with people of all ages, classes, and races, both professional and amateur. Her mandate is to bridge art with real life, and she has done it in laundromats (The Welcome Table), auto mechanic’s garages (Year, Make, Model), neighborhoods (Porch Stories), and rust belt towns (Little Wild Heart) to name a few. In the mini-retrospective she showed at Kinetic Cinema we could clearly see her love for common people. Regardless of technique, budget size, or production elements above all else, Renzi wants to show the virtues of ordinary people in their daily lives, and the acts of celebration, joy, pain and pride that are there if only someone will shine a light on it. Interestingly, Renzi has approached this not as a gritty documentarian, but as an entertainer and a dancer.

In many ways, it is the archetypes of the working person that interest Renzi rather than the specific stories of individuals. In her films dance is a means of turning everyday tasks into ritualized sacred acts that defy normal space and time. In “The Welcome Table” working class black women look like high priestesses of the laundromat. As if by magic, the little white girls whose clothes they are washing appear in a procession through the laundromat and then disappear again, only to reappear in a hidden garden of a crumbling mansion. In Porch Stories the neighborhood characters evoke fairy tale counterparts including a “Pied Piper” old musician being followed by mischievous children, and a “Rapunzel”-like author trapped by her own writer’s block on her porch high on a hill.

Opening the evening was a short improvisatory solo and a video work by Arthur Aviles, a long time friend and performer of Renzi’s. Arthur’s video, “To Be Real” tells the story of a pheasant that was trapped in the Hunts’ Point neighborhood of the Bronx, and how the bird’s release inspired a dance (performed by the beautiful Althea Pace outdoors on the Bronx waterfront). Aviles is also concerned with bridging art with community and creating an atmosphere of inclusion. He is the founder of BAAD! (The Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance), in an old factory space in Hunts Point that has become a beacon for creative talent in this notoriously poor and underserved part of the city.

In a world that is polarized by words such as entertainment vs. art, socialism vs. capitalism, liberal vs. conservative, it is so refreshing to see Renzi and Aviles’ work which seems to bridge these dualities and show us how we are all in this “cockeyed caravan” together. That is the beauty of art, especially poetic forms like dance. We can go beyond the either/or’s and see how we are connected in divine and beautiful ways.

To learn more about Marta Renzi and her work go to: martarenzi.blogspot.com.
To learn more about Arthur Aviles go to: www.bronxacademyofartsanddance.org

PORCH STORIES, Photo: Gary Tacon

Kinetic Cinema: Let me Entertain You

Screening and discussion with Marta Renzi

Marta Renzi, an acclaimed choreographer and filmmaker, curates a provocative program of Kinetic Cinema that reveals the real inspiration behind her work, and reminds us of why art matters:

“Asked to share something about why I make dance films, I find myself showing excerpts from feature films that include a prison gang, a drunken orgy, and run the gamut from Greek tragedy to Saturday morning cartoons. To accompany these, I’ve chosen bits from my own dance films featuring characters with everyday lives and actual jobs – nursing aide, garbage collector, fast food worker, bartender – and who dance like it.”

Arthur Aviles, a long time performer and collaborator of Marta’s will open the evening with a video and solo piece of his own.

Marta Renzi has been making dances professionally since 1976.  In 1992, Marta received a New York Dance & Performance Award (a “Bessie”), and in 1995 was the first recipient of a Dancing in the Streets award as “a fearless explorer of all manner of unconventional sites, integrating art into everyday life.” In 1981, she made YOU LITTLE WILD HEART, a half-hour video dance for PBS, followed in 1989 by a second for television entitled MOUNTAINVIEW, made in collaboration with filmmaker John Sayles. Since 2005, she has self-produced several short films which have been screened nationally and internationally.

Arthur Aviles is a Bessie Award-winning dancer and choreographer of Puerto Rican descent. Mr. Aviles was a member of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, and toured internationally with the company for eight years 1987 to 1995. In 1996 Mr. Aviles founded Arthur Aviles Typical Theatre (AATT) in Paris and moved the company to the Bronx the same year. In December 1998, he inaugurated a new performance space in the American Banknote Building, a warehouse in the Hunts Points section of the Bronx. His company is the centerpiece of BAAD! – The Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance.

Kinetic Cinema had a merry time with the Merry Makers last Sunday, February 26^th at Fort Useless.  The night involved video and performances by Jessica Flannigan, Kate Taylor, and the Merry Makers Rachel Sattler and Elizabeth Burwell along with their filmmaker Ethan Duff. Though quite different from one another the three acts were tied together by elements of nostalgia, parody, and feel good comedy.

During the screening of their film “Adventures In Anytown,” Rachel, Elizabeth, Ethan cued us in on their battles with freezing temperatures, venue changes, time cues, costume design and crunch deadlines.  They shared clips from films that influenced the formation of their stage and screen personas including segments from Annie, Moulin Rouge and Lavern and Shirley among others.

To hear of the Merry Makers process from start to finish was inspiring.  It also reminded us of what we already know but sometimes forget, which is that when it comes to art New Yorkers are by your side to make it happen.

Join us for our next Kinetic Cinema event with Marta Renzi on March 22^nd at the Gibney Dance Center.

For more information about the Merry Makers, visit them on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/MerryMakersDance?sk=wall

Come to laugh and be inspired, and leave tapping your toes!

Fort Useless

36 Ditmars Street

Brooklyn, NY 11221

Click here to view the embedded video.

FRAMEWORKS rolls out 6 new, exceptional dance films from near (Northampton) and far (Warsaw). All New York Premieres. All under 20 minutes. All selected for their choreographic punch and cinematic prowess.

This Sunday, Feb 12th @ 3pm
Dance New Amsterdam
BUY before FRI for $5

Featuring:

If she needs a third eye, she grows it
Rosie Trump
Houston, TX
New York Premiere, 6min

Around the Styx
Clotilde Amprimoz
Clermont-Ferrand, France
American Premiere, 4 min

A Praça
Filipe Martins & Ne Barros
Porto, Portugal
American Premiere, 13 min

Breakdown
In Kyung Lee
Northampton, MA
World Premiere, 4min

Press
Sarah Friedland
Providence, RI
World Premiere, 5 min

InSide
Anna Zuzanna Blaszczyk
Warsaw, Poland
American Premiere, 12 min

After hearing about it for months, I finally got a chance to see Pina, the 3D documentary by Wim Wenders at Lincoln Center last week. It definitely stands up to the hype. Not only does the film capture the emotional impact of Pina’s work for stage, but the artistry of the filmmaking and storytelling completely renewed my faith in the power of dance, film and performance.

I have been a reserved skeptic about the 3D trend in cinema. I still don’t fully believe it will take off and become a permanent format, but Wender’s use of 3D for this film went to another level that was highly gratifying. Pina’s dances pop out and feel alive, while the intimate framing of the choreography was so satisfying to watch. The opening scene is of a performance of Bausch’s Rite of Spring. The shot places us right there in the dirt with the Virgin, and we feel the dust rise up and the stampede of life rush over us. As the piece builds to the sacrafice, we are increasingly pulled into the drama and the terrifying emotions of performers on a collision course with a violent fate.

Woven between scenes from Bausch’s famous dances, are vignettes highlighting each dancer in the Tanztheater Wuppertal Company. The intimate portraits of the dancers gave me a great appreciation for their craft and Pina’s unique method of directing through observance. These vignettes, shot out of doors and in public spaces are like gifts offered up to the memory of Pina, disseminating her spirit throughout the world. I particularly loved a scene shot on a suspended cable car with the elder dancer, Dominique Mercy in cardboard elf ears sitting coyly in back while a raven haired Aida Vainieri enters the car like a terminator monster in a white cocktail dress, ready to devour towns and villages. As she stomps her way to her seat, the reactions of the innocent bystanders are priceless.

I must admit, I have never been a huge fan of Pina Bausch’s choreography on stage. While I respect the work and the theatrical breakthroughs she achieved, I have always found myself unable to sit through an entire evening of her work. After two plus hours of vignettes, I would become desensitized to the emotional subtleties of the performance and mentally fatigued. My reaction to her work on screen has always been the exact opposite. I fall in love every time. I gushed over the scenes of Café Müller in Pedro Almodovar’s “Talk to Her,” and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed all of the documentaries made about Pina over the years. The power of film editing is what I need to appreciate Pina’s brilliance, and Wender’s Pina does this supremely well. I hardly realized two hours had elapsed, and I was left wishing it would never end.

Wender’s film does not give Bausch’s life story nor explain how she died, it simply captures the world she created and lived in everyday. “Dance, dance, otherwise we are lost.” This quote is the mantra of the film, and we come to believe it with our whole hearts, minds and bodies. If you want to renew your vows dance, or make someone else fall in love with dance, go see this film. You will be transformed and feel much better for it.