Archive for the ‘screenings/events’ Category

Camera Operation and Shooting Strategies with Amy Greenfield & Jeremiah Story

Amy Greenfield

DNA (Dance New Amsterdam)
280 Broadway, Studio 6 (entrance on Chambers)
New York, NY 10007
212.625.8369

October 12, 2011
7:30-10:00pm

Topics will include: basic understanding of camera operation, shooting strategies, and concrete concepts and methods to enable artists to have a more formalized approach to their filming process.

$10 for Dance Films Association or DNA Members; $25 fee for Non-Members.

RSVP to brighid@dancefilms.org with Dance Film Lab in the subject line to reserve your place.

For more information visit the Dance Films Association website

Next Dance Film Lab events:

November 7- Dance Film Lab Screening

November 19 & 20- Moviehouse presents: Curated Screening of works by Dance Film Lab Participants

Now in its 10th year, Philadelphia Dance Projects’ MOTION PICTURES has become a mini-festival unique to Philadelphia that explores how film and video serve as natural collaborative mediums for dance. MOTION PICTURES’11 will feature 4 different programs that highlight the power of image in motion including shorts, features and an “informance” artist/audience conversation with Filmmaker, Nadine Patterson.

Wednesday, October 5, 2011 – 6:30pm, 8:00pm
Thursday, October 6, 2011 – 6:30pm, 8:00pm

Location:
Performance Garage
1515 Brandywine Street
Philadelphia, PA, 19130
United States

Admission is $10-$15

For More information visit Philadelphia Dance Projects

As a student in the Florida State University in NYC program, I was fortunate enough to be invited into Noémie LaFrance’s work studio in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, to discuss her new project. Sitting in wooden chairs in the homey brick apartment, Noémie entered the room spewing information about her newest work, the White Box Project. In response to our questions, she explained that she is ever-interested in infusing dance with the everyday. The Black Box is known as a place to sit in an audience and to be spoonfed a presentation. Hence, the White Box.

Successfully, the White Box Project is the furthest thing from a proscenium, concert dance performance. As I entered the museum space, I was approached by what I thought to be a fellow observer, and naively pushed out the back door into the cement enclosed porch. The crowd chattered and looked around skeptically, until suddenly and miraculously the room fell totally silent (a brilliant tactic brought about by the performers, I realized on my second visit).  As the hour passed, it became clear that at least one of the men in the room was a performer. He, in my opinion, took on the role of the initiator; the leader. Otherwise, I was completely unsure as to who was a performer, and who was an observer. As a woman dressed in a trendy black coat and heels stood inches from my face and proceeded to lie down on the cement in front of me, I battled myself with whether I should do the same.

The feeling of uncertainty gradually melted away, as we were put into groups by a few men and women, and whispered instructions…“On the count of three, run!” By the end, I felt more like a child playing games in the schoolyard than an audience member.

Noémie invited everyone in attendance that Saturday back to another showing, free of charge, to witness the constant changes being applied to the project each day. I arrived the next week, eager to scrutinize the events I knew would happen and to identify the changes, of which there were several. This time, there was more dialogue between the dancers and the crowd; I was asked incognito to learn a succinct dance step, and teach it to another. Again, the realization that everyone was in clear groups/teams near the close of the work came with a playful sentiment. I was a participant, not a spectator. I cannot assume that this feeling fell upon every person in the ‘box’, but each individual surely brought something of their own to the experience, simply by entering the space.

The White Box is not a dance show. It is instead a mind game of sorts. Whether or not one chooses to run and turn the length of the walls at the demands of a scruffy man whose role is unknown is irrelevant. Choosing to act is participation. Choosing not to act, also, is participation. The audience ultimately, and blindly, has control of the show.

Carly Lozo is a dance major at Florida State University and an intern with Pentacle’s Movement Media this fall.

Maya Deren: 50 Years On

Fifty years after the death of filmmaker and choreographer Maya Deren, the art and influence of one of experimental cinema’s most inspiring and charismatic figures is celebrated and explored. The British Film Institute will present a dedicated program of Maya Deren screenings and events on October 4-12 2011, BFI Southbank, London.

For more information visit Maya Dean: 50 Years On

Performa 11, one of two new festivals in NYC that defy artistic boundaries post-9/11

Like many people, the 10^th Anniversary of 9/11 brought up many “What if’s” for me. What would my life be like now if 9/11 hadn’t happened? What would my art look like? What would the fields of dance and dance film look like? And then after being baffled by those questions, I started to think about what actually did happen. How did September 11th, 2001 change my views of my artistic work, and my chosen field of dance?

For me, I wonder if I would have become obsessed with dance for the camera. Without the traumas of 9/11 and the political and cultural awakening it inspired in me, I might not have felt such an urgent need to seek other outlets for artistic expression. In an uncertain world, film and new media gave me hope that my artistic work could make a difference in the world. The feelings of mortality that were triggered by 9/11 made me desperate to be able to create work that would last (ie be able to be watched repeatedly) and the rage and violence that has surrounded the event (and still does to this day) gave me an urgent need communicate with people outside of my tiny circle of acquaintances. I felt that if we were to reconcile with our enemies and restore stability to our lives, then we had to start communicating and learning about each other. Live performance was too limiting for me, I needed to tap into media, and thankfully with the rise of broadband internet that became more possible than ever before. Read the rest of this entry »