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.

Edited by Douglas Rosenberg and Claudia Kappenberg, this issue also features a report on the recent Screendance Symposium in Brighton by Claudia Kappenberg and Sarah Whatley.

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

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.

Since its inception, street dance has benefited from it’s organic connection to hip hop music and urban culture. Arising in the 1970’s out of disco, funk, and the black and latino urban cultures in America’s inner cities, hip hop culture encompasses all the art forms including music, visual art, dance, and poetry, as well as fashion and design. As hip hop has spread from the underground to the mainstream culture, it has gained a foothold in large entertainment and media industries as well. The Sugar Hill Gang and Run DMC became some of the first Billboard topping hip hop music groups, sparking megastars like Michael Jackson and Blondie to embrace and emulate this new vibrant street culture in their music and videos. Along with hip hop’s rise in popularity, street dance forms such as break dancing (or bboying) became well known and dance crews arose on every street corner and club where hip hop music spread.

Still to this day, street dance styles develop in tandem with new strains of hip hop, electronic and club music. The two disciplines of dance and music virtually exist to support each other. Club music is made to get people dancing, and the dance styles form around the different rhythms and vibes of the music. Since the decline of hip hop music sales, simultaneous with the rise of video’s popularity online, the power dynamic of the two art forms are shifting. Previously the hip hop music industry was the giant, and hip hop dance played a supporting role in music videos and stage shows. Now however, hip hop dance seems to be moving ahead through its popularity with viral video hits. Today dance videos are becoming important ways for music tracks to get noticed, rather than the other way around.

Marquese Scott, aka Nonstop, is a streetdancer from Inglewood, CA. He started dancing in high school after jumping in a dance circle at a local skating rink and getting “maxed” (laughed at and humiliated in front of his friends), which spurred him on to practice and win other dance battles. Today he is part of the Atlanta-based dance crew RemoteControl and his specialty is “animation”, a robotic style of motion that comes out of poplocking and autobot dance styles.

After a special appearance on So You Think You Can Dance with Remote Control, Nonstop began posting solo videos on YouTube that garnered a great deal of attention. His biggest hit was a solo performed to Butch Clancy’s dubstep remix of “Pumped Up Kicks” by Foster the People. Seen over 24 million times, Nonstop’s simple video was done in a single take from a camera he left on a tripod. What follows is a mindblowing display of movement that seems to defy gravity, time, and any other human constraints. The video was immediately picked up by bloggers and major media outlets who fueled its viral fire. While Foster the People’s single was already a break away hit, Nonstop’s video elevated the dubstep remix version to chart topping levels as well.

Since his YouTube success, Nonstop has become a sought after dancer for commercials, music videos, and live appearances. His story reveals an alternate path to a career in dance that is becoming more common in the era of online video. As streetdancers continue to post viral video hits online, videodance is poised to become a major pop culture phenomenon, akin to music video on MTV thirty years ago. Dance and music will still be inexorably intertwined, but this time, the dancers will get credit and esteem as well.

Encompassing a multitude of urban dance forms from breaking to crumping, and from popping to jerking, street dance is a thriving movement with both a strong amateur community and a robust industry of professional artists. Since the launch of social media and web video technology, street dance has had an artistic renaissance. No longer relegated to local street corners and individual club scenes, street dancers have fully exploited new media outlets to share their moves with a global community eager to see and learn more.

In this three part series we will discuss:

1. The artistic effects of media sharing on the development of street dance forms.
2. How media sharing is changing the value proposition of street dance.
3. What the concert dance world can learn from street dance in the video age.

Pt 1: The artistic effects of media sharing on the development of street dance forms

In October 2009 a crew of young Oakland street dancers uploaded a video on YouTube that showed four of them meeting on a street corner in the rain. The music was solemn and reverential, and their moves were graceful and emotional. Unlike most street dances, these dancers weren’t battling it out, instead they were paying tribute to a brother who had died on that street corner, and expressing their grief the way they knew best, by dancing. Unbeknownst to them, this video would put these artists on the international map and set the course of their careers.

The crew is TURF FEINZ, and they were filmed by their long time friends and collaborators, the Oakland-based video production company, YAK FILMS. Within a few weeks the video had gone viral in Europe, spreading from Germany to France, then to Brazil, Russia, and Denmark. Ten months later, the video took off stateside and today it stands at 3 million hits and counting. YAK FILMS have gone on to produce a weekly video series cataloging the street dance from around the world, and TURF FEINZ now has their own internationally recognized dance style called Turfing. Among other things, YAK FILMS puts out a very popular series of street dance tutorials taught by rising talents. Here is one on how to do the wave taught by Chonkie from TURF FEINZ.

In street dance, the goal is to be seen as the biggest, baddest dancer out there. One of the ways to do that is to coin a new move or a unique style that everyone tries to copy. Street dance choreography is generally made in a competitive environment, with dancers literally battling each other. The more their moves are copied, the better bragging rights the originator has. As moves get copied, each imitator tries to put their own stamp on the choreography, resulting in many mutations and variations on the original. With the advent of YouTube and online video sharing, this evolutionary process has gone into overdrive. Now a single video can be seen by millions of viewers worldwide in a matter of days or hours. When a street dance video goes viral, the choreography will be copied by hundreds if not thousands of other dancers and tweaked each time. These imitators will post their own videos online, and if even a couple of these go viral again, it starts a new wave of mutations. In this way, street dance forms are evolving at a breakneck speed. If an evolutionary biologist were to study street dance, they would be astounded at the rate of new moves, genres, and styles being made all the time. The developments in this form are growing at an exponential pace. As a result more has happened in street dance in the past five years than in the 30 years prior.

Chris Anderson, the curator of TED conferences, mentioned the phenomenal growth of street dance in his TEDtalk “How web video powers global innovation.” Anderson presented his theory of “Crowd Accelerated Innovation” to explain the rapid evolution occurring in many cultural and scientific sectors today. The way street dance spreads is a perfect illustration of the three components that make up “Crowd Accelerated Innovation.” First you need a CROWD of people that share a common interest, then LIGHT or clarity need to be shed on the crowd so that they can all see each other, and lastly you need the DESIRE to excel. Street dance was already a global movement when YouTube appeared, but the light that web video was able to shed on dancers everywhere from rural villages to inner city street corners enabled dancers to reach for greater recognition and influence on a scale never possible before. Anderson says that “Crowd Accelerated Innovation” is a kind of positive feedback loop where the more light that gets shed on the street dance movement, the more people desire to become dance stars in their own right and join the ranks of the crowd.

Jon M. Chu, filmmaker and creator of the popular web series, The LXD (The Legion of eXtraordinary Dancers) spoke of the new renaissance happening in street dance in his TED talk by saying, “Dance has never had a better friend than technology…Dancers have created a whole global laboratory online. Kids in Japan are taking moves from a YouTube video created in Detroit, building on it within days and releasing a new video, while teenagers in California are taking the Japanese video and remixing it to create a whole new dance style.” Chu speaks from experience as the director of the blockbuster hit movie, Step Up 2: The Streets and his latest success with The LXD, that was cast entirely through YouTube audition videos. Chu believes that what is happening right now in the “underground” street dance community will resurrect the popularity of dance to its status during the Golden Age of movie musicals. Once again kids will grow up with dance heros like past generations had with Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly and Michael Jackson.

What is immediately apparent when watching TURF FEINZ’s video is that the dancers are well versed in many dance techniques including ballet, jazz, and modern, as well as street dance forms like breaking and locking. In an interview for the Bay Citizen, YAK FILMS director, Yoram Savion said that YouTube has been important in the development of TURF’s signature style. “The dancers would come to my office and watch YouTube videos,” Savion said. “They’d watch everything. Once we even saw a random video of 1950s jazz dancing in Chicago that the dancers would incorporate into TURF.”

As street dance continues to garner devoted fans on YouTube, and new moves spread like wildfire across the internet, big media industries are taking note of it’s rising popularity. Street dance professionals are finding plenty of demand for their work, and an entire indie dance/film industry is rising up around the culture. YAK FILMS is an example of how one production company got its start by specializing in urban street dance. In the next segment of this series, we’ll examine how the video age is effecting the commercial potential for street dance giving it an economic edge over other many other dance forms.

To see the quotes clearly, some fans of de Keersmaeker put together this video showing Beyoncé’s video and the original material by de Keersmaeker side by side. Incredibly, it is the second video that comes up when you search for “Countdown beyoncé” in YouTube!

In a statement for the social network, Dance-tech.net, de Keersmaeker responded to the hubbub by saying that she is neither flattered nor upset by the heavy borrowing from Beyoncé, rather she is sad that it has taken so long for the world to recognize her dance experimentations from 30 years ago.

Personally, I think it is great that Beyoncé and her creative team have brought these dance works into mainstream consciousness. I’m also happy that the arts community has responded with a flurry of comments on YouTube because it is leading Beyoncé’s fans to see de Keersmaeker’s work for themselves.

This is not the first time Beyoncé has quoted great choreography. Her viral video hit “Single Ladies” was clearly inspired by Bob Fosse’s choreography for “Mexican Breakfast” (Beyoncé found as a video mash-up with the rap song “Walk it Out” and has since been removed from YouTube). What was wonderful about “Single Ladies” was all the subsequent copying that happened around the world with millions of fans reconstructing the choreography and posting it online. From fat men to 3 year old kids, everyone and their brother learned that piece of choreography to perfection. Can one wish for anything more as a choreographer? It was a stroke of marketing genius for Beyoncé to give that choreography away for millions to copy and share. I can only hope that “Countdown” does the same.

What do you think? Are you outraged or overjoyed? We’d love to hear your thoughts.

Update 10-26-11: Here’s a news clip from Reuters announcing de Keersmaeker’s pending law suit against Beyoncé. Doesn’t look like she’s taking the imitation as flattery!

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.

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.

Looking around at the greater effects of 9/11 on the arts and dance in particular, I can see that I was not the only one looking outside of my discipline at that time. One of the biggest art trends of the last ten years is the movement towards interdisciplinary work. Everywhere you turn you see all the arts mixing and intermingling. Dance in particular has become almost ubiquitous in art museums and gallery spaces. The Guggenheim started the highly popular Works & Process series that has presented many dance companies over the years. The Whitney’s Biennials are peppered with dance works, and smaller museum and gallery spaces such as P.S. 1, Chelsea Art Museum and Location One are hotbeds of interdisciplinary artistic activity. I commonly read artist bios that say “choreographer, dancer, and visual artist” (such as those of Ralph Lemon, Shen Wei, Tony Orrico, and Yvonne Rainer to name a few). Likewise, many visual artists repeatedly incorporate dance into their work (such as Kelly Nipper, Julia Mandle, Christian Marclay, and Isaac Julien).

Curators have had a huge influence on this shift to a post-disciplinary era. Two of the most progressive festivals to have emerged in New York after 9/11 are FIAF’s Crossing the Line Festival, and Performa. Both were born in the mid 00’s to advance boundary-defying artistic practices through commissions and presentations. Crossing the Line has an emphasis on French and American artistic exchange, however it keeps a very broad view of what that exchange could entail. Performa was founded by Roselee Goldberg, a leading authority on performance art since the ‘70’s, whose festival’s mission is “dedicated to exploring the critical role of live performance in the history of twentieth century art and to encouraging new directions in performance for the twenty-first century.”

Both Performa and Crossing the Line have pioneered new curatorial approaches to performance presentation, that revolve more around central ideas and less on the particular art forms that are on display. In this year’s Crossing the Line Festival program, the events are grouped around 3 curatorial perspectives: “Fiction & Non-Fiction”, “Lecture/Performance” series, and “Endurance/Resistance/Inspiration.” Within these categories are works that incorporate all the art forms and most of them are interdisciplinary, such as choreographer Kelly Bartosik’s “i like penises: a little something in 24 acts” that involves a dialogue between three dancers and a visual artist that perform live alongside each other in layered scenes. Performa endeavors to single out the influence of performance on the visual arts, both past and present. This leads to programming that is by nature interdisciplinary as multiple art forms collide and are influenced by each other within the works, such as choreographer Boris Charmatz’s “Musée de la Danse (Dancing Museum): Expo Zéro,” an exhibition that takes place in empty rooms and includes both real and imagined performance.

After 9/11, artists – particularly in New York City – suffered on many levels. We experienced rage, sorrow, and exasperation as our nation inflicted violence and war on innocent people while using every excuse to devalue the arts – the very lifeblood of culture that restores humanity and compassion in the world. Despite this, I believe that amazing growth has taken place in the arts that has led artists to see beyond boundaries and closed-mindedness within our own communities, and forced us to grapple with the world in a way that is collaborative, healing and ultimately life-affirming. I believe in the power of artists to regenerate a fractured and ailing world no matter what happens and under any circumstances. As much as I wonder how my life could have been easier and better if the events on 9/11 hadn’t occurred, I am so thankful that I was driven to explore the medium of film, and the infinite artistic riches that lay there for me.

FIAF’s Crossing the Line Festival is taking place now until October 16^th at venues all over New York City.

Performa 11 will take place November 1–21, 2011 in New York City.

Anna Brady Nuse is a dance filmmaker and director of Pentacle’s Movement Media. Examples of her work can be seen here.

With his winning idea, Daniels garnered support from the Baryshnikov Art Center to develop “Dances for an iPhone” over two years as an artist in residence at their facilities. In another genius stroke, Daniels chose well-loved, seasoned modern dancers such as Carmen deLavallade, Megan Williams, and Deborah Jowitt to perform his choreography. The resulting volume of six short videos, are neatly packaged in an app now available for free on iTunes.

Perhaps my expectations for “Dances for an iPhone” were set a little too high. On July 15th Gia Kourlas, gave the app a glowing review in the New York Times, for its artistic approach to filming dance, but when I downloaded and looked at the works, all I saw were a bunch of short dance videos that looked like any other rehearsal footage found on YouTube. The handheld camera is shaky most of the time, and often zooms in on the dancer’s face, cutting off our view of the movement and choreography. The lack of focused lighting causes the dancers to go in and out of silhouette, and I was constantly aware of the fact that they were performing for us in a dance studio, rather than transporting me to a world of the artist’s making. For me, the framing of the camera should fundamentally change the dance and make it exist on screen in a way that it could never be in a live performance. I didn’t see any videos in “Dances for an iPhone” that gave new meaning to the dances performed, instead I wished I could see them live rather than on my tiny screen.

Furthermore, I question why these are “Dances for an iPhone” at all. As an “application” the package doesn’t give you much to play with. It’s really just a collection of short videos, with a bit of biographical text for each. Surely you could accomplish the same thing by making a video podcast (also downloadable and viewable on an iPhone, iPod or iPad), or a YouTube channel for that matter. When I think of an app, I expect there to be in interactive component of some kind such as the infamous “Brushes” app that was used to create two New Yorker covers by artist Jorge Colombo. If it isn’t highly interactive, then I expect an app to offer me something new to explore every time I open it, such as my new favorite, the “NPR Music” app that consolidates all of the latest NPR music content in easy to search categories that are up-dated daily.

I suspect that Mr. Daniels saw an opportunity to package his art in a way that was so exciting and novel, it would succeed no matter what. He can now say that he created the first iPhone app featuring modern dance (although that might be debatable as I saw an app for the Korea National Contemporary Dance Company that came out in 2010). The fact that it has no business being an app is besides the point, in the high stakes game of technological development, he who gets there first is the winner.

Still, I’m glad someone in the modern dance world has taken the plunge to create an app. The proliferation of apps is not going to die down any time soon, and we may be seeing a new revolution in the media industries: the way television superseded film and radio, mobile is now threatening to do the same. Since Daniel’s app has left much room for improvement, let’s hope that new upstarts will jump into the ring soon and give us better ways to capture and experience dance in the palm of our hands.