The papers presented at last year’s Screendance: State of the Art 2 Conference at the American Dance Festival have just been posted online and are available for download. It is nice to revisit the ideas around curating that were presented at that conference, as I’m in the process of planning next Fall’s Kinetic Cinema series. My paper was all about the model of artist-driven curating that I have been cultivating through Kinetic Cinema. I wrote a couple of follow-up posts on this blog about the Screendance conference at ADF last summer here and here if you would like to follow the thread of the discussion.

You can download the latest essays for the Screendance Journal on the following topics here: http://dvpg.net/screendance2008.html

Thoughts on Curating: How to Bring About a Shift in Perception

Anna Brady Nuse

“Screendance is growing worldwide. Every year more dance film festivals spring up; new courses in dance for the camera are added to college dance curriculums; and symposiums, workshops and panels take place all over the world. Despite this trend, screendance is still virtually unknown in American culture at large.”

Does Screendance need to look like dance?

Claudia Kappenberg

This is an edited version of a paper, which was first presented at the American Dance Festival, ‘Screendance State of the Art 2’, Duke University, North Carolina in 2008, and re-presented at the conference ‘Exploring the Screen as a Site for Choreography’, University of Bristol, Department of Drama, Theatre, Film & Television, April 2009, in response to debates at the Bristol event. Drawing on a wider field of visual art, film, dance and theatre studies the paper proposes a new knowledge map for screendance aiming to articulate the complexities of choreographic sensibilities and identifying a set of Screendance strategies

Curating the Practice/The Practice of Curating

Douglas Rosenberg

This paper in a slightly different form was presented at the Curating the Practice/The Practice of Curating conference at the American Dance Festival in Durham, NC, USA on Thursday July 10, 2008. Some of the ideas contained were originally posted (by Douglas Rosenberg) in a number of on-line discussions during the last year. Please use with permission. rosend@education.wisc.edu

Curator’s Notes for Linssin taka / Beyond the Lens

Sini Haapalinna

A national video dance screening program, coinciding with the dance and live arts festival Z – in – Motion, organized by Zodiak, Center for New Dance in Helsinki, Finland, and curated by freelance artist Sini Haapalinna.

(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

For Murphy’s Kinetic Cinema program “Is it Live or Is it Cinedance?” she focused primarily on work that fits within the definition of “cinedance”. For Pearlman, cinedance and the term dancefilm are the same thing. Here is her definition for the term:

A dancefilm that is working in the overlapping areas of cinema and dance will prioritise the directorial vision and emphasise the collaborative coordination of all of the elements of cinematic production from script to mise-en-scéne to sound mix.

Murphy elaborated on this definition a bit more, and named three essential elements that must be present in a work for her to consider it a “cinedance.”

1. It must be Art (as opposed to a film about art – a documentary, or a record of art – a recording of a performance.)
2. It is Poetic (generally wordless and journey oriented, as opposed to narrative driven, spoken-word, and destination oriented which would be a prosaic film).
3. It is centered around Movement or a moving body (this could include choreography that is made through editing).

Another defining characteristic of cinedance that many people consider  important, is that the work can only exist on screen, and is not replicable onstage or in a live performance setting.

Categorizing films

For her screening, Murphy presented a variety of films that ran the gamut of what what is often shown at dance film festivals. Some of these fit within her criteria of “cinedance” while others clearly did not, and still others could be considered close cousins.

Of the Heart

The first film she showed was “Of the Heart” directed by Douglas Rosenberg and Allen Kaeja and performed by David Dorfman and Lisa Race. A short duet set in a cornfield, with simple choreography and camera movement, “Of the Heart” was definitely movement-based art (unable to be replicated live and not about another work of art), and poetic in nature. In this film, all the criteria for a cinedance were clearly present.

The second piece Murphy showed was an excerpt from “Latcho Drom,” a film about the Romany people and their culture that journeys across eight countries. Murphy contended that this film was not a cinedance because it was primarily a documentary about culture, and therefore should be considered a work of cultural anthropology. There are some blurry lines here though, because the film has no narration, and most of the dance scenes were staged specifically for the film. Perhaps the main purpose of making the film was cultural anthropology, but the end result is quite poetic, artistic and movement-driven. It is understandable why a curator for the Dance on Camera Festival this year included an excerpt from this film in his program. Not only does it educate us about a beautiful and rare culture, it also seems to stand as a piece of art in its own right.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Another genre that seems related to, but not exactly cinedance is the movie musical. Murphy showed two examples from this category: a dance number from the 2003 film “Chicago” and a song number from “Across the Universe” by Julie Taymor. In analyzing these films Murphy found them to be both music and movement-driven, which makes the cinedance distinction really exist in the eye of the beholder – dance film enthusiasts will see these numbers as dance-driven, while music-lovers will find them music-driven… Also, many musicals, including “Chicago” are narrative films with spoken language and a  prosaic structure. Murphy observed that the song and dance numbers in musicals are usually dream-like interludes that take place out of real time and space and have a poetic structure. For Murphy, movie musicals are hybrids, in that they are prosaic/narrative films with poetic interludes that could be considered cinedances.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Why bother?

If you are obsessed with dance film, as I am, you probably notice dance pop up all the time in mainstream media – in commercials, music videos, movie musicals, experimental films, and even in the middle of sitcoms. All of these are established genres in which dance has and continue to thrives in today, so why bother establishing a separate category for dance film that no one knows about?

This is a debate that many dance artists and film-makers are engaged in, and it often comes back to one’s personal self-identification as an artist. Some makers come from visual arts backgrounds and have been drawn to dance and working with dancers, but they do not consider their work to be different from video art or experimental films. Some makers come from film backgrounds, and happen to specialize in making films with a lot of dance and choreography in them, but they call their work music videos, commercials, or musicals.

What has been emerging more recently is a strong contingent of makers from dance backgrounds as choreographers and performers turned film-makers and videographers. It is this this group of people that are very invested in claiming a genre of their own in which dance and movement is of primary importance. The trade off for this unwillingness to conform to already existing genres is that makers contend with a lack of recognition in the market and among audience members and funders. I believe that it is just a matter of time and persistence until the perfect conditions for a tipping point are in place, and screendance will break through into the common lexicon.

If we look at current trends in the cultural landscape, we can see that we are now living in a video age. All of the major art forms are being subsumed by this dominant medium of our time. Art museums must devote more and more space to video art, music videos are consumed more than the songs they are promoting, and dancers are starting to create work for video in conjunction with their performance work, or in some cases instead of. Video is an essential component of any marketing strategy today. To reach and sustain audiences, dance companies must make videos. Out of these practical reasons, dancers are also finding new artistic possibilities in the medium, and exploring all that a camera and editing has to offer.

We are still at the dawn of screendance. While it may seem like an obscure genre today, the ranks of artists working in the form are growing, and with them will come wider audiences and recognition. The names and terminology for the form will likely change, and the distinctions will become more clear, but what is certain is that this is a separate category of it’s own. Someday it will have its own body of theoretical knowledge, complete with its own Hitchcocks, Brandos and Lucas’s. Things are muddy now, but out of this apparent chaos will come form and shape, a process that Murphy, Pearlman and others are working hard to bring about.

Kerrie Welsh, cinematographer of Fünf 'n' Twist, a new videodance by Anna Brady Nuse. Photo: Susanna Christians

Jessica LaCombe wrote a great article in Dancer Magazine this month about making dance for screen, and I was honored to be included in it. My friends and colleagues, Ellen Bromberg (professor of dance at University of Utah and director of the Dance for the Camera Workshops in Victoria, BC) and Douglas Rosenberg (professor of art at University of Wisconsin-Madison and director of the Dancing for the Camera Festival at ADF) were also featured prominently.

The article gives a well-organized overview of the state of the field today, and some practical advice for new would-be film-makers coming from a background in dance. I’m pleased to see a more main-stream dance publication turning its attention to this burgeoning hybrid medium. As I say in the article, “This generation of choreographers have grown-up with media and been exposed to media so much more even than live dance, that they think in terms of media.” It’s time for dance teachers and educators to wake up to this reality and start helping the new generation navigate the vast media landscape of today and tomorrow.

Check it out and let me know what you think!

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.

I’m finally home after several weeks on the road, crossing the country and then heading south for the second Screendance: State of the Art conference at the American Dance Festival. The topic for this year’s conference was CURATING THE PRACTICE/CURATING AS PRACTICE. There were about 20 registered participants, coming from all over the US and Europe, and we were a good mix of artist/makers, teacher/scholars, and curators. While some of the old topics came up (like what is the definition of screendance?) the presence of the over-arching theme of curating helped guide many of the discussions into new territory, and keep us on topic.

Douglas Rosenberg, a filmmaker, scholar, and organizer of the conference started off the proceedings with a lecture about the history of curating as it arose out of the visual arts field and how this practice has gradually slipped by the wayside with the rise of the festival model in screendance. He spoke about the original premise of curating in the art world as a means of creating meaning by grouping different works of art together. This combination of art works creates a meta-narrative between the pieces and can serve to support a thesis about the art put forth by the curator. In this way curating can help shape new ideas in art.

I appreciated learning about  how curating differs from “programming”, which is generally how dance film festivals work. For a long time I’ve felt dissatisfied by the programs at festivals, particularly the shorts programs, because they can be such a grab bag of films that seem to have nothing to do with each other. Usually these programs are billed as the “best” new dance films of the year, with the dubious value judgment of “best” being the only unifying theme. With no other underlying meaning to connect the films together, I as a viewer often find myself feeling disappointed when the films fall short of my expectations of what “the best” dance film should be. I leave most screenings feeling like the vast majority of screendance is boring and uninspired, when in reality, I just didn’t have enough context to view them under.

Helping to illustrate this difference between curating and programming, there were several curated screenings during the conference as well as screenings that were part of the “Dancing for the Camera” festival. One of these curated programs was put together by Claudia Kappenberg, an artist and scholar from the University of Brighton and was entitled “Paradoxical Bodies.” In her program notes Kappenberg described “Paradoxical Bodies” as seeking “to address the peculiar premise of real bodies on screen, in itself a paradoxical proposition, which mixes and purposefully confounds mental states and actual physical existence.” With this introduction we watched seven experimental films that were often oblique and seemed to float in the timeless space of ritual. The program included ELEMENT (1973) by Amy Greenfield, HWRGAN (BY THE LATE HOUR) (2006) by Simon Whitehead, K (1989) by Jayne Parker, THE NIGHTINGALE (2003) by Grace Ndiritu, SAND LITTLE SAND (2006) by Becky Edmunds, IT IS ACHING LIKE BIRDS by Lucy Baldwin, and SPRUE (2004) by The 5 Andrews. Most of these films have never been shown in dance film festivals before, either because they are not generally considered “dance”, or they are not the typical show pieces that would past muster with a festival’s judging panel. Despite their challenging and experimental nature, I was captivated by this program. After Kappenberg’s introductory statements I was prepared to grapple with the paradoxes, ambivalence, and alternative notions of the body put forth in these films, and I was freed from having to compare them to my usual standards of what’s “good” and “bad”. Instead, I appreciated them for what they each said to me within the framework of the program’s topic.

In contrast to Kappenberg’s curated program, Sini Haapalinna, a freelance artist from Finland, presented a program of shorts from her first curation for the Finnish dance film festival “Beyond the Lens” which sought to show a snapshot of “the state of the art” of Finnish screendance. This was a good example of the usual festival model of programming, which culls work from an open call for entries, and then seeks to show the best ones of the group. While it was probably meaningful for Finnish audiences to see what work is being made in their own country, for an international group of screendance experts gathered in North Carolina, the program seemed jumbled and out of context. The works were all over the map in terms of style, production value, content, and intention. The result was a muddy program that had some nice isolated moments, but was somehow lesser than the sum of its parts. While Haapalinna probably didn’t get the reaction she was hoping for from the conference attendants, it was actually really useful and informative for us to see this kind of program in light of the curation model Rosenberg had just presented. Finally we were able to critically respond to the festival model of programming, and articulate about why it isn’t as effective as it could be at promoting and advancing screendance to the public.

In my next couple of posts, I’ll talk about my presentation on “artist-driven” curating, and summarize some of the other discussions that went on at the conference including a theory for mapping screendance by Kappenberg, how a curator’s role is always political by Gita Wigro, and a modified Venn diagram for curators of screendance proposed by Martha Curtis.

To be continued!

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!

I credit almost all of my understanding of what screendance is, to watching curated programs at various dance film festivals. The genre is very hard to describe, because dance for the camera could mean anything really. The very definition of film and video is moving pictures, and dancing is only a slightly more specific word for moving. Creating special programs of films that are organized around a specific idea helps to provide a lens for viewing work in a different way. By grouping films under a new name, you can embue them with meanings they didn’t necessary have before. For instance if I put clips of Jim Jarmusch’s Mystery Train, Sergei Parajanov’s The Color of Pomegranates, and Maya Deren’s Ritual In Transfigured Time all together in a program entitled “Films as Visual Poetry, Great Symbolist Poets of the Silver Screen,” what happens to the way you look at these films?

Films as Visual Poetry: Great Symbolist Poets of the Silver Screen

clip from “Mystery Train” by Jim Jarmusch

clip from “The Color of Pomegranates” by Sergei Parajanov

“Ritual in Transfigured Time” by Maya Deren

Perhaps you have seen all of these films before in different contexts, but now you are seeing many similarities and connections between them you have never thought of before. The through-line of a poetic approach to film making becomes very obvious, and yet, you may not have thought about this connection if you hadn’t read the program’s title.

This ability to create new meanings and connections between things is especially important for promoting a relatively obscure genre like screendance. In order to educate viewers and attract new audiences we need to give them a window for entry and help them connect with the form. We are a media savvy culture, in which the average viewer can identify the genre and conventional structures of any given media clip in a matter of seconds. Screendance is just different enough to feel strange and foreign to the typical viewer, but only a slight shift of perception is necessary to make it seem familiar and identifiable.

Bringing about this slight shift of perception should be the goal of all curated programs. For my monthly Kinetic Cinema series, the goal is to help make dancers and members of the New York dance community aware of the role media plays in their artistic work. We are all bombarded with media images and messages everyday. This constant deluge of information has to filter down into the work of dancers and choreographers too. I wondered why the dance community in New York seems to be lagging behind our European contemporaries in embracing media with dance, and I realized it may be because dancers here just haven’t thought about it consciously. With Kinetic Cinema I invite different members of the dance community to curate programs and draw upon their own media interests and influences. In this way the curators discover the knowledge they already have about media and dance, and can present their ideas in a way that other dancers can relate to.

By these standards, Kinetic Cinema has already been successful. Many of the curators I’ve invited have never curated a screening before, and yet their programs have blown me away. February’s curator, Brian McCormick, displayed a knowledge of video art and new media platforms like Second Life that far surpasses my own. This month, Malinda Allen presented one of the most entertaining and inspiring programs of dance films and videos I’ve ever seen, and she has never seen the work of Maya Deren before (a filmmaker widely regarded as the mother of modern dance film). Each of these artists presented programs that gave me and all the members of the audience new perspectives on dance and media we had never had before. Bringing about new perspectives and thought connections makes a seed bed for creativity. I believe that these programs will inspire more dancers to make work for the camera, and the artistry and sophistication of their work will be higher, because they are connecting consciously to their own knowledge about media and how it works.

A guest curator series is just one way to bring about a shift in perspective for a particular audience. I’d love to hear of other examples. Please share your ideas and experiences here, and help us brainstorm more ways to bring screendance to the fore of the media landscape!

FEBRUARY 2008

CALL FOR WORKS

O dança em foco -International
Video & Dance Festival is receiving applications for its International
Videodance Screenings. The 2008 edition will take place in September
in Rio de Janeiro followed by other cities, with free public showings.

The applications will only be accepted thought the site www.dancaemfoco.com.br

If interested please send dance documentaries and videodance works by 29
February 2008 to the following address:

dança em foco – Festival Internacional
de Vídeo & Dança
a/c Paulo Caldas
Rua General Glicério 144 / 202 – Laranjeiras
Rio de Janeiro – RJ – Brasil
CEP 22.245-120

CALL FOR ARTISTS

The 3rd International Vdance festival at the Cinemateque Tel Aviv (Cinematek), Israel
The
festival will run for 3 days showing international and Israeli work
that explores the connection between film and movement – showing video
dance and contemporary dance films plus experimental films from
beginning of 20th century.
 
Festival dates: 12 – 14 June 2008
Venue: Cinemateque Tel Aviv

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: February 29, 2008
artists should submit their work on DVD format (2 copies). 
including:
a
document with Name of artist, Postal address, E-mail address, Phone
number , Name of the piece (Title), Name of Director, Name of
Choreographer, Name of Producer, year in which the work has been made,
length of the piece, and a short description of the piece.
 
Send it to:
Vdance – The International Festival of Video-Dance
Cinemateque Tel Aviv
2 Sprinzak St.
Tel Aviv 64738
Israel
 
For inquries and information contact:
vdance2008@gmail.com

DANCEDOC SLAM


Thursday, March 6, 2008, 7:00 – 9:30
p.m.
Green Space, 37-24 24^th St.,
Long Island City


An interactive peer-review workshop that
provides choreographers and dancers the
opportunity to present video
documentation of their work for critique
by experts in the field.

The panel will lead a discussion on the
best ways to document dance pieces on
film for venues, festivals and funding
applications based on five pre-selected
video submissions.

SUBMISSION PROCESS


To submit your video sample for critique
please send a DVD clearly labeled with
the name of the artist and contact
information to:

Independence
Arts Builds Community Submissions
Queens Council on the Arts
One Forest Park at Oak Ridge

Woodhaven, NY 11421-1166

Submissions should be 3-5 minutes.
Please note that this workshop is
directed towards the documentation of
dance pieces not narrative or artistic
films involving dance. Only a limited
number of submissions will be discussed
at the workshop.

For more information email chenderson@queenscouncilarts.org or visit: http://www.queenscouncilarts.org/html/artsservices-dancedoc.html

MARCH 2008

EMPAC DANCE MOVIES COMMSSION 2008: OPEN CALL FOR PROPOSALS
The deadline for the proposals is March 1, 2008.

For
more information on EMPAC and the DANCE MOViES Commission, or to
download the guidelines and application form, please visit the EMPAC
website:
http://www.empac.rpi.edu

DANCE MOViES Commission application process:
The
EMPAC DANCE MOViES Commission is a competitive open proposal process,
in which eligible artists submit a project proposal.  The initial
proposals are reviewed and a small number of artists are invited to
submit a detailed proposal to an international panel. The panel
assesses the quality and feasibility of the proposed project and
submits its recommendations to EMPAC. The commissions are awarded by
EMPAC after review.

Upon awarding of the commission, the artist
or collaborative team has one year to complete the project, at which
point the work is premiered at EMPAC, shown at dance film festivals
around the world, and credited as an EMPAC DANCE MOViES Commission.

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

The American Dance Festival calls
for innovators to step forward with submissions for the 13th annual
Dancing for the Camera: International Festival of Film and Video Dance.
Showcasing the best of fusions between cinematographic skill and
choreographic vision, Dancing for the Camera has screened to
international audiences more than 250 dance films by filmmakers from
over 20 countries.  Directed by dance filmmaker and curator, Douglas
Rosenberg, the 2008 festival will take place July 11-13, in conjunction
with the ADF’s 75th Anniversary. 

Seeking high artistic
quality, all entries will be adjudicated in one of four categories by a
panel of jurors whose selections will screen at the festival.
Certificates of Distinction will be awarded to works of exceptional
merit.

Submissions should align with one of the following areas:
Choreography for the Camera–original work made specifically for video or film or re-staged for the camera.
Documentaries–productions that include interviews or other educational elements in addition to choreography.
Experiment
and Digital Technologies–work that extends the boundaries of dance and
can exist only in video, film, or new technologies.
Student Work–submissions produced while the filmmakers were students or by current students.
The early deadline for film/video submissions is March 11, 2008, by 6pm with an entry fee of $30. 
All submissions must meet the final deadline of April 11, 2008, by 6pm.  The entry fee for late submissions is $40.  Download the entry form.  

For more information on Dancing for the Camera, including registration, entry forms, and guidelines for submission please visit www.americandancefestival.org

Questions regarding the call for entries should be directed to adf@americandancefestival.org or 919.684.6402.

CALL FOR ENTRIES
The
2008 dance event for the Dowagiac Dogwood Fine Arts Festival is
“Dancing Outside the Box: A Video& Film Festival of Dance.”  On
Saturday, May 10, 2008 select films will be shown at the Theatre in the
Dale A. Lyons Building on the campus of Southwestern Michigan College
in Dowagiac, Michigan.
 
WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR:
We seek
films or videos that blend dance and film of all kinds.  We will accept
dance made for the camera, documentary, short film, adaptation of a
stage work or site specific creation, or music video.  Content must be
family friendly.
 
ENTRY REGULATIONS

• Entries must be received in DVD or VHS format

• Entry form and media must be postmarked by March 15, 2008
• If
  you would like your media returned please send self addressed mailer
  with return postage.  We are not responsible for returning preview
  media without a specific request and postage.
• Dogwood Fine Arts
  Festival is given the right to use excerpts from your video, if chosen
  for the festival in all Dogwood promotional materials.
• DISCLAIMER/LIABILITY:
  every effort will be made to protect entries while in the Festival’s
  care; however, the Festival and its sponsor do not assume liability for
  damage or loss to DVD’s or videotapes.

Send entry form and VHS/DVD to:
Dogwood Fine Arts Festival
PO Box 526
Dowagiac, MI 49047
Attn:Amy
Direct questions to:
Amy Rose  269.580.1447
 craigamy@btc-bci.com  subject:Dogwood

APRIL 2008

Entry Call 2008                                               
Dance film entries are now being accepted for the 2008 SHOOT – Dance for Screen festival
 
SHOOT
- Dance for Screen, the Swedish dance for screen festival celebrates
the fifth anniversary with festival in four cities:
Stockholm-Luleå-Göteborg-Malmö.
Screenings, seminars, discussions, workshops, 3D installation, national and international guests.
 
We
are looking for dance films and videos in various styles, completed in
2006-2008, that combine choreography and cinematography.
We welcome shorts, features, animation and video clips.
 
Festival date: Oct/Nov 2008
Submission deadline: 2 April 2008
 
MORE INFORMATION AND HOW TO SUBMIT:
go to www.modernadansteatern.se
or email stina@modernadansteatern.se

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

EDIT2008

4. International Dance Film Festival, Budapest

Organised by Workshop Foundation in co-operation with Budapest Autumn Festival

Planned date: 10-13 October 2008

We are accepting original films and videos on dance and movement,
camera re-works and experimental projects on body and gestures with no
restriction on its length and subject.

A DVD format copy should be sent to Workshop Foundation no later than 15 April 2008 (postmark).

Workshop Foundation / Gabor Pinter
1094 Budapest, Liliom u. 41.
HUNGARY

It is also the deadline for submitting the on-line ENTRY FORM.

A professional jury will select the films into the screening programme.
Applicants will be informed about the decision by 30 July 2008.

Do not hesitate to contact us for further information: editfest@yahoo.com

Thank you,

Gabor Pinter
Program Curator

ON-GOING (No deadlines)

VIDEO ART REQUEST

Jorge Sepulveda T. (alias lulo)
Curador Independiente
www.curatoriaforense.net