Posts Tagged ‘Cinedans’

With its sleek and beautiful presentation, savvy programming, and multi-disciplinary approach, The Netherlands’ Cinedans Festival is one of the greatest events of the year for dance film. The line-up this year promises not disappoint with new premieres by well-loved directors: Thierry de Mey (LA VALSE) and Clara Van Gool (COUP DE GRÂCE); new documentaries about well-loved choreographers: Jiri Kylian (JI?Í KYLIÁN: MÉMOIRES D’OUBLIETTES) and Lucinda Childs (LUCINDA CHILDS’ DANCE); and innovative installations that expand the concept of dance to new realms never before possible: DANCE ENGINE [interactive game] and the wearable film WHEN WE MEET AGAIN.

This year Cinedans continues to be progressive and visionary for the field. Besides offering regular screening programs, they have instituted a contest for One Minute Dance Films, a selection of 24 of which will be featured on various monitors throughout the festival. Other innovative programs feature 3D dance films and online dance films culled from the web. Aspiring filmmakers will appreciate the PITCH SESSION on Dec. 4th where attendees can pitch their ideas to a panel of dance film distributors and producers.

Mixing high art with low art, new and old, Cinedans gets the balance just right, and shows us why dance film is so vibrant and exciting today.

For more information and to view the entire festival schedule and programs go to: http://cinedans.nl

BLACK TRAIN IS COMING by John Williams

Sept 30- Oct 23 2011

MAASTRICHT, NETHERLANDS

BodyTalks is a study into how the disciplines of video art and short dance films influence each other, and how they can evoke new, unexpected interpretations of bodily expression or body language.

The street is where everyone is aware of their own bodily presence and where they are alert to the nonverbal signals from others. In this public space, the BodyTalks – Video Art & Cinedans in Public Space exhibition shows 23 videos that focus on the moving body. The selected works of art offer a diverse picture of the strength, wealth and scope of non-verbal communication and dance. The videos and short dance films have rarely been shown outside the walls of arts institutions or (movie) theatres, yet thanks to their specific content they can easily be shown in the urban landscape. In the public space, they enter into a direct one-on-one relationship with the onlooker or passerby in the street.

I’m about to start a twelve day cross-country road trip, driving from West to East with one of my best friends who’s moving back to Vermont. We’ll be stopping at a bunch of national parks along the way including Crater Lake (OR), Glacier (MT), Yellowstone & the Grand Tetons (WY), and the Blackhills & the Badlands (SD). It’s gonna be great, but I won’t be able to post to Move the Frame for a while. There are lots of videodance activities happening around the world this summer, so I thought I’d leave you with a few things to keep you busy while I’m MIA.

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!

Hi All.

I apologize for the sparse postings the past couple of weeks. I’ve been slammed with school work at the end of the semester (I’m studying Media Management at the New School). I’ll share some of the wealth of my newly acquired knowledge soon, but in the meantime, here are some dance film/video events coming up this month.

Next Tuesday, December 11th
Dance Film Lab
@ South 4th Bar in Williamsburg
90 South 4th Street @ Berry
Subways: L at Bedford, J,M,Z at Marcy Ave.
Phone: 718.218.7478
8pm, free

The bi-monthly Dance Film Lab is a friendly gathering of folks interested in dance for the camera. People share their works (in any stage of progress) and get constructive feedback from the group. We all get to share who we are, what we’re doing, and what we need (which often gets miraculously granted!). And our gracious moderator Zach Morris (of Third Rail Projects blog) always makes everyone feel very warm and welcome. So come out, but shoot an email Zach first just so he knows you’re coming.

Last night I attended the DANCE MOViES Commission workshop run by my friend Hélène Lesterlin, dance curator at EMPAC (Experimental Media Performing Arts Center) in Troy, NY. It was a very inspiring presentation about the commission and the possibilities for creative experimentation in dance and media at EMPAC. The ratio of commission awards to applicants is very low, however I think it is still well worth applying to, for the process alone, and also to show the funding community that there are a lot of American artists out there that want to make dance for screen. Eventually other funders will sign on and join EMPAC’s efforts to support this fantastic genre. So Viva EMPAC and DANCE MOViES!

There is a wonderful festival in the Netherlands this month that I wish I could attend, called Dancing on the Edge: Confronting Dance from the Middle East. It’s a dance festival with a dance film component curated by Cinedans. The dance films are all from the Middle East, or made by artists from there, and tackle many topics from “West Bank Story” – a remake of the famous musical with competing Falafel stands and a taboo Israeli Palestinian love affair – to  “Horizon of Exile” a breath-taking installation about two Iraqi women torn between their country and their need to escape. Incidentally “Horizon of Exile” will be shown this January in New York during the Dance On Camera Festival. I can’t wait to see it!

So if you are in the Netherlands or thereabouts I highly recommend you check this festival out.

Dancing on the Edge
Confronting Dance from the Middle East
Amsterdam: 12-16 december
Rotterdam: 13-18 december
Groningen: 11-12 & 18-19 december

And to leave you with some moving images to muse over, my friend Hope Hall, a filmmaker, and occasional dance filmmaker, hipped me to this blog, La Blogotheque, where she shot one of their videos in the TakeAway Series. Essentially they shoot a band performing in some non-traditional space all in one take, and then post the take on their blog. Seems like a great idea for a videodance series too.

This is one of those TakeAways, and while it’s really a music video, it does have some adorable dancing, and it’ll make you want to move. So take it away!