Posts Tagged ‘dancefilm’

by Mollie Shapiro

Although the first month of our Videodance Contest has come to an end, we have a whole new crop of themes for the month of July. Our next theme is “Classroom or Stage.” All submissions and nominations are due by July 7th, and the contest winners will be announced on July 10th. Please scroll to the bottom of this post for more information on how to submit.

The winning videos for this week’s Videodance Contest for the theme “Rehearsal or Performance” are:

“Chunky Move’s Mortal Engine” by Chunky Move representing our performance category

There is an issue with the YouTube embeddable player, so please go to this link to watch “Mortal Coil”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pS1WALmBqUw

And

“One on One” by Caleb Custer for Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet’s Project 52

Rehearsal or Performance

When watching a performance, it is easy to become so wrapped up in a piece that you lose sight of the meticulous rehearsal process behind the polished execution. This week’s theme is an examination of the dichotomy between rehearsal and performance. While strongly interconnected, the differences between these two stages in the creative process are immense. Rehearsals often function as laboratories to experiment with movement material, and then hone in on the composition and execution of the movements. Once a piece reaches the performance stage, the focus shifts to how it looks to outside viewers (the audience). At this point visual effects such as lighting, costumes, and sets are incorporated, to create a seamless magical experience for the viewer.

Performance: Chunky Move’s “Mortal Engine”

“Mortal Engine” by the iconoclastic Australian dance company, Chunky Move (http://chunkymove.com/), is unique in that it incorporates choreography and animated visual effects to create a completely new hybrid form: an “intermedia” performance. The video of the performance is very effective at capturing the magic of this mingling of media and live performance, giving us a great sense of what it was like to see it in the theater. When watching this piece, it’s hard to fathom how it was made. The performance is utterly captivating and fascinating to watch. The technology behind the piece is a program called Calypso, that uses real-time generated graphics to accompany each dancer’s movements. To create the incredible effects shown on the stage, a projector shoots onto the floor, next to an infrared camera, which is next to infrared lights. Nick Roux, the operator for another performance by Chunky Move using this technology entitled “Glow,” explains that the camera, which is lined up exactly with the image of the projector, tracks the movement of the dancer and sends it to a computer running the program Calypso. The operator then responds to the choreography through a series of cues to create the stunning visual effects that move in time with the dancers. The sophistication of technology for real-time performance has made giant advances in recent years. Chunky Move has utilized these new technologies to great effect, making work that not only breaks technological barriers, but is also artistically innovative.

Rehearsal: “One on One” by Caleb Custer for Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet’s Project 52
Our winning rehearsal video, “One on One” is part of Project 52, a series of one-minute videos being posted each week for an entire year by Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet (http://www.cedarlakedance.com/). Each video is intended to give audiences a window into the company’s rehearsal process and give them information about the new pieces they are working on. “One on One” is about the exploratory zone of the rehearsal process in which the dancer must find the specific intention behind each movement in order to execute it with precision. In this video the rehearsal director explains that you cannot expect a dancer to fully absorb the information or grasp the concept of each movement after one rehearsal. Time must be spent one on one with the dancer in order to give the important information necessary to fully comprehend the movements. The rigorous concentration required for each movement is what makes rehearsing dance such a complex and extensive process.

Project 52 is a great example of how a dance company can continue to engage audiences even when they are off-stage. By showing the vigorous work that goes into each polished performance, audiences gain new appreciation for what they see, and are more informed about the piece. Dance is one of the most misunderstood art forms. A common question from audiences after seeing a modern dance performance is, What was that supposed to be about? An online rehearsal video series like Cedar Lake’s Project 52 can help audiences feel more clued into the performance they are watching, and give them a much richer and more meaningful experience.

Please leave us a comment, and let us know what you think about rehearsal and performance videos, this week’s winners, and anything else you’d like to share!

Next Week’s Theme for Movement Media’s Online Video Dance Contest

Theme: Classroom or Stage

Submissions are due by Tuesday July 7th.

Winners will be announced on Move the Frame on Friday July 10th.

Classroom could mean training videos, how-to videos, dance teachers and students, field study, or any other learning environment. Stage could mean performance, showing before an audience (of any size), the completion of a course of study, or any other final stage of a creative/learning process.

Please submit or nominate a video for one of these categories and tell us how you interpreted this theme.

HOW TO SUBMIT

• Submissions may be made by anyone – artists, film makers, and anyone who knows of online videos that fit the weekly themes.
• The video submitted must be under 10 minutes long.
• Pick/Submit one video to represent only one of the weekly themes.
• Send the link of the video to Movement Media
• The video submitted needs to be embeddable, ie hosted on YouTube or another sharable online video platform.
• Include a short biography/artist statement (if it is your work).
• For every submission, include a short summary that describes why you have chosen a particular video for the contest and describe how it relates to the weekly theme.
• Include a brief synopsis of the video.
• Include a link to your website (if you have one)
• Include your email address

Email all information to movementmedia@pentacle.org
If your submission is chosen for the weekly contest, we will contact you directly

Impetus for Contest Participants

• Have your videos seen by an online audience who’s interested in movement-based video.
• Receive publicity for your work/work of others
• Receive comments and feedback
• Automatic consideration for live screening at Kinetic Cinema in NYC.
• Automatic consideration for UMOVE, Movement Media’s Online Dance Film Festival in October 2009 (information and submission guidelines to be announced in early July).

UP-COMING THEMES FOR JULY:

Week three: Private or Public
Submissions due by July 14th. Weekly Contest winners will be announced on July 17th.

Week four: Pop Dance Phenomenon
Submissions due by July 21st. Weekly Contest winners will be announced on July 24th.

The final week of July will be guest curated by Doug Fox of Greatdance.com.

We wanted to provide you with the program notes and videos that Boris Willis presented at Kinetic Cinema, on June 10th at Chez Buskwick.  Since his program was about dance vlogging, all the videos he showed are available online, which we have provided the links to. Coincidentally, Willis organized his videos along the theme of amateur/professional, fitting perfectly with our first Weekly Videodance Contest.

Reality Dancevision: An Intimate Screen Capture of Dance Vloggers- Program Notes and Videos

Curator’s Note:

Boris Willis by Paul Emerson

The dance vlogger it seems, is a rare person to find. It is relatively easy to find dance bloggers, dance writers and dance photographers but finding professional dancers/choreographers who use the web as a primary source for showing a dance is more difficult. We see the powerful influence of the web with the disappearance of newspapers and the emergence of e-book readers such as the Kindle, the emergence of iTunes Music Store as the world’s largest seller of music, as well as the question of whether DVD’s will soon be outpaced by movie downloads. Even in this digital age, people love dance, as evidenced by video sharing sites that are replete with videos of the latest social dances and sophisticated dance videos made by amateurs.. I think that just as reality television can take you into the lives of ordinary people, online dance can take you into the lives of dance makers. We can get an intimate look at the person, not just the performer, through online video. I can’t predict that the web will provide a revolution in theatrical dance. However, I do sense a shift by some artists who feel as I do that one does not have to wait for their two nights in the theater to share their work. For this program, I will present several works by amateur and professional dancers that reveal the artist as both a performer and a person in a way that illuminates the purpose of dance in our lives as well as acknowledge the value of web as a venue.

–Boris Willis
Enjoy… Read the rest of this entry »

by Anna Brady Nuse

(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

Read the rest of this entry »

(“Maybe we all dream to be………?” by T.A.G.San Francisco, shown at the March 25th Artist Salon with Jaki Levy)

At the last Artist Salon on March 25th at Chez Bushwick, Jaki Levy, a media artist and new media consultant, discussed dance work created specifically for the web. The question of the evening was: Why should artists make dance films specifically for the web? In short, making dance videos for the web is convenient, inexpensive, and relatively easy to do.  For dance works in progress, posting videos on the web allows artists to conduct “audience test screenings”  and get feedback.  Web videos also offer artists the ability to communicate and mix media in different ways.

Jaki Levy compiled a few videos that gave us a peek into the present + future of dance, art, and technology on the web.  Some of the work was completely choreographed, others were more improvisational.  Jaki shared how videos are created for different purposes, and gave examples of what a digital performance world looks like, including live web casts, web series, and site specific performances.

For example, Tendu.TV is looking for a mass market for dance by offering high quality broadband content of dance concerts and dance for camera works. Jaki showed an example of a show produced for Tendu.TV by Marlon Barrios-Solano entitled “Dance-tech Ep. 1“. In this episode Marlon interviewed various international choreographers talking about their work and intercut the footage with excerpts from their New York performance seasons.

Troika Ranch was exploring a process of editing for their up-coming multi-media show, “Loop Diver”and shared it with their MySpace friends.  This process is called “Algorithmic editing” and it assaults the senses. In this experiment (a collaboration between Troika Ranch and Street Pictures), a simple phrase of movement is fractured into thousands of shots in various locations all over Brooklyn, New York.

3rd Rail Projects & Julie Fotheringham both used web video  to share their site specific performances with wider audiences. 3rd Rail Projects fully integrated  web activities into their recent month long performance series at the World Financial Center by posting videos online and writing about each day’s performance on their blog. In this way, the work had both an online life and a physical life that co-existed and supported each other.

Julia Fotheringham makes guerilla-style dances that interrupt normal routines and cause people to stop and observe. The video is both a document and a voyeuristic view of the performer’s journey through the city.

“A Facet of the Real” explored how performance in “first” life and Second Life can intersect, creating a trippy situation in which a live performance is viewed in real time by online avatars in a virtual venue.

Some artists make web videos for artistic purposes, others for marketing purposes, and some have both in mind.  The intention of web videos can be to develop audiences by hooking viewers online and enticing them to come to live shows or screenings, or to simply to post a personal video diary from the studio. The web space allows for both anonymous and public modalities and is as broad and rich as the physical world. What is exciting is how dance artists are starting to embrace the web for all its potential. It feels increasingly apparent that we are all media-makers now.

To see all the clips from the screening and read more commentary go to Jaki’s blog post at: http://www.arrowrootmedia.com

by Dawn Paap and Anna Brady Nuse

Kinetic Cinema has company! A new monthly dance film series has started in Queens curated by Alexx Shilling at her dance/yoga/Pilates studio in Long Island City, The Radiant Movement. The Dance Film Nights happen on the last Sunday of each month. This Sunday, March 29th you can see a great documentary about the “mother” of experimental dance film, Maya Deren as well as shorts by acclaimed choreographer/performer Maureen Fleming.

Maya Deren

By donation, popcorn will be served!

Sunday March 29 at 6pm
at the Radiant Movement

Please RSVP to secure your spot: info@RadiantPilates.com or 917.696.0648