Posts Tagged ‘NYC’

On Sunday May 6th 2012, a crowd of 100+ people came out to The Wild Project in the East Village for a screening and dance extravaganza by the Girl Walk//All Day community.

Opening the show was a performance by the flex group Street’s Finest with a guest appearance by Anne Marsen (star of Girl Walk//All Day). Sporting new pink hair, Anne danced fiercely along side the six guys in the group, who popped, locked, and dropped it as soon as they walked onto the stage. In black preppy outfits with red sneakers, they danced to some of today’s hottest songs including Ellie Goulding, Starry Eyed. In between each song mix, a comedic voice would transition into the next song keeping the audience members on their toes. Throughout the performance were movements of slow motion, acrobatics, tutting, and freestyle clumps. One particular moment that stood out was when one male dancer supported all of his weight from his arms while being on top of another partner’s back. The audience embraced the high energy of this group with their comedic styles and facial gestures. At the end everyone got to their feet to applaud. Who knows maybe we will see them on America’s Best Dance Crew?! Read the rest of this entry »

Mata Hari, an erotic dancer and courtesan, was executed by firing squad for double espionage in World War I. After her death, she was decapitated, her body donated to anatomical study, and her head displayed at the Musee d’Anatomie in Paris. In her latest short, How Mata Hari Lost Her Head and Found Her Body, filmmaker Amy Ruhl takes Mata Hari’s tragic ending and reimagines her as a strip tease artist whose ability to remove her head takes Belle Époche Paris by storm. Using Oscar Wilde’s Salome as a site for narrative and historical interaction, the film draws upon the cultural phenomenon of “Salomania” among largely lesbian and bisexual female performers in order to engage with an era when Orientalism sold, scandal became success, and deviant desires equaled a crime punishable by death.

For her Kinetic Cinema program, Ruhl will show How Mata Hari Lost Her Head and Found Her Body, using the film as a site to examine how the female body, under the unique technology of cinema, has been the primary source of spectacle since the beginnings of film. Ruhl’s work engages with sources ranging from George Méliès’ “trick films,” to Nazimova’s Salome (Dance of the Seven Veils) to Vera Chytilova’s phantasmagoria scene in Daisies, one of the most lauded Czech new wave films. She will present examples of these influences and discuss how they have informed How Mata Hari Lost Her Head and Found Her Body which was made in part by collaging early film footage together with live action animation.

The program will open with two shorts by contemporary experimental filmmakers, Kerrie Welsh and Amy Greenfield.

Kerrie Welsh’s Peter, Peter… is a dark retelling of the children’s rhyme “Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater,” that illustrates the disparity between the narratives we construct and the realities they represent.

Amy Greenfield’s Wildfire is the final film in her acclaimed Club Midnight film cycle and depicts women “clothed” in electronically generated flaming colors, reincarnating Thomas Edison’s 1894 hand-tinted film, Annabelle Dances.

Both filmmakers will join Ruhl for a lively discussion with the audience.

Monday, May 7th, 7:30pm

$9 suggested donation – Tickets

Uniondocs
322 Union Avenue (at Maujer Street)
Brooklyn, NY 11211

Trains:
L train to Lorimer street
G to Metropolitan Ave
J train to Hewes Street

Go to our website for more information on the rest of our Kinetic Cinema season.

Girl Walk // All Day, a music video of epic proportions will be coming to New York, NY Sunday May 6th 2012 for a screening at The Wild Project in the East Village. There will also be a special dance performance by Flex group, Streets Finest.  Tickets are available here.

Additional screenings will be added to their website in the next few weeks, check the events page for a screening near you.

Check out one of their latest videos featuring  Flex group, Streets Finest.

PORCH STORIES, Photo: Gary Tacon

Kinetic Cinema: Let me Entertain You

Screening and discussion with Marta Renzi

Marta Renzi, an acclaimed choreographer and filmmaker, curates a provocative program of Kinetic Cinema that reveals the real inspiration behind her work, and reminds us of why art matters:

“Asked to share something about why I make dance films, I find myself showing excerpts from feature films that include a prison gang, a drunken orgy, and run the gamut from Greek tragedy to Saturday morning cartoons. To accompany these, I’ve chosen bits from my own dance films featuring characters with everyday lives and actual jobs – nursing aide, garbage collector, fast food worker, bartender – and who dance like it.”

Arthur Aviles, a long time performer and collaborator of Marta’s will open the evening with a video and solo piece of his own.

Marta Renzi has been making dances professionally since 1976.  In 1992, Marta received a New York Dance & Performance Award (a “Bessie”), and in 1995 was the first recipient of a Dancing in the Streets award as “a fearless explorer of all manner of unconventional sites, integrating art into everyday life.” In 1981, she made YOU LITTLE WILD HEART, a half-hour video dance for PBS, followed in 1989 by a second for television entitled MOUNTAINVIEW, made in collaboration with filmmaker John Sayles. Since 2005, she has self-produced several short films which have been screened nationally and internationally.

Arthur Aviles is a Bessie Award-winning dancer and choreographer of Puerto Rican descent. Mr. Aviles was a member of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, and toured internationally with the company for eight years 1987 to 1995. In 1996 Mr. Aviles founded Arthur Aviles Typical Theatre (AATT) in Paris and moved the company to the Bronx the same year. In December 1998, he inaugurated a new performance space in the American Banknote Building, a warehouse in the Hunts Points section of the Bronx. His company is the centerpiece of BAAD! – The Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance.

One of the world’s leading festivals devoted to short films, Clermont-Ferrand in France is a vital showcase and a market for shorts, attracting over 100,000 visitors each year. Often referred to as the ‘Cannes’ of short film, it is now in the fourth decade. Originally Clermont-Ferrand screened only fiction films and only on 16mm and 35mm. But with the arrival of new technologies, a new competition called LABO (The LAB) was established in 2002. The LAB brings audiences films at the crossroads of different techniques and genres such as Fiction/Documentary, Experimental/Fiction, Animation/Documentary, etc.

Dance Films Association in collaboration with Balagan Film Series (Boston) hosts Calmin Borel, one of the curators of the LABO Competition, and Alla Kovgan, a 2012 LABO jury member and filmmaker who put together three programs of films from the collections of the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival (France).

Program 1

“Program 1: Dance and Rhythms of Life” celebrates choreography for the camera spanning over two decades. Absurdity and beauty of everyday life, personal dramas and comedies, relationships of people, objects and the machines are all expressed through dance, gesture and movement. Virtuosic, moving and inspiring! Approx. 90 minutes

WHERE: 92Y Tribeca, 200 Hudson Street, Ground Floor New York, NY 10013, 212.601.1000

WHEN: Friday, March 2, 7pm

COST: $12

Program 2

“Program 2: The Clermont-Ferrand Highlights 2011-2012″ features a diverse and eclectic collection of recent favorites and awarded films from around the world. Approx.100 minutes

WHERE: 92Y Tribeca, 200 Hudson Street, Ground Floor New York, NY 10013, 212.601.1000

WHEN: Friday, March 2, 9pm

COST: $12

Program 3

“Program 3: Dancing Frames” is the second program dedicated to dance and choreography for camera. A dance uprising against disappearing jobs, an orchestration of football fans, an exquisitely choreographed voyage through everyday life during the summer vacations, dances of light throughout the city of Tokyo, a dancing romance set against the backdrop of New York’s gay scene… A splendid musical mix! (Approx. 80 minutes)

WHEN: Sunday, March 4, 5.30pm,

WHERE: Barbès, 376 9th St, Brooklyn, NY, 11215

COST: $10, DFA members $8 (space is limited)