“Dance On Camera Extended”
presented in conjunction with CRS and the Dance Films Association
Saturday February 4th, 7pm
$10 Reservations

Program:

Let’s Dance, dir. Malia Bruker & Oscar Mollina

Let’s Dance is a sensual black and white film that captures the relief that art provides in everyday life.  The couple’s physicality changes, senses are heightened, and passion aroused when leaving the mundane and joining one another in dance.

Head First, dir. & chor. Jody Oberfelder

Jody Oberfelder uses physical imagination and wit in Head First, showcasing a playful, colorful and acrobatic crash helmet brigade under the Manhattan Bridge.

For Water, dir. Natalie Metzger

A collaboration between dancers from Indonesia and America, For Water is inspired by the importance of water to the islands of Indonesia and to water-starved California. The film follows a pilgrimage of five spirits to a sacred place to perform their ritual for water.

En Dedans, Gabrielle Lamb

New Yorkers and dance film-lovers from around the world look forward to the Dance On Camera Festival each year. For the past 40 years, this annual festival has been the central anchor and source for new dance on film. The 40^th edition of the Dance On Camera Festival will take place from January 27-31 at the Walter Reade Theater as well as the new Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center at Lincoln Center.

While we at Move the Frame tend to focus primarily on dance made for the screen, the festival’s programmers have always made an effort to encompass the vast range of styles and genre’s that make up dance film. “We try to reach far and wide to find films that connect dance and camera in ways that will surprise and inspire viewers to deepen their interest in both mediums,” says Joanna Ney, co-curator of the festival. “This year’s selection offers a diversity of subject, style and genre aimed at the traditionalist as well as the iconoclast.”

Dance enthusiasts will find many documentaries about dance luminaries such as Natalia Makarova and Robert Wilson, historic dance presenters and companies such as Jacob’s Pillow, the Joffrey Ballet, and Pilobolus, and innovative choreographer Wayne McGregor. Film enthusiasts will enjoy innovative shorts by inspired directors such as Clara Van Gool, Pontus Lidberg, and New York’s own Jody Oberfelder.

In another post we’ll share with you our personal picks for the festival, but for now, go to DFA and the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s websites to see the full lineup, as well as schedule and ticket information.

FRAMEWORKS accepts submissions of original works of choreography for the camera, less than 20 minutes in length and made within the last 7 years. Videos of staged work and documentary films are fabulous but won’t be reviewed in this series. On average, 30-75 films are submitted for each screening, and 4-7 are selected. Submission is and always will be free.

Deadline for the Winter 2012 Series is January 31st. Please note this is the received by deadline.

For more information and application forms go to: http://www.frameworksdance.org/

This Sunday choreographer Aynsley Vandenbroucke will present a screening and discussion at Moviehouse on the ways artists form relationships and navigate their personal lives and their art. The following Sunday dance filmmaker Zena Bibler will teach a down and dirty DIY dance film-making workshop at Green Space Studio in Long Island City.

Exploring Artistic Relationships

A screening and discussion with Aynsley Vandenbroucke

Moviehouse @ 3rd Ward
Sunday November 13th, 7pm Doors and Food, 8pm Screening
$5 suggested donation

In research for her new piece, Vandenbroucke’s program will examine artists’ relationships between personal partnership and artistic practice. From documentaries and films featuring New York based artists like Patti Smith and John Cage, freedom and commitment, presence and absence, public and private, mobility and stability will be questioned and the debate will be recorded.

3rd Ward (map)
195 Morgan Ave
Brooklyn, NY 11237
718.715.4961
events@3rdward.com

The One-person Crew: Techniques and strategies for getting it all done yourself

Kinetic Cinema Workshop with Zena Bibler

Green Space
Sunday November 20th, 3-6pm
$30 in advance, $35 at the door

Want to make a dance film but don’t know where to start? In this workshop filmmaker and choreographer, Zena Bibler will teach strategies for making dynamic films through use of camera positioning, perspective, rhythm, and movement composition. This workshop is especially geared towards dance filmmakers interested in filming and editing themselves. Register Now!

Green Space (directions)
37-24 24th St. Suite 301
Long Island City, NY 11101
718.956.3037

“Out, adventurous and in-your-face, DV8 Physical Theatre is a stroppy tomboy in the genteel world of dance.”
-the guardian

DV8 Physical Theater is a touring company dedicated to creating audacious works motivated solely by artistic need and concentrates on breaking down the barriers between dance and theater. Under the direction of Lloyd Newson, DV8 has produced 16 highly acclaimed and award winning performance and film works since their beginning in 1986, including Enter Achilles, Strange Fish, and the unconventional sensation The Cost of Living.

DV8 will be hosting open auditions in New York City on Saturday, 19 November at Chelsea Studios (callbacks 11/20/11).  The company is seeking highly experienced diverse dancers for a new work to be developed in 2013/14, and for roles in the Can We Talk About This? tour in 2011/12.

Date/Time:
19th November 2011
10am – 6pm
REGISTRATION: 9am
(Callbacks to be held by invitation only on Sunday, November 20)

Venue:
Chelsea Studios*
151 West 26th Street, between 6th and 7th Avenues
New York, NY 10001, USA

For more info about auditions click here.

On October 21 & 22 the company will premiere their latest performance project, Bound at the LaGuardia Performing Arts Center, examining the lives of nine individuals living under occupation. For Kinetic Cinema, they will provide a demonstration of their unique working technique with Samar Haddad King live on Skype, along with a curated selection of videos related to Bound.

Yaa Samar! Dance Theatre has been hailed as “awesomely athletic” by Chicago Stage Style, and “Like a ray of light coming out of the arid desert…leaving the audience mesmerized in their seats” by Hussein Daaseh, Al Rai. You can more about their long distance creative process in this article by Jennifer Edwards for the Huffington Post.

Here is a video about the making of Bound.

Click here to view the embedded video.

BOUND

October 21-22, 2011 at 7:30pm

LaGuardia Performing Arts Center, Mainstage Theater
31-10 Thomson Ave, Long Island City
7 Train to 33 St/ Rawson St
Tickets: $15 Advance / $20 at the door / $10 Students
www.ysdt.org

Kinetic Cinema with Yaa Samar! Dance Theatre

Saturday December 3rd, 4:30pm

CRS (Center for Remembering & Sharing)
123 4th Ave, 2nd FL
New York, NY  10003
212.677.8621
info@crsny.org
$10 suggested donation

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.