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?!

Following the performance the noisy crowd started to settle down and take their seats as the film began. Girl Walk//All Day is a feature-length music video that follows three young dancers across the city of New York. In 12 chapters, this music video of epic proportions showcases some of the most fascinating places in New York City, while capturing the lives of average people. As the popular beats of Girl Talk’s music echoed through the hall, young adults in their 20’s began standing and bopping. As the upbeat music continued, more people began to stand and the knee pounding turned into full on jovial dancing. With beers in their hands, the crowd enjoyed the entertainment and continued to do their own thing. At funny moments in the film such as when Anne Marsen lays anxiously on the street in a white sign displaying, “Dance With Me,” audience members laughed, clapped, and hollered at the big projection in front of them. As the 12 Chapters were wrapping up, five young adults boogied their way onto the stage. Within seconds, a majority of the audience members were standing, skipping their way down the stairs and landing themselves on the open dance floor. As the end credits began pouring down the screen, the entire crowd eagerly clapped and roared and continued to dance wildly to the pulsating music.

After a while the crowd became smaller but some still continued to dance onstage including the film’s star, Anne Marsen. With her pink hair radiating off the overhead lighting, I made my way to her eager to ask some questions. Upon greeting the magenta colored hair-do girl, I realized Anne was one of the most down-to-earth people you will ever meet. In her black button down shirt, she stood before me still bouncing to the music and smiling. With the music still roaring out of the sound speakers, I asked her, “How does dancing make you feel?” Anne smiled and leaned forward simply stating that dance makes her feel, “alive and free.” I proceeded to ask her the most memorable aspect of shooting the film. Pondering for a second, Marsen commented, “pretty much everything” She later commented on the sections where she was filmed on Wall Street and with all the shopping bags. She continued to explain to me when walking with all the shopping bags, she would plow through people as if she was someone important. Not afraid to act snobbish and get a reaction from average humans, she would bump their shoulders and separate groups who were in conversations. As we laughed about what the people must of thought, I left her with one final question, “What could you say to someone who wants to follow in your footsteps?” She answered by saying, “get a camera and just do it.” She mentioned that finding friends and working together is a great way to get started. Thanking Anne for her time, she humbly smiled and continued to dance on the stage as her pink hair glistened across the theatre. Stepping away, I wondered what’s next for this upcoming star.

New York City watch out for Girl Walk//All Day. Not only is it showcasing some of the area’s best talent but it’s keeping the passion of dance alive for generations to come.

Check out all of Girl Walk// All Day videos on vimeo.

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.

Click here to view the embedded video.

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.

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)

FRAMEWORKS rolls out 6 new, exceptional dance films from near (Northampton) and far (Warsaw). All New York Premieres. All under 20 minutes. All selected for their choreographic punch and cinematic prowess.

This Sunday, Feb 12th @ 3pm
Dance New Amsterdam
BUY before FRI for $5

Featuring:

If she needs a third eye, she grows it
Rosie Trump
Houston, TX
New York Premiere, 6min

Around the Styx
Clotilde Amprimoz
Clermont-Ferrand, France
American Premiere, 4 min

A Praça
Filipe Martins & Ne Barros
Porto, Portugal
American Premiere, 13 min

Breakdown
In Kyung Lee
Northampton, MA
World Premiere, 4min

Press
Sarah Friedland
Providence, RI
World Premiere, 5 min

InSide
Anna Zuzanna Blaszczyk
Warsaw, Poland
American Premiere, 12 min

Dance New Amsterdam Theater
February 20, 2012 7:30 pm
$10 for DFA or DNA Members; $25 for Non-Members

Google Map
280 Broadway (entrance on 35 Chambers), New York, NY, United States, 10007

RSVP to brighid@dancefilms.org with Dance Film Lab in the subject line to reserve your place.

Screening excerpts of the key films that every filmmaker should know.  Focusing both on dance film and “traditional” films, this masterclass gives attendees an overview of development of film techniques, aesthetics and idioms, and discussion of concepts and the development of the cinematic form.

Instructor: Alla Kovgan
Alla Kovgan is a Boston-based filmmaker, born in Moscow (Russia). Her films and films that she co-directed have been presented worldwide including at the Sundance, Rotterdam, Toronto, Melbourne, Durban, Oberhausen, Clemont-Ferrand, MOMA, Louvre, Centre Pompidou, PBS (US), ZDF (Germany) and numerous others. Alla’s most recent film NORA (2008), her collaboration with the British filmmaker David Hinton, is an art film – a poetic biography of the Zimbabwean choreographer Nora Chipaumire. NORA has been an official selection of over 80 festivals, received 23 awards and will be broadcast on PBS in 2010. The two latest documentaries, which Alla co-directed and edited, an Emmy-nominated “Traces of the Trade” (2007) and “My perestroika” (2009) premiered at Sundance and on P.O.V. (PBS). Since 1999, Alla has been involved into interdisciplinary collaborations – creating intermedia performances (with KINODANCE Company), dance films and documentaries about dance such as “Movement (R)evolution Africa” (with Joan Frosch). Alla’s projects have been supported by Open Society Institute, LEF Foundation, Trust for Mutual Understanding, Bank of America Celebrity Series, among others. Since 2000, she has taught and curated dance film and avant-garde cinema worldwide as the Programmer of St. Petersburg Dance Film Festival KINODANCE (Russia) and as a co-Curator of Balagan Film Series (Boston). In 2009, Alla was awarded a Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship and a Brother Thomas Fellowship for artists working at a high level of excellence and creativity.

Kinetic Cinema: “Dance on Camera Extended”

Kinetic Cinema’s Dance on Camera Extended program last Saturday, February 4th, was an intimate yet rich event. After the screening viewers conversed on the diversity in the six films shown that evening, as well as the wide array of films at the Dance on Camera Festival the weekend before. Why do we yearn for an element of surprise in modern dance?  How does a dance film weave in narrative and does it have to be a complete narrative? Is it important to know where a choreographer is from?  Does it change our perspective?  These were just some of the many questions debated.

Thank you to those, including dance film choreographer and director Jody Oberfelder, who came out to join and share their perspective.  As she eloquently said it is conversations like these that make the events so worth it!

Presented in conjunction with CRS and the Dance Films Association.

Come join us for our next Kinetic Cinema, The MerryMakers Make Movies featuring the vaudeville shenanigans and silent films of The MerryMakers at Fort Useless in Brooklyn on Sunday, February 26th at 7pm (doors open at 6:30)!

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.