A fascination for waves, the dance above and below sea level, leads one to wind, light, and hypnosis, and consider how rhythm is central to our being.

No two frames of wave footage are the same, nor are two seconds of being. The height, speed, texture of waves reveal the secret of rhythms

Exploring…

Would like to know whether anyone in Dance-Tech.net has a network to recommend for getting videos into high schools. Please let me know. 

Also, has anyone had any luck getting into the network for LETS MOVE, Michelle Obama's campaign. One would think this network would be a natural for dance filmmakers!! As you know, it's difficult to move one short film, but…

The screening of the two part film OLYMPIA directed by Leni Riefenstahl in 1936 made the women in re:PLAY 1913's audience to acknowledge the power of the female gaze. How often do we see evidence of that? Riefenstahl's exquisite framing of superb bodies in action, rhythmic editing, and the surreal dance film at the close of…

If a slim, handsome man or woman waits on you in a Manhattan restaurant, you just assume they are performers. But do you do the same in Chinatown and Flushing? Perhaps you should.  Since 1988, Qi Shu Fang, master of Chinese Opera, has been developing her own Peking Opera Company with her husband Ding Mei-kui in Queens. The professional lives of their company resemble…

I just spent 4 rewarding hours in the company of Peter Kubelka, courtesy of the filmmaker Martina Kudlacek. He is a Viennese man absolutely sold on his own ideas, so eager to share them, and so charmed by their endless possibilities, that we must dispend any skepticism. Martina Kudlacek, who made the 2002 documentary IN THE MIRROR OF MAYA DEREN, begins her film with Kubelka…

What does Jason Akira Somma’s installation “Phosphene Variations”  recently on exhibit at Soho’s Location One have in common with Snoop Dogg’s performance with Tupac this last April in Coachella? Both are take-offs of Pepper’s Ghost, a centuries old illusion popularized by John Henry Pepper in 1862 in which an image is bounced off the floor onto an invisible…

Soledad Barrios dares to touch us, to appeal to our empathy, and evoke an image of courage despite impossible circumstances. This ‪Madrileña‬, acclaimed by Alastair Macauley to be one of the greatest dancers of any genre, seems now to transcend dance all together. She commands our attention, emotionally and spiritually. She could be singing an aria or standing for a painter…

"We drank wine, watched porno films, danced as though we were dancing contact improv or working for Forsythe, Kylian, Anne Teresa de Keersmaker, " said the charismatic dancer Jordi Cortes Molina about his collaboration with Daniel Munoz in the making of COUP DE GRACE based on two men whose friendship was brought to an abrupt stop - only to be tested again after 40 years. "We tried everything to get to all the layers of the friendship of these two men with their long long history together.…

Tonight I will perform at St. Marks Church in Dagmar Spain's YELLOW IS NOT GOLD. Will I be able to replace moments in the piece that feel amorphous with those that feel potent and compelling?  Daniel Nagrin once advised his choreographic students never to verbally share the basic impulse for your choreography, save the urge to share through your dance. Guard it as your secret.  Lacking the toolbox of final cut pro to shape/morph/frame that image, I'm left to bumbling around in the dark room…

On January 30, 2012, NYC's Department of Homeless Services runs its eighth Homeless Outreach Population Estimate (HOPE). The survey estimates the number of individuals living on the streets, in parks and in other public spaces in New York City. A survey is a federal requirement for all cities wishing to draw down funding for homeless services provided by the McKinney-Vento…

EN DEDANS

Gabrielle Lamb, USA, 2011; 10m

A one-of-a-kind film collage that draws on dancers’ dream journals, choreography, structured improv and spoken text.

When I set out on my collaboration with the BalletX…

In 1994, I looked out at the sparse Dance on Camera Festival audience at Anthology Film Archives and asked anyone whether they had any suggestions for building the festival. Margaret Williams, the brilliant British director of OUTSIDE IN, came out of the dark from the back of the house, to shake my hand but within that handshake was the affirmation that DOCF indeed…

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) was a British writer whose criticism holds up over time. His depiction of "A Midsummer's Dream" reveals such a fresh perspective with an acute sense of how Shakespeare "catches the atmosphere of a dream. The personalities are well known to everyone who has dreamt of perpetually falling over precipices or perpetually missing trains. ... The author contrives to include every one of the main peculiarities of the exasperating dream. Here…

The editor Daniel Kontz for THE CAMERA BETRAYS YOU submitted by Liz Staruch and Mark O'Maley from West Chester University is a young talent to follow. Daniel transformed the team's flip-book idea into a dynamic, graphically pleasing jaunt, taut with tension. Shot on the High Line in NYC, THE CAMERA BETRAYS YOU makes you grin and wonder, as it draws you into its go-go/freeze rhythm. The video was created with 10,000 photographs of action and celebrated by the High Line on their website.…

Laura Taler, maker of the wonderful A VERY DANGEROUS PASTIME and Village Trilogy, said during her talk at Dance on Camera Festival that one of her professors urged her to use proprioceptive writing as a part of her practice.  "Through PW you learn to listen to your thoughts with impassioned curiosity, reflect on them imaginatively, and set them free."

Put on music that can run for 25 minutes, listen to your thoughts and play on them in print daily.

According to…

With limited resources, how should a dance film service organization best focus their efforts on nurturing the dance filmmaker? Do dance film festivals actually help the dance filmmaker? When DFA's Festival started in 1971, it formed a community, brought the user, producer, and filmmaker together. But now with over 5,000 film festivals and dance film festivals sprouting up everywhere, multiple options to screen your work on-line, what impact does a screening have on a filmmaker's career.…

Wondering how Wim Wenders 3d film on Pina Bausch is being received at Berlin Film Festival, I scanned the website of this famous festival. What can be learned from how they run it?

Asked to do a self-evaluation for DFA's Board, I am exploring a bit beyond the same final report requested by any funding agency, such as NEA. What more could be done?

The Berlin Festival proudly presents 8 categories of films: 1) BIG name fiction features expecting big audiences, 2) art…