Fast forward (revisited)

[Deirdre Towers]

This week has been an exciting melange of opportunities blossoming for dance on camera on the internet. This made me think about the article I was asked to write in 2000 about the future of dance films. Will this prediction indeed happen? Below is an excerpt from the article...

"In 2050, when choreographers jetpack to their studios, they will arrive with their warm-up complete, having executed their stretching exercises along the way. The wall-size mirror-- which doubles as a screen and a computer secretary--greets them with the screen saver of yesterday’s best aerial variation. As the dancers straggle in, the choreographer walks through a heat-sensitive hallway programmed to search for a sound or music that is directly “in tune” with that day/that moment/that particular artist’s sensibility. That accomplished, she reviews her laptop notes: “Check video thesaurus for another leap to replace in time-code 01:06:20:04.” “Tell Samantha she must look into her gene pool to see what can be eliminated to erase her fears about re-entering the gravity field. She is breaking the rhythm of the group in the cloud scene.”: “Find someone whose legs serve as complement to Samantha’s torso. We’ll just have to substitute her from the waist down.”

Sooner than that—dancers may be complaining as much about their video lap tops as their Achilles tendons. Instead of bemoaning the loss of six weeks when an injury occurs, a dancer might seize the time to download images or graphics from the Web to spike up her video portfolio. Apple’s digital editing software “Final Cut Pro,” released in 1999, plunged the price of post-production, empowering choreographers with tools that writers have enjoyed for decades. Choreographers will be accustomed to working with split screens, morphing techniques, and spot corrections. Dancers and/or whole sections will be deleted, copied, moved, and added as easily as words. A video dance may become as much of a composite as a CD is now. Choreographers may also secretly seek the editorial feedback of composition software programs. Today’s writing software automatically comments if a sentence is extremely long or convoluted; a composition software will coach the beginning choreographer with similar movement suggestions. We might see laptops hurling out of dance studios with a robot’s voice harping, “Delete. Phrase is boring. Delete...”

Back in 1958, a year before the Cuban revolution, Graham Greene wrote Our Man In Havana, an amazingly timely spoof of incompetent spy networks. Midway in the novel, a doctor tells the main character, a vacuum cleaner salesman, “You should dream more, Mr. Wormold. The reality in this century is not to be faced.” As amusing as that statement is, it is subliminal advice that we all have lived by, to one degree or another. Maybe in 2058 a well-meaning friend will recommend a weekend free of dreams, virtual reality toys, and holographic nightclubs. “What you need, young man, is to dance more, barefoot in the grass!”

Dancers are realizing that they possess a key that can open doors not only to a new form of cinema, but to a vehicle that expands their art. That key is the same one that enabled them to master their technique: imagination. With the patience of a sculptor and an image in mind of what their bodies could become, dancers chip away at their block of flesh and muscles. They routinely summon mental pictures of complicated movements to assure smooth execution. Teachers challenge their students to master mind-body coordination by using imagery. Visual, emotional, and physical training operate in tandem so that the best dancers are always directing and starring in their own film, seen only by their mind’s eye and one as ephemeral as their dance.

The mirror was until recently a dancer’s most reliable companion. Then video began to vie for that position. As dancers come to regard cameras as more than mobile mirrors with a memory, who knows what could happen to the art of dance film? Conventions in each dance form, from ballet to butoh, might be reconsidered. The standard pas de deux might become a pas de quatre with the cameraman and editor as magicians lifting the ballerina to greater heights. Contact improvisation might expand in the filmed context with a lacing of two “takes”: one of the physical and one of the stream-of-conscious reactions between the dancers. Rousing finales and other standard crowd-pleasing tricks will be turned on their heads. The omnipresence of media will invigorate an ageless art.