Breaking eggs

[Deirdre Towers]

Did anyone predict a year ago how apt would be the idiomatic expression ‘You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.’ So many metaphoric omelettes have been made in the last year and so many “eggs”/ lives have been broken, so many systems and structures have been shaken. According to the internet site, The Phrase Finder, this expression is a loose translation from the Russian phrase "to chop down a forest, splinters will fly" ("lyes rubyat, shchepki letyat") . Both the Russian and English expressions have survived for a century because of their ability to create instant understanding of the chaotic repercussions of change. Not all of us who profess to want change are fully prepared to duck those “flying splinters.”

Director/dancer Naomi Stikeman from Canada along with choreographer Crystal Pite filmed an unforgettable image in their 2009 Bravo!FACT supported short PINK NAVIGATOR.
We see a woman extend her leg out of bed to gingerly place an erotically arched barefoot on a floor strewn with eggs. The eggs, outside the kitchen and the barnyard, seem to be a poetic displacement and a potent symbol of birth bypassed. As the dancer gracefully passes through the treacherous terrain, leaving the eggs intact, we appreciate her deft avoidance of walking on egg shells.

The 2010 Dance on Camera Festival offers a treasure of uncanny images. Perhaps more than the virtuosity of dancers (though we are thoroughly charmed by that of the Cambodian artist Sokvannara Sar as profiled in DANCING ACROSS BORDERS) or screen adaptations of superb stage works (though hinted at in URBAN BALLET), the participants in the Dance on Camera Festival will remember the bold, personal images, the visual language of the filmmakers.

At press time, I am excited about the prospect of meeting this Saturday Blanca Añón, the set designer of CINETICA, one of the shorts nominated by the Jury for the Festival prize. The environments she created for this short directed by Ana Cembrero are extraordinary. A New York University/MFA Candidate, 2012, Blanca is here from her native country Spain, working on a visual and dramaturgical research project titled, “Evolution of the Christian Church Space.” What a provocative area of study. How indeed did the spiritual space for each religion become defined? How do dancers, many who consider their performing space sacred, create the environments that fully communicates what they have to share.

Many have set the value of dance films, the pursuit of making dance films as akin to creating a language that can be universally understood. In place of written symbols or sounds, the dance filmmaker's means of communicating is through images that involve the body, mind, spirit. No need to rush out to buy the Rosetta Stone software to understand the language of dance films. It doesn't exist yet. But how can one learn the secrets of communicating with the language of dance films? Start by attending the next Dance On Camera Festival!