Dance on Camera Ezine
September-October, 2006

PHOENIX DANCE Makes the Short List for 2006 Oscars!

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced that the field of Documentary Short Subject entries has narrowed to eight films, from which three to five will earn Academy Award® nominations. Every year about 75 to 100 documentary shorts (under 40 minutes) are submitted to the Motion Picture Academy for a potential Oscar nomination. Yesterday the Academy announced that PHOENIX DANCE by Karina Epperlein made the Short List!

This wonderful short which received two small grants for finishing funds from DFA, has been sweeping festivals, including Dance on Camera. The short shows how after losing a leg to cancer, Homer Avila returns to the stage, performing with Andrea Flores a dance choreographed by Alonzo King. The rehearsal process is fierce and tender. Solo or intertwined, Homer collaborates in his now “imperfect” body - and his “one-leggedness” turns into transcendent beauty.whi

The eight films on the short list are:
“The Blood of Yingzhou District”
“Dear Talula”
“The Diary of Immaculée”
“Phoenix Dance”
“Recycled Life”
“Rehearsing a Dream”
“A Revolving Door”
“Two Hands”

Nominations for the 79th Academy Awards will be announced on Tuesday, January 23, 2007, at 5:30 a.m. PST in the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater. Academy Awards for outstanding film achievements of 2006 will be presented on Sunday, February 25, 2007, at the Kodak Theatre at Hollywood & Highland Center®, and televised live by the ABC Television Network at 5 p.m. PST, beginning with a half-hour arrival segment.

Karina Epperlein sent us some of her recent reviews.

"I was blown away. Not only is it an amazing story but the dancing and your filming & editing of it are gorgeous."
– Deidre McGrath, Community Resources for Independence

"Dance is a performing art, and much of its live energy gets lost when transferred to film. Its power, however, remains in Epperlein's work. "Phoenix Dance" is not a lamentation or a ploy to evoke sympathy from the audience. [T]he film transcends Avila's story and speaks to the meaning of true artistry."
– From eclpse.livejournal.com

www.karinafilms.us

Just Who Do You Think You Are?
asks Thorvaldur Thorstein

Icelandic artist, writer, and curator Thorvaldur Thorstein whose name means God (Thor) make something happen (Valdur) has found that people are startled by that question which is often perceived as confrontational. But Thorvaldur is challenging you to examine what about that question puts you on the defensive. Emphasize different words in that sentence and you’ll find that the negative connotation disappears, freeing you to wonder just what you do think you are.

The main dilemma for Thorvaldur is how not to fall into the trap of giving curators and the public exactly what they think they want. Just how does one stay true to oneself? He has found that simple questions can make people connect their art with their being. This process is part of a larger one to revitalize a sense of community and push artists to take responsibility for their work. He tries to be grateful for the unique opportunity that being an artist gives you to live your life to the fullest. The books of American writer Suzi Gablik, “The Re-enchantment of Art,” “Sacred Altars,” and “Has Modernism Failed” have inspired him.

His concerns have not fallen on deaf ears with his partner, Helena Jonsdottir who hosted DFA’s Dance on Camera in Reykjavik on Iceland’s Cultural Night on August 19, 2006. Her dance videos, especially ZIMMER, about a couch potato, ANOTHER set in an Estonian prison and WHILE THE CATS AWAY, a comedy about prejudice, self respect and dreams fulfilled, have a slight political undertone. Strangely enough, the Icelandic government is behind her and has paid her to pursue her enthusiasm for dance on camera since 2001.

“I am probably related to everyone in Iceland,” said Helena. Certainly it’s evident though that she seems to know everyone in Iceland in its thriving cultural scene. After dancing and choreographing from a young age, she directed “Ms. Iceland” pageants for both stage and television for four years. This experience gave her an ease working with camera crews, blocking, and storyboarding ideas. Winning the Sk Stiftung award in 2004, Deutschen Videotanz Preiz, the encouragement from Magne Antonsen who initiated the Moving North series for which she produced WHILE THE CATS AWAY, and the admiration of the many co-producers behind ANOTHER, Helena is brimming with ideas and positive energy.

She secured two venues for dance on camera, one of them being 12 Tonar, what Icelandic Review called “Reykjavik’s headquarters for hipster music.” By putting dance on camera in front of people who might otherwise never consider it, Helena greatly expanded our audience and bridged the gap between the dance and music. What a way to open the way for change!

 

 

Julia Levien

 

 

Julia Levien, 94, DFA founding member & authority
on the dances of Isadora Duncan, Dies

Jennifer Dunning wrote in The New York Times, "A small, no-nonsense woman, Ms. Levien spoke her mind as a teacher in upbeat ways and had boundless curiosity — and opinions. She taught and lectured internationally and wrote many articles about Duncan, continuing to work until last year. Though she was not the only knowledgeable restager of the dances, Ms. Levien’s reconstructions helped to prove that Duncan choreographed rather than improvised dances, and that they had structure, set steps, gestures and patterns, all informed by a philosophy of naturally flowing and gravity-bound movement."

Ms. Levien danced the Duncan pieces “in a totally different manner which is nonimitative, nontraditional and her own,” John Martin wrote in a 1943 review in The Times. “She moves with great beauty and an apparently innate sense of dynamics,” he continued, describing her performance of her own choreography: “Few dancers can manage to make sustained, lyrical movement so engrossing simply as movement.”

Julia Levien and DFA Founder Susan Braun had a common love, Isadora Duncan. It was the lack of footage of Isadora Duncan that spurred the establishment of DFA. DFA produced a video ISADORA DUNCAN: TECHNIQUE AND CHOREOGRAPHY directed by DFA board member Virginia Brooks with Gemze de Lappe, Hortense Kooluris and Julia Levin in 1978. This 29 minute film included a technique class and performances of Schubert's Three Graces and Water Study waltzes, Chopin's Mazurka for Two and Polonaise Militaire, and Scriabin's The Mother and The Revolutionary Etudes.

In 1988, Julia Levien with DFA, as directed by DFA board member Penny Ward produced THE LEGACY OF THE CHOREOGRAPHY OF ISADORA DUNCAN. This 45 minute video introduced with stills to the tradition of Isadora Duncan with a performance of three movements from Tchaikovsky's Symphonie Pathetique and selected Brahms waltzes.

She wrote and illustrated “Duncan Dance, A Guide for Young People,” published by the Princeton Book Company in 1994.

Julia is smiling
as remembered by Lori Belilove

Julia is smiling. I can hear her voice. When we met in around 1973, I think, and I was to her the “girl from California Irma had sent to Hortense” but soon she came to understand that I was serious about Isadora’s work. Although I challenged her inconsistencies at times, I am honored to have received years and years of coaching from this remarkable woman. 

We met at a time of resurgence in Duncan Dance. From the Duncan Guild she formed in the 50’s it was in the 70’s that Julia (and Hortense Kooluris) took responsibility to transmit the legacy to the next generation.

In fact it is not hard to mention them both in the same breath - so distinct and individual as they were - they were a unique team that manifested in the Isadora Duncan Centenary Dance Company, of which I was a founding member. I can remember their performances of the Nocturne Duet like the back of my hand. They could dance together like undulating souls, reciprocating breaths, so pure, so committed.

Julia lead the way like a missionary, zealous yes, but with a clear understanding of the world of modern dance and Isadora’s place in it. She was the one who brought a modern perspective to the work, identifying the difficulties current generations of modern dancers have with the “Isadora Material”, as she often put it, saying “our center is up here, not down in the knees!”

Oh! I loved how she thrilled in showing dancers the fullness and power of the work –squealing at times “That’s it! That’s it!” She was always pushing, prodding and probing and, never wanting to feed our ego, she’d say, ”well, you’re closer”…. and often quoted Anna Duncan “No ‘superfluous’ movements, please!”

From there she would give her marvelous lectures, with or without slides, fluid and rich, exacting and entertaining. In 1990, after the Centenary/Commemnorative Company had dissolved, I formed my own Company and Foundation. Julia supported me and came on as our Lifetime Honorary Artistic Advisor, teaching classes, coaching the company and traveling with us. Our last trip was to Mills College, California in 2004 at the remarkable age of 92. She traveled with astounding independence giving her lectures and coaching us, drawing the attention of photographers, videographers, and the president of the College, but it was the students, the young people, who were especially drawn to her. Many religions teach about the moment of death, but few teach us about aging. To me one of Julia’s remarkable gifts was in her example of to grow old, how to age. As her performing days were less and less, she moved her talents in new directions- like diverting a great river of creativity – to her love of drawing and sculpture, exquisitely tying the dance in her body with her artistic mind’s eye. This transfer of energy kept her fresh and alive and thus fantastically stimulating and inspiring to be around. Young people flocked to her.

Julia and I had a special game. In her travels she would send postcards of newly discovered images that reflected dances we were working on. I was to guess which dances fit which images. I reciprocated. Then we would confer over tea realizing that some images and gestural themes were in many of the dances! The deliberate lines of Isadora’s dances were deeply rooted in her mind, hence her beautiful artwork done mostly from memory.

One quote of hers I have never forgotten was when my father was gravely ill and her mother had passed away, and she said, “Lori, you know, you never really grow up until your parents die.” Now with her death, I hope to grow up even more.

Julia was a tremendous and powerful teacher and friend.  I will remember her all my days.

Anarchic Dance
Edited by Liz Aggiss and Billy Cowie with Ian Bramley
Routledge, 2006, 197pp, $100 hardback, $43.16 paperback

Review by Elizabeth Zimmer

Performance artists and professors, friends and collaborators since 1980 and teachers at the art school of England’s University of Brighton, Liz Aggis and Billy Cowie are creatures of their age, making dance theater works involving visual media, documenting them on various websites, turning their career into a book with an accompanying DVD-ROM, and then turning the book into a touring lecture-demonstration.

You’ve got to hand it to them. Having only the most glancing acquaintance with their work (some of it was included in last year’s Dance on Film Festival), I find myself drooling over this collection, which is at once academic (strewn with footnotes and lists, an elaborate bibliography and a comprehensive index, color photos and film documents) and very lively, useful and funny. Aggiss and Cowie dedicate it to themselves, and have written about half of it; the rest is a compilation of essays by American and British critics and scholars (Sondra Fraleigh, Sherril Dodds, Carol Brown, Deborah Levy, and Valerie A. Briginshaw, with a foreword by critic Donald Hutera) trained up in the theory era.  I keep wondering what would happen if equivalent American artists tried to replicate this project. Where would they find the money, the scholars and critics with a strong interest in documenting their work, and the time to pull it all together?

Performing under their own names and as a group called Divas Dance Theatre since the early ‘80s, they also teach together (Aggiss’s title is Professor of Visual Performance); among their pupils is the prodigious Alison Murray, whose Wank Stallions won the award for best experimental film at a Dance Screen exhibition in Frankfurt in 1993). The volume, apart from being a rich compendium of information about a pair of self-described “outsider artists” and their oeuvre, is a pointer to what is possible:

If mainstream media ignore or denigrate your work, by all means collect essays—commission them, if necessary—that illuminate your product and process, make a DVD, find an academic press to produce a book, and Voila!  You will go down in history.

The entire enterprise is something of a great joke, simultaneously serious (the imperative to “publish or perish” is probably as real at British universities as it is in American ones, and the dance history documented here extends from German expressionists like Hanya Holm and Hilde Holger —the latter died at 96 in 2001—to contemporary British television) and very entertaining. Their substantial collaboration, extending from an ‘80s post-punk trio called The Wild Wigglers to award-winning films and installation projects (and of course this book) is practically unknown in the United States, but exemplifies what is possible in a country that has a  Foundation for Community Dance, an arts council that still supports experimental work, and a television network that believes in bringing that work before the public.

“Our work is driven by content, explores body politics and the performer as subject, and makes commentaries on language, wordplay, age, death, love, power, Thatcher, diversity and difference…. We aim to entertain, provoke, challenge and inspire, and blur the boundaries between high art and popular culture.”

They certainly succeed in this. I await the opportunity to view an entire festival, live or on screen, of their quarter-century collaboration, and recommend Anarchic Dance as in inspiration to American multi-media artists.  

Please support Dance Films Association.
How? Renew your membership, recruit a new member, organize a screening or set up a dance film lab (see article below) in your area. Become a sponsor.
Think in multiples of 50....
Thank you!

Invitation to the Dance (1956 and 2006)

Thinking about the 50th anniversary of DFA, I pulled some photos from the files of DFA founder Susan Braun. Up came the photo (left) of Susan, the only oneI have ever seen of her dancing. In the same group of photos were those of INVITATION TO THE DANCE, the first feature film to be produced in Hollywood, solely with dance, no words. Unfortunately it was a financial flop. How interesting that it came out the same year Susan founded DFA.

Gene Kelly's sunny annimation/live action film is filled with cheerful racial stereotypes, the sexy bomb shell, and his own choice to play a macho sailor. Wholesome, and energetic, Kelly swashbuckles his way through a cartoon world in a pioneering venture that took 4 years to make.

According to the website "Rotten Tomatoes," in December 1951, Congress passed a law exempting Americans from income tax if they spent 17 of 18 months away from the States. In an effort to avoid taxation, Kelly lived and worked overseas for a time; INVITATION TO THE DANCE was choreographed in France and shot completely off American soil.

In this year's entries, we got a moving documentary by German filmmaker Gerhard Schick titled INVITATION TO THE DANCE, BODY AND TABOO. Both works are so fitting for their times. A process documentary involving a cross-cultural collaboration between German and Kenyan abled and disabled dancers, INVITATION TO THE DANCE, BODY AND TABOO brings out everything - homosexuality, female circumcision, poverty, and creativity.

The 39-year-old Cologne dancer and choreographer Gerda König who leads the rehearsals has muscular atrophy. In her pieces, she confronts the social function of taboos. The courage to expose an audience to unusual and provocative images is derived from the struggle with the everyday world which she herself is forced to conduct on a daily basis.Since Gerda König formed the dance company DIN A 13 in 1995, she is a regular guest at dance-theatre festivals in Scandinavia, eastern Europe, South America and the USA. In 2005 she toured Brazil, Ethiopia and Kenya with her company. There, together with selected dancers, she created three pieces which were performed from 2 to 5 June 2006 as part of the Crossing Dance Festival at the Tanzhaus Düsseldorf. The film looks at one example, the development of the dance piece “CounterCircles” in Nairobi.

In Kenya there is virtually nothing resembling a professional dance scene, and most of the inhabitants of this East African country have had no contact whatever with dance theatre as an art form. While the non-disabled dancers had a certain degree of experience, the disabled ones had never been on a stage before. As in many African countries, rich and poor live cheek by jowl, but are separated by visible and invisible barriers. This separation between poverty and wealth, between interior and exterior, is the leitmotif of the piece. The insights into social conditions are first-hand, since Gerda König’s dancers themselves live in the slums that surround the capital.

Dance Film Lab: a playing (not proving) ground
by Rebecca Whitehurst

On Monday, October 2nd a group of strangers, linked by their craze for creating dance on camera, gathered one-by-one in a sizeable Williamsburg basement.  This basement, aptly tagged The Bunker, boasts a movie screen bigger than my entire Manhattan apartment! It’s a fabulous place and warmly welcomed Dance Film Lab’s successful inauguration. Many thanks to the host Kathleen Fitzgerald.

Presented by DFA, the evening of film and discourse was organized and skillfully moderated by Zach Morris, a video artist and choreographer. Morris met his intention of creating “a practical, supportive, no-pressure laboratory where artists are able to genuinely experiment, seek advice or feedback, and make connections with other artists in the field.”

Six dance filmmakers presented work: Victoria Murphy, Malene Schjonning, Tori Sparks, Evann Siebens, Anna Brady Nuse and Rebecca Whitehurst.  Pieces ranged from raw footage to finished films. The content varied greatly: from straight narratives to studies of the body moving in horizon-less space. Some works were created using film, others with video. And the artists employed all types of editing applications—from iMovie to Avid. (With the help of Kathleen Fitzgerald, the technical needs were smoothly met.)

After each showing, Zach facilitated a 10-minute feedback session. He asked questions that furthered our exploration of a piece and prompted all viewers to participate. What about the piece was successful? What really worked and why? By thus invigorating the discussions, Zach help grant the filmmaker constructive fodder that will surely feed their work and their spirit. While the Lab’s environment was one of inclusion and mutual respect, there was still plenty of room for constructive criticism.

Everyone seemed to enjoy discussing the work, as well as talking about the unique technical and artistic challenges of dance filmmaking; information about resources and opportunities was eagerly shared. All in all it was an enjoyable and stimulating evening. (I especially enjoyed the wine and hummus!) It will be great to see the evolution of the artists’ work at the next salon.

The Lab plans to meet once every two months. The next one will be December 4th.  Even if you don’t present material, it is a wonderful way to see cutting-edge work and to help foster a community of dance filmmakers. Please RSVP Zach Morris