Somewhere: The Life of Jerome Robbins
Written by Amanda Vaill
From the author of the acclaimed Everybody Was So Young, the definitive and major biography of the great choreographer and Broadway legend Jerome RobbinsTo some, Jerome Robbins was a demanding perfectionist, a driven taskmaster, a theatrical visionary; to others, he was a loyal friend, a supportive mentor, a generous and entertaining...720 pages, published 2008 by Random House Author to participate in a panel on January 16th after the screening of Judy Kinberg's American Masters Jerome Robbins: Something to Dance About

Suggested books for the dance on camera aficionado

2008 Annual Review
Glorious photos and descriptions of DFA's 36th Dance on Camera Festival's winning films plus provocative essays including: DORKY DANCE, YOUTUBE, AND THE NEW VAUDEVILLE by Latika Young; GLOSS, GRIT, DANCE/STORY, Lloyd Newson's THE COST OF LIVING by M. Candace Feck; EVOLUTIONARY DREAMS by Marcia B. Siegel; SCREEN DESIGN by Betty Jenkins; TIMELINE by Virginia Brooks; ELECTRIC SALOME and TRACES OF LIGHT, Book Reviews by Jody Sperling. Free to DFA Members. Discounted if purchased at a Festival 2008 venue. 80 pages, 4 color. Published by DFA. Order now

Anarchic Dance
by Liz Aggiss and Billy Cowie
Comprising a book and DVD-Rom, this package is a visual and textual record of the work of Divas Dance Theatre. The DVD-Rom features extracts from Aggiss and Cowie's work, including the highly-acclaimed dance film Motion Control (first premiered on BBC2 in 2002), rare video footage of their punk-comic live performances as The Wild Wigglers and reconstructions of Aggiss' solo performance in Grotesque Dancer. These films are cross-referenced in the book, allowing readers to match performance and commentary as Aggiss and Cowie invite a broad range of writers to examine their live performance and dance screen practice through analysis, theory, discussion and personal response. Published by Routledge, 08/02/2006.

Art and Visual Perception: A Psychology of the Creative Eye
by Rudolf Arnheim
Originally published in 1954, the 1974 edition inccludes chapters on balance, shape, form, growth, space, light, color, movement, dynamics and expression. 508 pages with extensive notes, illustrations, photoss, and bibliography. ISBN: 0-520-02613-6 Published by University of California Press

Art Time and Technology
by Charlie Gere
2006, 240 pages. Examines the role of art in an age of 'real time' information systems and instantaneous communication. The increasing speed of technology and of technological development since the early 19th century has resulted in cultural anxiety. Human kind now appears to be an ever-smaller component of dauntingly complex technological systems, operating at speeds beyond human control or even perception. This perceived change forces us to rethink our understanding of key concepts such as time, history and art. Art, Time and Technology explores how the practice of art, in particular of avant-garde art, keeps our relation to time, history and even our own humanity open. Examining key moments in the history of both technology and art from the beginnings of industrialisation to today, Charlie Gere explores both the making and purpose of art and how much further it can travel from the human body.

Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film
by Michael Ondaatje
The author of "The English Patient," became so intrigued by the editing of his subsequent film that he pressed the famous editor Walter Murch to explain his process. Marvelous secrets divulged. Published 2002. Barnes & Noble Also read Walter Murch's marvelous "IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE

Cutting Rhythms Shaping the Film Edit
By Karen Pearlman, A fascinating read and a must for any dance filmmaker. Written by a New York dancer who married the Australian filmmaker/writer Richard James Allen. To order, click here 304 pages
Copyright 2009, USD 39.95

Dance on Screen: Genres and Media from Hollywood to Experimental Art
by Sherril Dodds. Palgrave Macmillan, 2004

Dance and Technology/ Tanz und Technologie
(in German and English) Moving towards Media Productions - Auf dem Weg zu medialen Inszenierungen Edited by Söke Dinkla, Martina Leeker Including DVD 440 pages, ISBN: 3-89581-079-7. To order, visit the following website: www.buch.de

Digital Performance
Edited by Emanuele Quinz.Published by Anomos An independent research group based in Paris that disseminates information about new developments in contemporary arts. 408 pages.

Directing the Documentary
by Michael Rabiger, 1998 published by Butterworth-Heinemann
A comprehensive manual with everything you need technically and conceptually. "Directing" covers the methods, technologies, thought processes, and judgments that a director must use throughout the process of making a film. It emphasizes low-cost digital technology, which allows cutting-edge creativity and professionalism on shoestring budgets. This book offers eminently practical tools and exercises and shows you how to surpass mere technical proficiency to become a storyteller with a distinctive voice and style.

Dying Swans and Madmen: Ballet, the Body, and Narrative Cinema
by Adrienne L. McLean. Published by Rutgers University Press. 2008.
From mid-twentieth-century films such as Grand Hotel, Waterloo Bridge, and The Red Shoes to recent box-office hits including Billy Elliot, Save the Last Dance, and The Company, ballet has found its way, time and again, onto the silver screen and into the hearts of many otherwise unlikely audiences. In Dying Swans and Madmen, Adrienne L. McLean explores the curious pairing of classical and contemporary, art and entertainment, high culture and popular culture to reveal the ambivalent place that this art form occupies in American life. Rutgerspress.rutgers.edu/acatalog/Dying_Swans_and_Madmen.html

Envisioning Dance on Film and Video
edited by Eilzabeth Zimmer, Judy Mitoma, and Dale Ann Stieber
This book chronicles the 100-year history of dance for the camera and gives readers new insight on how dance creatively exploits the art and craft of film and video. In 53 essays, choreographers, filmmakers, critics and collaborating artists explore all aspects of the process of rendering a three-dimensional art form in two-dimensional electronic media. Many of these essays are illustrated by 93 photographs and a 2-hour DVD (40 video excerpts). Published by Routledge, 2002
ISBN: 0-415-94170-9

Explorations in Art and Technology
by Linda Candy and Ernest Edmonds
This book explores the fascinating relationship between artist and technologist through studies of innovative projects that push the boundaries of digital art. The research sheds new light on the nature of interaction between people and computers and provides insight into the characteristics of environments in which creativity can be enhanced. In doing so, it presents a case for organisations to develop strategies for offering environments in which collaborative, sustainable partnerships can thrive. What emerges is a story of new visions and new forms in a field that is set to transform traditional norms in both art and technology as we move through the 21st Century. Published in 2002 by Springer-Verlag, London. ISBN: 1-85233-5459. Amazon.

Film Choreographers and Dance Directors: An Illustrated Biographical Encyclopedia, with a History and Filmographies, 1893 through 1995
by Larry Billman
A new edition is currently in the works! Published by McFarland. 1997 ISBN 0-89950-868-5 181 photographs, appendices, bibliography, 664pp.A comprehensive reference work to 970 choreographers who worked in nearly 3,500 films. For each, there is a biography, a description of their choreographic style and a listing of their stage, television, music video, nightclub, concert and film credits. The author Larry Billman is the Director of Entertainment for Tokyo DisneySea.

Filmdance - From 1890-1983
4 essays, 19 artist statements, plus all the films shown at the 1983 Filmdance Festival; $20. Make checks to Kinetic Awareness Center. Mail to: Elaine Summers, 537 Broadway, New York, NY 10003.

Hippo in a Tutu: The History and Connotations of Dance in Disney Animation
by Mindy Aloff
The New York writer clarifies that "the art form is integral to the Disney experience, whether it's the complex ballet in Fantasia's "Dance of the Hours" sequence, or Louis Prima's jump-n'-jivin' in The Jungle Book's 'Just Wan'na Be Like You.'" Buy now

Lines, A Brief History
by Tim Ingold, 2007, 186pages
"What do walking, weaving, observing, storytelling, singing, drawing and writing have in common? The answer is that they all proceed along lines. In this extraordinary book Tim Ingold imagines a world in which everyone and everything consists of interwoven or interconnected lines. Ingold's argument leads us through the music of Ancient Greece and contemporary Japan, Siberian labyrinths and Roman roads, Chinese calligraphy and the printed alphabet, weaving a path between antiquity and the present. Setting out from a puzzle about the relation between speech and song, Ingold considers how two kinds of line - threads and traces - can turn into one another as surfaces form or dissolve. He reveals how, with the dawn of the modern era, the moving line was gradually transformed into a static point-to-point connector, only to be fragmented by the dislocations of postmodernity. Drawing on a spectrum of disciplines including anthropology, archaeology, classical studies, art history, linguistics, psychology, musicology and philosophy, and with more than seventy illustrations, this book takes us on an exhilarating intellectual journey that will change the way we look at the world and how we go about in it. Tim Ingold is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen" - Available from Amazon

LIVENESS: Performance in a Mediatized Culture.
by Philip Auslander
Addresses what may be the single most important question facing all kinds of performance today. What is the status of live performance in a culture dominated by mass media? Since its first appearance, Philip Auslander's ground-breaking book has helped to reconfigure a new area of study. Looking at specific instances of live performance such as theatre, rock music, sport, and courtroom testimony, "Liveness" offers penetrating insights into media culture, suggesting that media technology has encroached on live events to the point where many are hardly live at all.In this new edition, the author thoroughly updates his provocative argument to take into account new digital and media technologies, and cultural, social and legal developments. In tackling some of the last great shibboleths surrounding the high cultural status of the live event, this book will continue to shape discussion and to provoke lively debate on a crucial artistic dilemma: what is live performance and what can it mean to us now?Anna Brady Nuse writes, "His analysis of how media has effected live arts is spot on. Every performer should read this, but especially performers who use or make media." 2008 pages January, 2008 Published by Routledge

On the History of Film Style
by David Bordwell
Another venture into poetics, this time concentrating on international stylistics. It’s a book of historiography, reviewing three major trends in understanding the history of film style: the orthodox position that emerged in the 1920s (and still governs most history-writing); a counter-position that emerged with André Bazin’s generation in France during the 1940s and 1950s; and a modernist wave that emerged during the 1960s and 1970s, epitomized by the work of Noël Burch. A fourth chapter brings the story up to date, concentrating on “revisionist” work in early cinema (Charles Musser, Tom Gunning, Kristin Thompson, Ben Brewster, et al.). Each chapter offers some criticisms. The fifth chapter suggests studying the history of style as linked problems and solutions, and the approach is illustrated through a history of depth staging. Harvard University Press, 1997.

Making Video Dance
by Katrina McPherson
A ’how-to’ manual for choreographers, dancers and students who want to make dance films by a Scotland based artist. The guide combines practical help with aesthetic discussion in an anecdotal and accessible style. This manual includes exercises to be used inside, or outside the classroom, a production diary, interviews with leading practitioners on both sides of the camera, and a glossary of terms. Published by Routledge, Available through Amazon.

Maya Deren and the American Avant-Garde
edited by Bill Nichols
Regarded as one of the founders of the postwar American independent cinema, the legendary Maya Deren was a poet, photographer, ethnographer, filmmaker and impresario. Her efforts to promote an independent cinema have inspired filmmakers for over fifty years. Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) ranks among the most widely viewed of all avant-garde films. The eleven essays gathered here examine Maya Deren's writings, films, and legacy from a variety of intriguing perspectives. Some address her relative neglect during the rise of feminist film theory; all argue for her enduring significance. The essays cast light on her aesthetics and ethics, her exploration of film form and of other cultures, her role as (woman) artist and as film theorist. Maya Deren and the American Avant-Garde also includes one of the most significant reflections on the nature of art and the responsibilities of the filmmaker ever written--Deren's influential but long out-of-print book, An Anagram of Ideas on Art, Form and Film, in its entirety. Published by U.C. Berkeley Press, 2001 ISBN: 0-520-22732-8 Amazon.

River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West
by Rebecca Solnit
A great read! Fascinating anecdotes. Sure to inspire you. Penguin Books, 2004.

Video: The Reflexive Medium by Yvonne Spielman
2008, 371 pages
"A comprehensive catalog of video's aesthetic evolution from its early intermedial accords with television and performance to its more recent interactions with computers and networked digital media. As the media-specific distinctions between cinematic, televisual, and computer-based media have been eroded beyond recognition." Available from Amazon

The Visual Story: Seeing the Structure of Film, TV and New Media
by Bruce Block. Explores the "science" of visual presentation, from perspective to tone color and rhythm. Amazon

CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS

Ausdance, the Australian Dance Council, Conference Proceedings:Dance Rebooted: Initializing the Grid, July 1-4, 2005, Deakin University, the Australian Dance Countil - Ausdance Inc, ISBN 1 87525516 8(refereed).
Ausdance, the Australian Dance Council, Shifting Sands: Dance in Asia and the Pacific, 2006
Filmdance - From 1890-1983, 4 essays, 19 artist statements, plus all the films shown at the 1983 Filmdance Festival; $20. Make checks to Kinetic Awareness Center. Mail to: Elaine Summers, 537 Broadway, New York, NY 10003.
McPherson, Katrina and Fildes, Simon, (eds) Opensource {Videodance} : Symposium 15th - 19th June 2006 Findhorn, . Available through Lulu.
Vokoun, Jessica (ed), Screendance: The State of the Art Proceedings, PDF download: http://www.dvpg.net/screendance2006.pdf Numerous essays on Screendance from a wide range of authors. Screendance Conference directed by Douglas Rosenberg.

UNPUBLISHED THESES

Allen, Richard James, Out Of The Labyrinth Of The Mind:
Manifesting A Spiritual Art Beyond Dualism, University of Technology, Sydney, 2004
Pearlman, Karen, Cutting Rhythms: Ideas about the shaping of rhythm in film editing, University of Technology, Sydney, 2006

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