Dance & New Media by Latika Young This spring has been a prolific season for dance for the camera on the internet. The seed that was planted with the video web-sharing site YouTube has mushroomed into an assortment of new online viewing venues, each with its own unique benefit to the videodance community. From Macfadden Publishing’s new dancemedia.com, to TenduTv, an internet television channel devoted exclusively to screening dance, to the virtually unlimited possibilities in collaborative dancefilm-making made possible by the Kaltura online editing platform, dance for the camera is finally exploding onto the internet. As much as one may appreciate (or not) the amateur aesthetic popularized by the YouTube dorky dance video, the more refined dance film never quite meshed with the vibe of this early video sharing site. With these new options, however, which all materialized over the last few months, dance for the camera is finding a new, more appropriate home for its many offerings. DFA had the pleasure of learning from Marlon Barrios-Solano, the founder of Dance-tech.net as our partner and consultant. It is due to his vast knowledge and keen awareness of the field that we first learned about dancemedia.com when it was only three days old at the time and about the open source platforms, such as Kaltura.DFA is now examining how best to utilize these new venues to broaden the audience base for dance films and even invite increased participation in the creation of dance for the camera. Below we outline these new endeavors and the ways in which DFA is fantasizing about our involvement. Dancemedia.com Launched officially this June by Macfadden Performing Arts Media, the publisher of Dance Magazine, Pointe, Dance Spirit and several other dance publications, dancemedia.com is designed to be a YouTube that is dedicated exclusively to dance. Marketed primarily to the readers of its various magazines, the site allows members to upload their own videos. Each of the sister magazines have their own “channel” so ballet videos, for example, can be uploaded onto the Pointe channel and instructional videos can be posted on the Dance Teacher channel. But the exciting news for our members is that DFA was given its own channel! So far various short dance for the camera clips and festival trailers have been posted and after only two weeks in not-yet-officially-launched status, the clips have still generated hundreds of hits. Since these magazines tend to attract younger readers, the feel of the site is also a tad juvenile (when uploading a video, the site exclaims “get ready to make your debut!”); at this point most of the video clips veer towards the recital tape end of the spectrum and many in the videodance world might feel uncomfortable placing their own creations in this forum. But the site and DFA’s channel is a perfect opportunity to reach hundreds of young dancers whose awareness of dance for the camera might be minimal or even non-existent. This is an audience that DFA had wished to target for the past several years. At one point we even flirted with the idea of creating a DVD specifically designed as an educational tool that could be sent to local dance studios around the country; of course the costs for such an undertaking would likely be insurmountably prohibitive. But dancemedia.com now provides an optimal platform perfectly poised for attracting these young audiences and potential creators via the online medium with which these youth are so comfortable. TenduTV Still in its final stages of development, TenduTV (tendu.tv) is “coming this summer, to a stage, monitor or television near you.” An Internet television channel, TenduTV will present dance performances, from both established and emerging choreographers, in an online forum that subscribers can watch on demand; it strives to provide dance lovers the opportunity to watch great performances “without having to go anywhere.” Although Tendu.TV will emphasize theatrical performances, negotiations are also in the works to screen dance films—documentaries and dance for the camera. TenduTv founder Marc Kirshner, who has been working on this venture for 4 years has asked DFA to present film highlights from the Dance on Camera Festival as well inteview programs with the artists involved. The possibilities with this type of Internet streaming are limitless as more and more people are becoming accustomed to watching films over the Internet. Netflix, the rental service provider that had traditionally sent DVDs through the mail, is shifting their offerings toward more web-based distribution. Many of their titles can now be watched instantly online and they just recently launched a relatively cheap ($100) television box that allows Internet-streamed video content to be transmitted to a television screen. Internet media can now be watched on the home entertainment system comfortably ensconced on a couch instead of in front of the computer in the home office. Viewers also no longer have to wait three days to receive their DVDs in the mail. As one user, Chuck Tryon, has written on FlowTV (an online critical forum on television and media culture hosted by the University of Texas at Austin), this new ability to watch instantly on Netflix has actually inspired him to watch film more frequently and to be “more willing to take chances on certain movies.” His viewing selections are now much more spontaneous, either chosen randomly by browsing Netflix’s offerings or by following recommendations from the many film blogs and postings sprouting up from the burgeoning online film community. Tryon attests that this new Netflix service has been increasingly significant after his recent move to Fayetteville, North Carolina, where his access to watching film in the movie theater and his offerings at the local DVD rental store were quite limited. With this shift away from the DVD and towards an ease and accessibility in watching media online, as TenduTV will allow, one may imagine the possible eventual impacts on the film festival. Perhaps the traditional film festival will begin screening online premiers or even entire programs curated specifically to be viewed at home instead of in the theater? TenduTV would offer this same system of instant gratification that viewers increasingly think of as standard. Why wait until your beloved dance company comes to your city for a live performance (if you are even lucky enough to live where dance companies can afford to tour)? Just like the film viewer who has little access to diverse film content in his hometown or even just wants to watch a specific movie, right now, these shifts in distribution may also prove necessary for the dance world. If we are having trouble filling the seats in our theaters for dance performances or film festivals, perhaps we need to bring our offerings to where the audiences are — at home watching media through the Internet. Perhaps internet television/media watching may breed a lazier audience member (why should one go to the theater or even walk to the mail box when one can watch this movie by pushing one button on the computer?), it is also, at least in the case of some viewers like Chuck Tryon, leading to a more educated and involved media watcher. With the new capabilities to watch instantly on the site, I also find myself being even more spontaneous in my decision-making—there is nothing to lose since there is no limit on the number of videos one can watch instantly within the month. One can imagine, and hope, that TenduTV might also inspire the same type of exploration for its audiences. Perhaps one viewer subscribes in order to watch theatrical ballet performances but then may stumble upon AMELIA (directed by Canadian choreographer Edouard Lock) and fall just as in love with its warped spaces and perspectives, intricate precision, contemporary ballet choreography, and its art of the frozen glance. Dance for the camera has often been pushed to the peripheries or even ignored completely by the theatrical dance world, but TenduTV has the potential to place both on equal footing. It is also possible to imagine that dance for the camera may continue to inspire increasingly more rigorous and refined practices for filming and capturing these live performances—the time of the one-camera performance footage shot from the back of the house is surely a relic of the past. TenduTV subscribers will expect to see beautifully filmed dance, whether it be a performance or a dance for the camera. (For an example of similar Internet television channels and a benchmark partner of TenduTV, please visit tidaltv.com.) Excerpts from “Dancing with Phantoms” by Kevin H. Martin, an article about Ben Dolphin’s most recent project, the dance film “Arising” that combines eight dancers and an eight-foot waterfall. Excerpted from the International Cinematographers Guild Magazine, June 2008 http://icgmagazine.com/2008/june/dancing.html “Since Dolphin’s first career was in dance and he later taught a class in choreography for camera at the NYU School of Arts while working his way up through the production ranks, he had feet firmly planted in both worlds, which inspired his original notion for an artistic high-speed presentation. “I thought of using Vision Research’s Phantom cameras for a live-action performance, collaborating with dancers choreographing nano-speed events while interacting with an eight-foot wide waterfall and fire elements. The years spent as a high-speed and liquid specialist caused me to fall in love with the subtle surprises and revelations that emerge at high frame rates. I planned to capture with a pair of cameras, then immediately play the event back via rear projection behind the dancers. I figured on speedramping the action from fifteen to thirty seconds in length on playback. Then I’d stage another live-action nano-event and begin layering these in playback before the live audience…his exciting notion—a kind of live show equivalent to timeslice/frozentime/bullet-time multi-tasking—soon received a setback. “In order to generate interest in the live performance, I needed to shoot a spec piece first,” he says.” “Dolphin’s concept for “Arising” (originally, Making the Invisible Visible) starts “In a kind of prehistoric time, when people are undifferentiated; the group of dancers is like a landscape of bodies. Through movement, they start to make inquiry into themselves. Each dancer arises to confront a truth, with the element of a water barrier challenging them.” “With this predilection for color, it is perhaps no surprise that the cinematographer names Vittorio Storaro, ASC, AIC as his favorite DP. “I agree with his notions about color and its emotional impact, and how we are influenced by it on a sub-intellectual level,” reveals Dolphin. “My visual arc on Arising went from low and dark to high and light, in keeping with the chakras, starting with red and progressing to violet. Even my shot list was color-coded, which helped communicate to both cast and crew where we were all supposed to be at any given point in terms of emotion and evolution and performance.” Watch “Arising” at http://icgmagazine.com/2008/june/dancing.html The Worst of the Best: Kinetic Cinema gets down with its bad self by Latika Young Before taking a hiatus for the summer, Kinetic Cinema, the dance films screening series curated by Anna Brady Nuse, went out with a bang! “The Worst of the Best,” a night of “bad” dance film, as selected by guest curator Kriota Wilberg, featured an array of clips and excerpts that had the audience at Tribeca’s The Tank in stitches. With everything from undulating nude males to jete-ing serial killers to an over-the-top 80s spandex extravaganza, there was something in the selection to please even the most well-versed bad dance connoisseur. The night began with a little live dance, as Brady Nuse exploded onto the stage in a frenetic version of the classic dance from “Flashdance” complete with gold metallic hot pants and matching shoes. A perfect entrance, it warmed up the audience’s belly laughing muscles and set the tone for an evening of the dance cliché as encapsulated on film. Wilberg, co-director of THE BENTFOOTES, which premiered at Dance on Camera Festival 2008, has been interested in bad dance for some time. She used to host bad dance film screening parties at her apartment for fellow dancer and choreographer friends (what better way to build a supportive dance community—we may be struggling in our own careers, but at least we are not making dance like that!). Wilberg developed somewhat tricky criteria that determined her selections for this “tour of surprisingly bad dance films from the early 1900s to the present.” As she explains, there is a difference between “bad” dance and just “boring” dance. Bad dance necessarily “provokes a strong emotional reaction” in the audience, and, as Wilberg points out, these are more often than not the dances people end up discussing fervently with friends. Boring dance, on the other hand, “is just dull” and is easily forgotten. Where it gets tricky is with the question of production values. For Wilberg, even boring dance, with a big enough budget, becomes bad dance by virtue of the unrealized potential of its grandiosity. Any otherwise boring dance film with a large enough budget enrages Wilberg to the point that it has elicited a strong emotional response and thus qualifies as a truly bad dance. The screening began with a video montage of clips culled from the internet of dances intended to demonstrate “boring.” All low production value, the clips may have come from You Tube or artists’ personal websites, but they certainly were not from Hollywood blockbusters. The original videos likely go on for what must feel like many very long minutes, but edited down into a quickly paced montage, they were not really that boring after all. Instead, the curatorial process of cramming them side by side and positing them into humorously crafted sub-categories, such as “Women and Their Hands,” “Semi-Clad Undulating Duets,” and my personal favorite, “Nude Men Kinetically Recumbent” highlighted their humor rather than their boredom. Fortunately, though, the audience was saved from having to watch any of the clips in their entirety. Anyone who has sat on a dance film festival pre-screening committee can undoubtedly understand. The bulk of the offerings, however, were clips from films released on the big screen and each example was selected to provide a more nuanced understanding of Wilberg’s definition of bad. The gem of the night, glittering in decadent ridiculousness, was Ben Hecht’s 1946 film SPECTRE OF THE ROSE. Choreographed by Tamara Geva, Balanchine’s first wife, the two dance scenes presented were performed by Ivan Kirov. An attempt to combine a murder mystery with classical ballet, the result, at least to modern eyes, comes across more as camp than refinement. In the first scene, the male ballet superstar (Kirov) has been confined to bed for two years after killing his first wife. Suddenly feeling better, he is inspired to dance, performing ebullient feats of jete and pirouette that are made that much more incredible (and farcical) considering his extended period of inactivity (perhaps, instead, we should feel relieved he did not join the ranks of the “kinetically recumbent nude male” as we witnessed earlier). The second scene has our star re-entering a state of insanity and struggling with his desires to kill his second wife. Fortunately, derangement does not deter our protagonist from his dancing tour de force and, with knife in hand, he catapults about the room, balletically crashing into walls, before leaping with pointed feet through a glass window, to his certain death below. This is a bad dance film made so by both its delicious anachronistic ballet moves (likely quite magnificent for the time but which seem highly dated to the modern viewer) and its equally ridiculous backstory. Other choices from the evening included THE MOTHERING HEART, the 1913 D.W. Griffith film that features background dancers, undoubtedly quite common on the vaudeville stage of the time, who appear as gallivanting Isadora nymphettes and a leopard skin toga-ed couple who awkwardly perform Lindy aerial moves, STAYING ALIVE, the sequel to SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER, as directed by Sylvester Stallone (and, yes, Travolta does wear a very Rambo-eque headband), and scenes from the film everyone loves to hate, Paul Verhoeven’s 1995 SHOWGIRLS, which is just bad in so many divine ways. Wilberg wants to know, “What is the worst dance film ever?” To share your favorites, or most hated, e-mail her at info@duramater.org and be sure to tell her why. After a summer break, Kinetic Cinema returns in October. E-mail Anna Brady Nuse at anuse@speakeasy.net to get on the mailing list. Michelle Mola wins The 2008 Susan Braun Award for Young Choreographers Initiative Michelle Mola, a 2007 graduate of The Juilliard School will work with art director Kenny Cahall whom she met as a student of North Carolina School of the Arts to create a dance for the camera. Unanimously chosen by DFA’s 2008 team of mentors, Michelle demonstrates a distinct clarity of vision, confidence and artistry. Michelle also received the distinguished Leonore Annenberg Fellowship in 2008 and is scheduled to choreograph for the 2008 Juilliard Summer Dance Intensive. Mola is a teaching artist and co-founder of enterCircle educational outreach programs. In 2007, she received the Hector Zaraspe Prize for Outstanding Choreography. Michelle’s statement about proposed film “Chambermaids and Tuxedo Dances” The film journeys as first time movie director Michelle Mola curiously examines quintessential Busby Berkeley style musical sequences inside of the confines of a tight space. By rigging low tech contraptions normally used to get large scale shots created on giant Hollywood sound stages, we are shooting for and with the camera. We are executing complex camera movements, including camera operators as dancers and reversing their roles, we shoot the process and performance, the working class and the opulent, the cast and crew, the Chambermaids and Tuxedo dances. The short film proposes the notion our attention will not be misled by the institutions that oppress us; a series of contact improvisations whose characters each cope by devoting energies to simple pleasures, letting imaginations roam free. Our performers, characteristically androgenistic, surf between basic and embellished fashions. Through meticulous fieldwork examination of assembly lines, the reversal of fortune, mundane task and small strategy for survival, Michelle Mola and her creative companions construct and shoot improvisations in their Brooklyn arts studio The Manor. “We are building for and with the camera simultaneously. There’s something inappropriate about opening up the film to capture process and performance and explore turning everything on its head. If there wasn’t that element of self identification, it wouldn’t be something I was compelled to do. I think the miniature scale will create some interesting results and I enjoy being invested this way in the current workspace.” Please visit her website www.MichelleMola.com to see video examples, particularly stunning is her work in Peru. The mentors for the 2008 Young Choreographers Initiative are Gwendolen Cates (director of the 2008 Jury Winner WATER FLOWING TOGETHER), Hila Shani (founder of Literary and Talent Management Firm O.N.Y.O.), Julie Talen (screenwriter, journalist and filmmaker), Ben Dolphin (Director/Director of Photography/Choreographer) and writer Louis Venosta whose credits include; THE CORIOLIS EFFECT (1994) which he also directed and BIRD ON A WIRE (1990) which he co-produced and THE LAST DRAGON (1985) and FAME (1980) in which he danced. This new initiative is an opportunity for New York City choreographers ages 16-25 to win a cash award to create a short work and/or adapt a stage choreography for the camera, in collaboration with a young filmmaker with a grant from DFA named after DFA founder, the late Susan Braun. The project was started after years of seeing artists from every country but the US be prominent in the ever widening circuit of dance film festivals. The first year of this initiative, Austin McComick, also a Juilliard School graduate, won the Susan Braun Award for his screen adaptation of a stage work called FOLIES D’ESPAGNE. This work was nominated for the 2008 Jury Award and screened in the Dance on Camera Festival at the Walter Reade Theatre and subsequently on its tour to Galerie Michel Journiac Paris, France; Wisconsin Film Festival in Madison, Circle Cinema in Tulsa, Oklahoma as well the showing coming up in Burgos, Spain.*