Dance, Film, and Kinesthetic Response – A Call Toward Action by Jen Edwards

Nearly a year ago, I had the opportunity to make a short video, for distribution on a large online platform. The assignment was to teach a relaxation technique through the piece. I knew that dance needed to play a part for two reasons: 1) because it would be helpful in conveying the message of the work, and 2) this presented an opportunity to expose a very large audience to dance. The piece, which will be featured in the DFA / Solar One Festival on September 7th, is now being integrated into an iPhone app. Through my work on this project I discovered that technology can be a fun and fluid medium in which to play. Additionally, it can function as a natural stage on which to exhibit dance and explore what we know innately when sitting by the ocean or studying a bird in flight: watching movement has a profound kinesthetic effect. It may even be calming. Grounded #6 from Jennifer Edwards on Vimeo. This phenomenon has been studied in the context of dance performance in a study which was recently released, entitled Watching Dance: Kinesthetic Empathy. As stated on their website, the study uses audience research and neuroscience to explore how dance spectators respond to and identify with dance. It had been supposed that “dance audiences can experience physical and imaginative effects of movement without actually moving their bodies.” The preliminary results of the study indicated, among other things, that former and current dancers – those whose bodies hold the muscle memories of actually performing the movements they watched – had the strongest neurological response. Additionally, a study conducted by Wolf Brown entitled Engaging Dance Audiences, found that a majority of dance viewers have some dance training. In fact, not only are those who dance more likely to respond biologically, they are also the majority of ticket-buying audience members. This is not to say that the results are positive across the board. Watching others dance can be quite stressful for dancers. This too is an issue that can be addressed head-on through going beyond merely documenting the harshness of training (think A Beautiful Tragedy). It may behoove the field of dance to generate dance films that bolster the value and expression of kinesthetic intelligence rather than focusing only on the sacrifices of striving for perfection. This will entail a cultural shift from within the community starting with the simple admission that the sacrifice approach perpetuates a certain acceptance of abuse extant in the dance world. Aside from the essential sadness of this situation, the real conundrum arises when we consider that a large part of the audience for dance is either missing from theaters or missing out on the benefits of watching dance. Continued viability of the field and the capacity to ignite the interest of future generations of dance audiences may depend on developing a healthier relationship with how we view dance. This begs the question of how to engage a broader audience. According to the NEA study Audience 2.0: How Technology Influences Arts Participation a mere 7% of the US population consumes live dance across genres. Dance on film is a clear entry point. Displayed in hospitals, schools, nursing homes, and offices, these films could have lasting effects on the culture at large. Many of us – and not only dancers – often recollect past moments like images from a short film. In my memory, such a scene opens in a field. The camera pans left and zooms in on a small, tanned girl lying face up, captivated by the moving world around her – the swaying trees, tall rustling grass, and the clouds shifting through the sky above. What is not seen is the way I felt – peaceful, engaged, energized, and comfortable in my skin. If there were an audience in my mind-theater, they would also feel these things if the filmmaker conceived of it that way. This, for me, is the beauty of dance and film – two media that allow for often-wordless personal experiences that draw us to deep recesses of our inner landscapes and connect us to ourselves. If we in the dance world can clearly define and highlight this connection, we may be able to carve out new spaces and a larger, more purposeful place for the art form. Jennifer Edwards is an expert in crafting and packaging ideas for human consumption. She is a founding partner with Edwards & Skybetter | Change Agency, as well as the founder and director of JenEd Productions. As a writer, choreographer, and consultant specializing in messaging, stress management, and organizational change management, Edwards is skilled in shaping and delivering streams of information. Using her experience as a high-level yoga and meditation teacher, she has mastered the art of grounding theory, ideas, and efficient flow of information into practice. Edwards’ client roster includes: The American Heart Association, Columbia University Medical Center, and New York University. Major publications have written about her work including The New York Times and Martha Stewart’s Whole Living Magazine. Writing credits include the Huffington Post, Women In Biz.com, The In Good Company Entrepreneurs’ Blog, and Dance USA’s e-journal, From the Green Room.                                   “Camera as _______” This article was inspired by Aristotle’s notion of Rhetoric; the five Core Course Headings originated by Bata Passchier CEO of the South African School of Motion Picture Medium and Live Performance (AFDA); dance filmmaker Douglas Rosenberg’s novel idea of “the camera as carnivore”; and my own research on “loading the camera” and capturing discourses in a screendance work. All these ideas are about enframing, packaging and curating epistemologies, providing easy access to the discourses embedded in both the form and content of any screendance work. This process amplifies the intention of the work, through and with the media, in order to communicate more effectively to a viewer. Although these inspirational ideas cannot be discussed in great depth here, I intend to demonstrate briefly how they may be adapted in the making of a powerfully loaded screendance work. You may also by the end of this process attempt the following assignment: while viewing your screendance work, select PAUSE at any frame. You should be able to identify all these points – at least ten per frame! ARISTOTLE’S RHETORIC All communication is rhetorical. Intention needs to be communicated within each frame. In his Rhetoric, Aristotle describes how a speaker can engage and persuade his audience by taking the following into consideration: elements of style, delivery, emotional tone and narrative device; the use of metaphor, comedy, linear or non-linear storytelling to evoke strong emotions in the viewer. Included is the use of reasoning to construct a believable viewpoint. Basically, Aristotle calls for four elements to be included in the speaker or writer’s arguments. Aim: what is the effect you want on a viewer? Audience: who are your viewers? Medium: what is the medium of delivery? e.g. YouTube clip, screendance work for a single screen, an installation, a mash up Subject: what is the topic, what are the discourses in your topic?   AFDA CORE COURSE HEADINGS Before you shoot, the following headings may be useful to find in your frame. I have adapted the main headings for the AFDA Core Course for screendance usage (see below) Narrative/Engagement: Your intention, idea, concept, and narrative – whether linear, non-linear or poetic. How are you drawing your audience in? Performance/Kinesthetic Emotion: This foregrounds the psychological, sociological, anthropological, emotional and physical manifestations that your performers physically demonstrate, in order to engage the viewer. How and why are they performing the choreography in such a manner for the frame? How are you directing them? Medium/Delivery: This includes the background research that supports your concept, as well as the use of the various technologies of screendance: choreography, dance style, lighting, camera work, edit choices, vertical montage or linear progression. Aesthetics/Form: your aesthetic tools, both visual and sonic; the look and feel, including the locations, set, costumes, art and design Production Control/Economy: all aspects of production, marketing, management, finance and the law   CAMERA AS _____ In 2006 Douglas Rosenberg originated the idea of “camera as carnivore”: as a predator with a carnal appetite. In the 1980’s Rosenberg noted that from a Marxist point of view the camera’s gaze sexualized the body of the dancer, rendering it a spectacle for mainstream consumption. The body was captured in such a way that the “marks of production [were] erased” allowing for the triumph of commodity, voyeurism and fetishism, perpetuating the male gaze that suited mainstream viewership. In contrast, certain dance films by DV8, La La Human Steps, L’Esquisse, Phillipe Decoufle and others “effaced the ‘marks of production’, in favor of a style that allowed for more mainstream distribution and in the process elevated dance, via its mediated image, to the level of spectacle.” This carnivorous camera may be redeployed, made into an ontological tool that pulls into sharp focus – using hand-held and close-up shots – the discursive nature of the moving body, drawing through the lens onto the timeline its power, emotion, movement, inviting the informal, the authentic, the personal, rather than the transcendent, the abstract and the spectacular. In this way the context for screendance is opened to difference, to becoming more discursive. The camera is employed as narrator, as voyeur, as proprioceptor … Thinking thoroughly about the “Camera as________” ensures that the camera captures, enframes and is loaded with the screendance maker’s accumulated knowledges, philosophies, intention and subject matter. The control of the media shines through the technology onto the retina and into body of the viewer.   How this might work in practice Decide on your Rhetorical Frame: Aim, Audience, Medium, Subject. Tick off the AFDA headings: concept, performance, delivery, aesthetics & production. For a linear narrative, for example, you might start in this fashion: Shot One: Camera as…Narrator W/S on tripod. Tilt, angle, speed and framing are chosen to establish the concept, location, style, mood, tone and emotion. A location is chosen that is appropriate to the concept and the characters, capturing their style, movement and personalities. Correct sound, correct lighting for the time of day. It’s all about concept and intention. Secure release forms making you sure you have clearance to shoot there, and the right to shoot these performers. Time to do the shoot? Power? Resources such as funds, food, transportation. Though you may not actually “see” these in the shot, they have a remarkable effect on the cast and crew. If, for example, everyone is uncomfortable, hungry, or cold, the eyes of the lens see and capture everything! Now you are on course to invent the camera as…in the way that you need it. You are loading the frame to engage the viewer with your visceral and intellectual intentions: Camera as voyeur, proprioceptor, contact improviser… References Aristotle, Rhetoric http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhetoric (accessed online – 10 August 2011) Ginslov, J. 2009. the concrete and the digital – emotional and kinaesthetic amplification of the authentic and digitalised body in screendance Master of Science in Media Arts & Imaging – screendance thesis. Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design, Dundee University Scotland. http://jeannetteginslov.com/ (pp16-18) Passchier, Bata. The Core Course Outline – The AFDA System http://www.afda.co.za/learning_systems.php (accessed online 10 August 2011) Rosenberg, D. 2006. Proposing a Theory of Screendance. Cited in Screendance: The State of the Art Proceedings. American Dance Festival. Duke University, Durham, VOUKON, N.C. (ed.) http://www.dvpg.net/screendance2006.pdf Jeannette Ginslov (Danish/b.South Africa), is an interdisciplinary artist, facilitator, curator and producer for dance on stage, screen and the internet. She has an MSc in Media Arts & Imaging – Screendance, University of Dundee, Scotland 2009 (A1 Distinction) and an MA Choreography Rhodes University South Africa 1998. She lives in Copenhagen, Denmark. Website:http://jeannetteginslov.com Jeannette Ginslov August 2011   A group of young adults are dressed in formal wear. One by one, they rise from a row of black chairs to stand and face the camera. Mechanically, the mass of students begins to dance. As a carnival song plays, their feet shuffle and their hips jut out in perfect synchrony. This is the opening scene of the documentary film Dancing Dreams, directed by Anna Linsel and Reiner Hoffman. The film follows a group of teenagers as they prepare to perform Pina Bausch’s Kontakthof. The students are put through their paces under the watchful eyes of two Bausch dancers who have been working with the material for years. I grew up dancing. Watching Dancing Dreams I began to reflect on my time spent studying this art form and how it has impacted my personal development. Dancing is truly a social sport. I watch an Afro-Caribbean youth smile as he dances with a European girl. Dance classes gave me the opportunity to make friends outside of my social circle. Kontakthof is a German word which means meeting place. A Muslim student originally from Bosnia faces the camera and explains the misconceptions he encounters in his daily life. In contrast, during rehearsals, the students work together towards a common goal and manage to put their differences aside. Dancing here serves the purpose of bridging gaps. Tenderness, empathy, and respect are behaviors that can be learned in the dance studio. Initially, the young performers in Dancing Dreams are out of their comfort zone when encouraged to interact with one another. The contact they have with their own bodies and with others seems rushed and tense at first. Their teachers, always attentive, suggest that they take their time. The dance of expression they are taught is universal and the gestures they learn are not necessarily masculine or feminine. Then the scene shifts: Two boys talk about how they interact differently with women in the studio than in real life. In this meeting place, they learn to be with each other as equals. Kontakthof explores human relations. Pina Bausch’s work is tanztheater, a form which incorporates theater, dance, speech, and movement. Questions are posed and the dancers provide the answers. The piece contains aspects of violence and aggression as well as tenderness and naivete. These are feelings that one begins to explore in youth and continues to encounter in old age. One student explains her difficulty when learning to embody an assigned sequence of movements. Unable to fully let go, she describes the frustration she felt in throughout the process as well as the exhilaration when she finally achieves her goal. To fully embody a movement requires commitment and patience. Above all, it requires the courage to place oneself in a vulnerable position. The situations explored in Dancing Dreams helped me realize that being posed such challenges, especially at an age when the body is ever-changing, can help young people gain the confidence that comes with self-awareness. In developing their characters, these performers discover that dance can be a vehicle through which to express their emotions. One young girl describes her character as a woman hiding her sadness behind a barrier of extroverted personality traits. Another dancer explains that her character has a strong temper, is never happy, and criticizes everyone. Both girls relate to these characters, even as they exaggerate their traits. In one compelling interview, the girl playing the aggressive character reveals her memories of the political tensions in Serbia and Kosovo. This sequence includes her recalling an incident in which her grandfather was burned by Serbian fighters. The link between her experiences in the studio and these painful memories reveals the far-reaching scope of dance education from the studio into the realms of memory and emotion. I too have a set of experiences that have shaped my personality. Dance has allowed me to gain a better sense of why I respond in a certain way to a given situation. As I gain in awareness, I can learn to construct creative ways to cope with difficult feelings, rather than resorting to destructive behaviors. Dancing Dreams doesn’t shy away from the delicate topics. One of these is suicide. A young woman in a satin dress tightens a purple scarf around her neck hoping that someone will approach her before she dies. The students respond honestly to this staged situation and manage to openly express their views about the topic at hand. These difficult conversations are facilitated through corporal expression. Things that can not always be said in a straight forward manner can be effectively explored through dance. This challenging process, which culminates in a final performance equips the young participants with key skills that will translate to their academic, professional, and personal lives. Dealing with pressure, being accountable, receiving and giving constructive criticism, being patient, communicating clearly are a few of the skills we watch them acquire. Because only some students could be selected for the final cast, a certain degree of pressure was placed on the performers over the course of the several month-long preparation process. Such exposure to high pressure situations can be good preparation for future academic, professional, and social environments. Understanding how one responds to stress can be crucial in developing a coping strategy. Throughout the weekend days spent rehearsing the show, the teachers empower their students with constructive feedback, creating an environment that honors hard work and commitment. As they learn new material, there can be a tendency to seek instant gratification, which at times leads to frustration. The students are encouraged to be patient with themselves and others. Working as a group in order to put on a show these young adults learn to be accountable to one another. This is rewarding work: One of their teachers says that witnessing these different personalities working together sometimes moves her to tears. In the closing scenes of Dancing Dreams, I found myself touched by the positive energy emanating from these young performers. One student tells us that his grades in oral exams improved since he took up dancing. We often hear, especially during the recent economic crisis, that the job market will reward creative thinkers with good communication skills who can approach issues in fresh and innovative ways. Investing in educational programs that develop these traits is worthwhile. But more importantly, this film demonstrates an even greater asset. By learning to dance Pina Bausch’s Kontakthof, the students achieved an unchangeable sense of personal integrity. Jeremie Gluckman is a Junior at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York. He has been studying dance since early childhood and learned a variety of forms over the years ranging from Ballet to Indian Classical as well as Modern Dance, Jazz, and Hip-Hop. In addition to his intern position at the Dance Films Association, Jeremie is currently studying economics and finance accompanied by film and dance in university.