DOC Journal: September/October 2011, 2nd Article

Katrina McPherson’s Dance for the Camera Workshop

Katrina McPherson’s Dance for the Camera Workshop held in conjunction with the 6th International Film Festival at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, September 2011.  The below article represents the combined contributions from two participants in the workshop: Ally Voye in Italics, Alise Anderson in Bold

there is a place
(image from There Is A Place, a videodance from Katrina McPherson, Simon Fildes, ad Sang Jijia)
Open your eyes. What do you see? There is a dancer moving in front of you.  Now close your eyes, and open your eyes again. You see a new perspective on the dancer. You’ve made a visual cut simply by using your eyes. Continue repeating this action and you’ve created a film. Through this exercise, we were able to explore each other’s different editing techniques. One participant would choose to tighten focus by putting the dancer in immediate sight while others would explore sharper edits by having you (the camera) open and close your eyes quickly. There were three areas of focus for the workshop:   To keep the dance in dance film To develop the use of the camera as a practice To explore location and its relation to movement To keep the dance in dance film Throughout the workshop Katrina focused our attention on improvisational dance film work. We looked at live performance footage filmed by MacPherson herself while onstage with the dancers. Discussion centered around the beauty of improvisational work and the gems to be found spontaneously, when onstage camera work becomes part of the dance. To develop the use of the camera as a practice We played with many improvisational scores for dancers and camera – for example, dancers focus on one point of contact between the two of them; the camera follows that point of contact. Practicing and developing these improvisation techniques, for MacPherson, is like plies and tendus but for the camera. When location scouting, Katrina required that we DO NOT take a camera to our sites at first. Instead, we were asked to develop movement scores that fit into those sites, making the movement the primary focus of the work. Bodies end up interpreting, trying to fill or represent the space and getting lost, which is why we end up only walking, stopping, running and rolling. Then the dance is lost. But if you can find a movement score that fits into the space, you know it works. Many of us found this incredibly challenging. The minute we stepped into a space, we were imagining shots with the camera, but not thinking about the dancing. First we set up a dance score and a camera score. A score is essentially the structure of your project: the direction you give the dancers and the positions and purpose of the camera work. For example, with two dancers, the first dancer’s goal might be to always stay in the frame, while the second dancer’s goal is to try and stay out of frame. Add to this the camera contradicting their goals by doing the opposite of what the dancers are doing, and you’ve created an interesting score. In addition to individual or pair scores that we developed ourselves, we practiced what MacPherson calls a “round robin” score. In this score, dancers and camera operators are interchangeable; the camera person makes in-camera edits intuitively before passing the camera on to someone else. To explore location and its relation to movement I had the opportunity to apply MacPherson’s process while making a small piece based on a score of my own creation. For the dancers, the score was to react to touch and moments of stillness following intense movement. The camera score was to be in close proximity to the dancers, using fluid movement. The location I chose was an alleyway, for a feeling of claustrophobia and privacy. I created a fractured piece, both by shooting though jars of water and later in the editing process.

Camera and editing and sound and performance each have their own functions and meanings and purpose. Often one or all of these elements can drive a strong narrative in the piece. If narrative is not the intention of the piece, using patterns and rhythm in the edit will remove us from the meaning of the performance/choreography. A focus on the visual image will help take the focus off of the narrative. One of the most fascinating parts of the workshop was listening to Katrina talk about the questions that have driven her film making over the years. She was able to trace both the question she wanted to answer when beginning work on each of her films, as well as the question she was left with at the end of each film, which led to her next work.
    • How can the camera be a performer and take the viewer into the action? These Three Rooms
  • How can I make a piece without narrative and instead about rhythm, tempo etc? How can I use non-linear digital editing (a new technology at the time) as a structural process and to use the material as a palate for creating a montage?  Pace
  • No sync sound gives a disembodied sense to the piece. What if I made a piece where the sound was the key? How can I connect non linear editing to small moments in time and in life? Moment
  • The sound in Moment takes you into the physicality and breath of their movement, and bus sounds, etc. give it a sense of place. Could you make a dance film that could only be heard? Sense 8
  • The footage could be given to anyone and they could have re-edited it in a different way. The dancers in this film struggled to relinquish control about how their movement was seen. What if I give the audience a change to edit a piece themselves? Hyperchoreography 
  • How could we have the viewer be the performer AND the editor? Give the same concept to two choreographers and made two different films with same dancers, costumes, director, etc. to show the difference between the two interpretations. The Truth
  • With people gaining access to more and more production value, the dance in dance films was disappearing. How can I make a dance film with no production value?  Move Me Booth
Inspired by a previous list Katrina had made (Left-luggage.co.uk, click on Dogma Dance) over the course of the week’s workshop, we developed a Dance for the Camera Manifesto. Here is the incomplete list that we came up with: Yes to… sync sound Yes to… always being slightly zoomed in No to… “coverage” – filming the dance from many different angles just to have something for editing No to… wide angle No to… dancers glued to the architecture and only physically sensing the space No to… slow motion effect in editing For further reference, Katrina recommended the following links: makingvideodance.com http://videodances.tv/ http://vimeo.com/goatmedia http://tendu.tv/
Ally Voye’s dance film RED has been screened at festivals in the US and abroad, and was created during DFTC 2009 in British Columbia, led by Utah professor Ellen Bromberg. She is co-artistic director of IN/EX Dance Project and is also a dance teaching in Los Angeles. Alise Anderson is a new DFA member who is currently attending film school at Berkeley Digital Film Institute. She studied modern dance at Utah Valley University and has attended many dance film workshops. Alise recently completed a dance film piece that she has entered into multiple festivals. http://vimeo.com/27979639  
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