CINÉTICA wins Dance on Camera 2010 Jury Award CINÉTICA, directed by Ana Cembrero Coca from Valencia, Spain, won the Jury Prize winner of the 38th Annual Dance on Camera Festival Shorts Category. Announced at the Festival screening on Sunday, January 31st 2010 at the Walter Reade Theatre, Lincoln Center Plaza, in New York City, Ana Cembrero (middle of photo) accept- ed her award and monetary prize with her director of photography and music composer Jorge Piquer Rodriguez and set designer Blanca Añón. They are the first Spaniards to win the Dance on Camera Festival Award. Described by the artists as an emotional journey, CINÉTICA, shows through the body the ambiguity of a real and imaginary world where a woman inhabits, searches, dances, fights or plays, without separating what is lived and what is dreamed.” The artistic team for CINÉTICA met in Valencia, Spain while studying at the Universidad Politecnica with Gema Hoyas Frontera and Juan Bernardo Pineda, choreographer and PhD. scholar on dance on camera. Currently, Ana Cembrero and Jorge Piquer Rodriquez work in Brussels, Belgium while Blanca Añón is studying at New York University. The competition was four other nominated short films: BEGUINE, directed by Douwe Dijkstra from the Netherlands, THE LAST MARTINI, directed by Vickie Mendoza from the USA, little ease [outside the box) directed by Matt Tarr and Ami Ipapo from the USA and SUNSCREEN SERENADE, directed by Kriota Willberg from the USA. The jury committee declared the 25 minute long work, CINÉTICA, as “a cinematic poem that places women dancers in surreal atmospheres, natu- ral and interior, with mysterious beauty and inexplicable feeling.” The Dance on Camera Festival 2010 Jury was comprised of: Terry Fox, the Executive Director of Philadelphia Dance Projects (PDP), a long time partner of DFA’s touring program; Zsóka Nej, the project manager for the Workshop Foundation in Budapest, Hungary and program developer and curator for EDIT – International Dancefilm Festival in Budapest; Arthur Aviles, a dancer for eight years with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, a founder of the Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance (BAAD!) in collaboration with the Point Community Development Corporation in the Hunts Point section of the South Bronx. In 2008, Arthur won the NYC Mayor’s Arts Award. “Silent Films/Live Guitars” review by Jared Newman As part of the 2010 New York Guitar Festival, and in harmony with its mission to “examine virtually every aspect of the guitar’s musical personality,” its three directors created the series “Silent Films/Live Guitars,” co-curated by Artistic Director David Spelman and Board Director A.J. Benson, and hosted by John Schaefer, Public Radio’s voice for live and recorded music and co-founder of the Festival along with Mr. Spelman. On January 14th at Merkin Hall, the opening program in the series paired two distinctly different guitarist/composers with a silent screen classic. Whether by accident or design we heard two styles which opposed each other in such a way that the evening’s entertainment was enhanced by a sort of “contest” between the two: David Bromberg, a veteran Yankee Blues Folkie (in this cornah), and challenger Marc Ribot’s Post-modern Urban Cool. Bromberg, a just-pre Baby Boomer from the Northeast, has enjoyed a long career playing the American Blues, Ragtime and country guitar styles developed in the first half of the last century; he is a preservationist. Ribot (REE-bow), a decade younger and also city-bred, is an almost supernaturally busy and eclectic musician on the leading edge of contemporary Art- Jazz loft pop, whose affiliations include Wilson Pickett, The Lounge Lizards, T-Bone Burnett and John Zorn. As for the film selections, the curators made a seemingly foolproof choice for both musicians –Charlie Chaplin, a potential minefield for the evening’s musicians, precisely because of Chaplin’s iconic place in our culture and consciousness. Not only silent, but classic, not only classic but Chaplin. We all bring several generations of associations and mythology to Chaplin, and his inimitable screen presence casts a dauntingly long shadow – so what does a hardworkin’ guitar player in 2010 bring to the table exactly? In this case they brought their guitars out on stage and proceeded to do exactly what they’re well known for – no surprises in store. Bromberg, who went first with the far shorter (20 minutes) THE IMMIGRANT, picked laid- back country Blues and ragtime licks, eyes glued to the screen; usually when Charlie was sad, David played slower in a minor key; when the Tramp was down to a last coin, we heard the Depression classic “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out.” As an attempt to re-create the film’s era in sound this is all OK, as long as one could ignore the constant note of discord between the film’s urban locale and the country inflected accompaniment. All in all, this was a modern classicist’s reverent and comfortable response to a timeless classic. Mr. Ribot drew the tougher assignment, the two big reasons being the 68-minute length of his Chaplin, THE KID, and that film’s place at the very top of the All-time Chaplin Classic chart. Ribot’s score took a right angle to Bromberg’s; it was structurally an extended “semi-improvisation on itself,” built on repeated licks and a recurring minor key theme presented more- or-less discordantly at various points. One felt however that the music’s structure bore no particular relationship to the film it was (supposedly) accompanying; nor did the artist’s voices seem to harmonize. Timeless (Chaplin) is not the same as contemporary – perhaps some incongruities are destined to remain? The idea of the event is fine and welcome, but after all, the notion of music to accompany “silent” visual theatre is not ground-breaking news, is it? The evening really called for a bold choice or two. As a musician who plays and writes guitar music, we naturally were pulling for the show to work in all sorts of marvelous and unpredictable ways. No doubt a contemporary musical partnership for Chaplin’s art is possible; for that matter, a near capacity audience stood cheering at the end; but as film and dance/music collaboration this is red herring. Isn’t actual (not vir- tual) co-creation in the here-and-now what’s happening? Jared Newman is a composer/guitarist specializing in classical and Flamenco.