All – Tagged "DANCE FILM" – Page 5

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Outside/Inside

Critically acclaimed duo Holly and Duncan Wilder are New York-based Wilder Project. They are siblings who create beautiful, inventive, often playful films which interrogate human connection, ritual, and nature. Their work has been screened at over forty film festivals internationally and include The Weight, Wake, Evergreen, Undertow, Ashes to Ashes, and most recently, We Are So Very Far Away. Lorna Irvine caught up with them as they finished filming a brand new project, to find out more about what makes them tick, and creating art during lockdown.

DANCE FILM | INTERVIEWS | By Penelope Ford

Alone Together

Aterballetto, contemporary dance company based in Emilia-Romagna in northern Italy, was among the first to release a dance film in response to the pandemic. The region was particularly hard hit by Covid-19, and 1 Meter Closer, which aired in April, tells the emotional story of this dark period, and reflects on the changing nature of body language and gesture in times of crisis. At 20 minutes in length, 1 Meter Closer is paced like a short dance work, and is a significant piece in itself, not only for quarantine times.

DANCE FILM | REVIEWS | By Lorna Irvine

Emotional Landscapes

For any dance aficionado, Sadler's Wells is a legendary location. From the first theatre built in the seventeenth century, to the present day, with the sixth theatre standing in the prestigious Clerkenwell area of London, countless numbers of dancers, actors, choreographers and directors have cut their teeth here. The series of short online films presented by Sadler's Wells and currently available on YouTube are as eclectic as anything from the venue's centuries of inspiration. They all show the diversity of performances as well as the progression of dance, in terms of both choreography and developmental film techniques on screen. Watching these...

DANCE FILM | INTERVIEWS | By Penelope Ford

Take Two

2 in a Million (Director’s Cut) is J.A. Moreno’s personal take on the official music video he directed for Grammy-nominated DJ and producer Steve Aoki, multi-award winning musician Sting, and platinum-selling trio SHAED.

DANCE FILM | INTERVIEWS | By Penelope Ford

Close to the Sun

Jake Mangakahia, soloist with the Australian Ballet, embodies the one who dared fly too near the sun in the award-winning dance film, Icarus. Inspired by the Greek myth, Icarus is the first film project from Australian multi-media arts group Lumyth. The film, which was released online on May 30, has been officially selected for the 2020 Phoenix Dance Film Festival. I spoke with Lumyth co-founders, Candice MacAllister and Sage Fuller, about the creation of Icarus.

DANCE FILM | By Penelope Ford

Bright Young Things

“Art is the only way to travel without leaving home.” Twyla Tharp’s quote rings truer than ever, as we negotiate our various states of isolation. For dancers, the Covid-19 pandemic has meant training at home, taking part in online classes, and interacting with dance fans via social media. For the foreseeable future, the performing arts are confined to the digital realm.

DANCE FILM | REVIEWS | By Lorna Irvine

The Ferryman

Belgian-French choreographer, dancer and performer Damien Jalet's extraordinary works seem to be not quite of this Earth: they are comprised of a not altogether human landscape, a liminal space of knotted limbs. His complex choreography creates a fleshy mass that means his dancers are more akin to animals. He others the corporeal, wherein it often becomes hard to differentiate between plant and mammal. Bodies entwine and hands grasp like pincers or gnarled tree branches. At times, the spectator is reminded of paintings, either from Goya who referenced the horrors of civil war, or Francis Bacon's Screaming Popes. This is uncomfortable, visceral...

DANCE FILM | REVIEWS | By Róisín O'Brien

Making a Statement

What is the friction between words and movement? What does one give us that the other doesn’t? If there is an intelligence in movement and physicality that cannot be expressed through words, do we look down on that intelligence?

DANCE FILM | By Kosta Karakashyan

Glance from the Edge

Many choreographers today are looking for ways to engage the audience beyond the stage. Site-specific work and film are just some of the ways dance artists are keeping their work both fresh and lasting. Glance from the Edge is an international collaboration between Bulgarian co-directors and choreographers Kosta Karakashyan and Stephanie Handjiiska, American director of photography Kevin Chiu and composer Jude Icarus. After wrapping the principal photography, the team sat down to debrief together about the inspiration, process and goals for the project.

DANCE FILM | By Penelope Ford

Movement in Structure

John Lam, principal dancer of Boston Ballet, and director Shaun Clarke collaborated on the dance film, Movement in Structure, which premiered in Boston in March 2019. Set to music by Lucas Vidal, and filmed at the Cyclorama at the Boston Center for the Arts, Movement in Structure calls attention to our physical relationship with space. In the interview below, John Lam discusses his artistic and personal motivations for creating dance on film.

DANCE FILM | By Penelope Ford

Dancing to the Street

Xin Ying, principal dancer of Martha Graham Dance Company, has been making improvised dances wherever her work takes her. The simply framed videos quickly became a highlight of Instagram. Often set in tourist hubs, busy streets and danced to ambient sound, her swift, modern movement strikes a contrast with the pedestrian setting. Originally from China, Ying moved to New York almost a decade ago to pursue her dream of becoming a modern dancer.

DANCE FILM | By Kosta Karakashyan

A Twisted Tale

Edifice Dance Theatre’s new dance film Salomé uses a hybrid ballroom and contact improvisation vocabulary to explore a wide range of human emotions. The company, in collaboration with director Rogério Silva, take Oscar Wilde’s version of the mythical Salomé, the young seductress who requests and is granted Jokanaan’s head on a silver platter, and offer a haunting dance film adaptation featuring sinuous partnering and Silva’s trademark camera work.

Featured Reads

REVIEWS | Lorna Irvine

Teenage Angst and Institutions

Watching Matthew Bourne's reworked version of the “star-cross'd lovers,” I was briefly reminded of Veronica, played by Winona Ryder, in the dark 1988 comedy by Daniel Waters and Michael Lehmann, Heathers, and her line, “my teen angst bullshit has a body count.” Yes, this is the darker side of Bourne's repertoire,...

INTERVIEWS | Marina Harss

The Me of Today

The choreographer Alexei Ratmansky reflects on the war in Ukraine, the connection between geopolitics and ballet, and joining the house of Balanchine.

REVIEWS | Rachel Howard

Starry Nights

Beneath blue California skies, manicured trees, and the occasional hum of an overhead airplane, Tamara Rojo took the Frost Amphitheater stage at Stanford University to introduce herself as the new artistic director of San Francisco Ballet.

REVIEWS | Faye Arthurs

America, F**K Yeah

After a week of the well-balanced meal that is “Jewels”—the nutritive, potentially tedious, leafy greens of “Emeralds,” the gamy, carnivorous “Rubies,” and the decadent, shiny white mountains of meringue in “Diamonds”—the New York City Ballet continued its 75th Anniversary All-Balanchine Fall Season with rather more dyspeptic fare.

REVIEWS | Emily May

Acosta Danza’s Choreographic Soup

An “Ajiaco” is a type of soup common to Colombia, Cuba, and Peru that combines a variety of different vegetables, spices, and meats.