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Moving Stories

The first moments of Risa show the petite Risa Steinberg seated at a sleek desktop in her New York apartment. To her right is an abstract sculpture posed atop a column. Behind, a framed mirror is mounted on the wall. Wearing a crisp white shirt with sleeves rolled to the elbows, Steinberg begins to move, brandishing a shock of brilliant silver hair. She recites the movement instructions as if just learning the sequence. But really, it’s a way to show us, the audience, a little of the dance’s underpinning. “Around the world,” means that she sweeps an arm across the full expanse of the desk. “Circle into oy vey” is head thrown back, torso arched. “Slice, metronome, soothe, soothe.” She flops her hands palm up, palm down, on the desktop, then leans forward until she’s nearly facedown. “Look under your arm as much as possible.” At “leg side, parallel, circle rond de jambe to the back,” she reveals a well-muscled bare leg, beautifully accomplishing the task.

Performance

“Risa,” a film by Kate Weare and Jake Flame Sorokin / “Spoken Movement Family Honour,” a film by Daniel Gurton

Place

Dance on Camera Film Festival, Symphony Space, New York, NY, February 6-9, 2026

Words

Karen Hildebrand

Risa Steinberg in“Risa,” a film by Kate Weare and Jake Flame Sorokin. Image by Keira Chang

Risa is a project of choreographer Kate Weare and cinematographer Jake Flame Sorokin, who masterfully blend the quiet dance (artfully shot in black and white) with Steinberg’s chatty reminiscences of her long career. Not her professional achievements (of which there are many), but rather, the personal choices: the way she became a dancer despite her father’s misgivings; the decision not to become a mother. “I was born to teach,” she says. “It’s where my passions are.” The film—an absorbing 20-minutes long—is a moving tribute to, as the filmmakers acknowledge in the credits, “an invaluable mentor to celebrated and emerging choreographers of our time.” Steinberg went to work for the José Limón Dance Company directly after graduating from the Juilliard School in 1971, and has taught for her alma mater since 2000, including a 9-year stint as associate director. She’s been active in the New York dance scene now for 55 years.

The dance moves to a hallway. We see a stretch of leg framed in a doorway. Steinberg moves in and out of the frame, lunging against a wall, draping an arm around her head like a scarf. This is a mature dancer, working with substantial gravitas. I could watch her dance for hours. Her entire being radiates confidence. “I learned immediately that if you worked hard, you got attention,” she says. “I am addicted to attention, and I love working hard.”

The camera alternates close-ups of Steinberg’s face, her forearms, her torso, and most prominently, her heavily veined hands as they slice and fold, carving space. Charming, vulnerable, resilient. She announces her love—and fear—of working with the modern dance pioneer, Anna Sokolow. And at one point, she claims Martha Graham and Sokolow were “ball-busting humans who happened to be gendered as women.” 

In one particular sequence, she stares defiantly into the camera while she crouches and steps, first one foot and then the other onto her desk chair, then lowers them down on the other side. I get a sense of her strength of character with that gaze—and when she talks of her love life: “My greatest relationship… has been my career. In human relationships, … I have found they are jealous of my other lover.”

It’s quite moving to hear her talk about taking care of a nephew’s twin babies during Covid. Her eyes well up as she relates what it was like to feel her priorities shift, and to realize that for the first time, career came second. I imagine that Risa renders Steinberg closely relatable to many of us as we listen. Risa is part of the Dance on Camera Festival Portraits program, scheduled for Sunday, February 8.

Kwame Asafo-Adjei in “Spoken Movement Family Honour,” a film by Daniel Gurton

Kwame Asafo-Adjei in “Spoken Movement Family Honour,” a film by Daniel Gurton

Immediately following on the Festival program is Shorts II (also showing on Sunday), with the nine-minute Spoken Movement Family Honour by Daniel Gurton. Dancers Kwame Asafo-Adjei and Catrina Nisbett deliver a striking contrast in tone from Risa They depict a British-Ghanaian father and daughter entangled in a heated, non-verbal conversation across a scant table in a concrete warehouse. The space has the feel of an interrogation room. 

Both films emphasize the hands, and seat their performers at a table. While Steinberg’s hands are full of grace, those of Asafo-Adjei and Nisbett slap and bite. They remind me of venomous snakes as they flex at the wrist, preparing to strike, then slam like a trap on the metal table surface. The camera puts us at eye level with the rapid-fire hand work.

The performers make hissing sounds with staccato breath, like insects. I’m reminded of the kind of rhythmic clapping games that kids play, where they keep speeding things up. Only this is not a game. Asafo-Adjei taps his middle finger rapidly on the table, as if he can’t help himself. Nisbett sets down a single knuckle quietly at table’s edge. I can almost hear her make a sarcastic remark. When his hand arrives under her chin, the two freeze for a moment. At one point, she tilts her chair and arches backward violently. The only reason the chair doesn’t topple is that Nisbett has braced her feet against Asafo-Adjei’s knees beneath the table.

The father and daughter face away and refuse to look at each other, yet they also cannot walk away. They are drawn together like magnets. We don’t know the backstory—there is a suggestion of religious fanaticism. The filmmaker has successfully coiled a lifetime of tension into this pressure cooker of a dance.

The performers eventually move from the table into a full body version of their battle. They work themselves into a frenzy of anguish. She returns to her seat defiant. He assumes a humble posture as he shuffles to his chair and sits with hands clasped. He grabs her arm. She swats it away. He fingers her braids. In the commotion, the table tips over, and he delivers a rare line of dialogue, “Are you telling me the truth?” Her mute response is to right the table. He chants a prayer over her prone body. There’s a tender moment when he cradles her in his arms, “I remember when you were a child and we carried you from the hospital…” but the peace doesn’t last. 

Karen Hildebrand

Karen Hildebrand is former editorial director for Dance Magazine and served as editor in chief for Dance Teacher for a decade. An advocate for dance education, she was honored with the Dance Teacher Award in 2020. She follows in the tradition of dance writers who are also poets (Edwin Denby, Jack Anderson), with poetry published in many literary journals and in her book, Crossing Pleasure Avenue (Indolent Books). She holds an MFA from the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. Originally from Colorado, she lives in Brooklyn.

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