All – Tagged "DANCE FILM" – Page 5

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Lightfoot's Love Letter

Nederlands Dans Theater’s brand new work “Standby” is a dance of irresistible energy, galvanizing athleticism and touching poignancy; it’s also an ingenious and masterly realized work of art created in the time of pandemic. Choreographed in just three weeks and captured exclusively on film to be streamed on the company’s website and NDT’s YouTube channel, “Standby” is described by its creator, Paul Lightfoot, as a ballet inspired by the limitations and possibilities of social distancing. “Can we connect without touch?” With this brilliant dance, the choreographer answered this question affirmatively.

DANCE FILM | INTERVIEWS | By Penelope Ford

Back to Nature

Adji Cissoko, acclaimed dancer with Alonzo King LINES Ballet, was on tour in Europe with the company when the Covid-19 pandemic struck. During the lockdown period, she has been characteristically productive. We spoke to Adji recently about managing her time away from the studio, her new creative projects, and her new social enterprise as a Health and Life Coach.

DANCE FILM | REVIEWS | By Lorna Irvine

As Night Draws In

Few choreographers made work which endures and resonates like the mighty Pina Bausch. She wasn't just an iconoclastic presence, she created work that still shocks, gets under the skin and into the marrow, and feels so visceral that it is timeless—whether it was through certain nuanced presentations of violence or societal taboos; staging work in unusual locations or bringing older and younger dancers together as twinned iterations of themselves. She stripped back veneers of genteel bourgeois respectability. She got down and dirty, she provoked, teased at larger truths about the human condition, and kept it real. Work was not always...

DANCE FILM | INTERVIEWS | By Lorna Irvine

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.

Featured Reads

REVIEWS | Rebecca Deczynski

Firebird Rising

Long before the dancers take the stage, Dance Theatre of Harlem’s season at New York City Center feels like one of the most energizing cultural events of the spring.

REVIEWS | Faye Arthurs

Rare Birds

It is rare for George Balanchine’s grand, bedazzled “Symphony in C” to open a program. Its champagne-popping finale for 52 dancers tends to be a nightcap.

REVIEWS | Faye Arthurs

Lord of the Dance

The Spring is Blooming festival, by Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels, now in its fifth year, has become a highlight of the spring dance circuit.

REVIEWS | Eoin Fenton

Jack of Hearts

As the audience come to their feet at the end of this ballet there is a noted difference to be seen on stage. Three women stand with joined hands, taking their call as the romantic leads of a loud and proud lesbian ballet.

REVIEWS | Rachel Howard

School Report

One of San Francisco Ballet’s greatest assets is its home venue, the Beaux-Arts style War Memorial Opera House, with four rings of seating that require performers to project their energies practically to the exosphere.