THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE GIFTED
25 June 2009
by Shuriu Lo
Dance Camera West
REDCAT Theater
Los Angeles, California
Saturday, June 6, 2008
6pm & 8pm screenings collectively titled "Screendance: A New Visual Language"
Don't get me wrong. I'm enamored of dance. I'll watch ballet, pole dancing, krumping, MTV videos, Lawrence
Welk -- you get the point. I like looking at craftsmanship, at presentation or technique, at individual dancer's
charisma and musicality, but most particularly, I like looking at composition. In evidence at Dance Camera
West's "Screendance: A New Visual Language" was a mixture of experimental dance films ranging from the
mediocre to the sublime.
In a mediocre dance film, dancing is used as a tool to get the viewer to pay attention to a message of some
kind. That's one way the average dance film is structured. Also in a mediocre dance film, the medium of film
itself gets the glorified role of recording dance. In "Risen" (2008), a beautifully-formed and virtuosic dancer-
choreographer, Shay Kuebler ostensibly shows up to practice street dance in a large, expensive dance studio.
(Yes, I'm sure the typical street dancer has access to studios with a sprung floor covered in marley that won't
splinter his skin and where a wall of windows opens to a city skyline.) It's a thin conceit for the message that
follows -- an uneven rehash of material where instead of Marlee Matlin posing as a photographer in "What the
Bleep Do We Know?" we get a hip dancer who simulates injury after negative thoughts. Masaru Emoto is even
quoted as images of water molecules flash across the screen with the appropriate "I hate you/I love you"
messages attached. It's the "Bleep" movie but shorter. At the end of this positive thinking à la quantum
physics film, Kuebler has become so proficient with positive mental imagery, that he levitates -- yes, he levitates
-- out of the frame. The overall effect is corny and uneven, although, the film is worth purchasing just to watch
great street dancing up close.
In the second category of average dance film
where the camera merely records dancing falls
"Wildmenspark" (2006) filmed in Holland by
Gonny Jüngst and Vloeistof. This thirteen
minute film documents a certain genre of post
modern dance that comes from the European
tanztheater tradition. In tanztheater, dancers
perform mostly pedestrian movements with
repetition, using elements of theater such as
spoken word and narrative interactions that
accumulate to stimulate the viewer's intellectual
investigations of life, politics, and art. Frequent
collaborators Yuri Bongers and Anja Reinhardt are listed as the choreographers in this film but the movement
appears to be structured improvisation. Placed on some kind of track, the camera spins around and around in
a circle as dancers run in a circular pathway around the camera. Fortunately the camera action is smooth
enough so that the viewer doesn't experience nausea. The viewer most likely experiences fatigue, though.
I can't emphasize enough how tanztheater relies heavily on repetition. Dressed in business suits, the dancers
run and a woman calls out to them as if she were a physical education teacher taking roll. The dancers run
and a man jerks spasmodically and says in Dutch (or German) a string of emotionally escalating absurdities
that culminate in his physical collapse against other runners. Of course we're meant, as the viewers to see the
dancers as participants in the rat race of life. Sometimes the dancers help each other move forward as they
run; sometimes they just throw each other down to the ground and speed ahead. The analogies are obvious:
in our society, we at time cooperate then compete with each other. At times the dancers merely observe the
action before rejoining the circular race. In other words, sometimes we observe life; sometimes we participate
in life. The dancers cluster; the dancers separate. Sometimes we are a part of a community; sometimes we
are alone. The repetitions become aggravating, as they tend to in tanztheater. Aggravation forces the viewer
to confront issues in his or her own life similar to what is being depicted. One gorgeous dancer throws off her
jacket, quits running in a circle, and performs idiosyncratic movements that are simultaneously luscious and
iconoclastic. It's Jessica Van Reuschen in an extended solo and when her face and name appeared at the
ending credits, several members of the audience clapped in appreciation. The film ended with a deliciously
silly movement: a dancer flees the race holding his arms aloft in an absurd gesture similar to the affectionate
whimsy of Monty Python.
Experimental dance films require a level of participation in the viewer that can be exhausting. I concentrated so
intently during the six o'clock showing that I fell asleep during the last film, "Captain" (2008) even though it, like
most of the films in both screenings, was less than ten minutes long. Many audience members came on dates
and I could hear restless movements and feel shuffling feet pressed against my seat from the non dance
enthusiasts. "Too much culture for you?" asked one date. And later on, "is this too arty for you? do you want
to go?" Non narrative films are much, much harder on the viewer than one would expect. Without any plot to
propel the action, the films require the viewer to be engaged from inside. By this I mean, the viewer is required
to trust that the sequence of images one is viewing do accumulate to some kind of vision. The viewer is
required to participate in creating his or her own meanings for what he or she sees. And the viewer is asked to
exercise a kind of imaginative curiosity that functions on a non verbal level. I say non verbal because in a
dance film, the primary method of expression is movement, body language, weight, velocity, kinesthesia and
not words and logic. Watching dance on film is an experience akin to interpreting one's own dreams, but less
personal, because someone else has created the dream. In normal reality, we have sound bites, simple and
easy categories of good/bad, proficient/lazy and other black or white notions of organizing reality. In the realm
of dance films -- even with some level of plot line as in dance musicals, the viewer is required to re-examine
what gestures mean, what is important, what is fun, what is possible.
For instance, in the workaday world, it's good to be on time, increase sales, and score a new customer. In
"After Dürer" (2007), it's unclear whether the world depicted is made better or worse with its focus on symmetry,
measurements, and mathematics. Is the monk animating the geometric world he inhabits or is he dwarfed by a
predominance of grids and compasses? In the final scene, the only portion in color, a monk holds a small grid
frame of four squares. He and the camera look through the frame as if it were a window pane through which he
can admire the sea at sunset. Even surrounded by the vastness of sand, sea, and sky, the monk still chooses
to reduce his world to a grid framework through which to perceive the world at large. Whatever the director,
Daniel Belton, intended, I felt that I had been submerged into a man's mind where his reality was constantly
informed by mathematical structures that both made his spirit soar and drove him to obsessively quantify the
world. He appeared to escape that world to The World outside of math, art, and mind in the final image but
only to an extent. The sea was too powerful to be measured or fully conceived by his mind so he fell back on a
small grid held in his hands to contain it visually. The film seemed like an artist's distillations of his personal
experiences with Dürer who wrote extensively on perspective, proportions, movement, and beauty. Perhaps
Mr. Belton had been deeply inspired by Dürer at some point. Whatever the director's reasons, I looked up
Dürer and read about him once I had access to my computer and a good cup of tea. The film had piqued my
curiosity about a world of which I knew very little.
The Canadian film "Baba" (2008) is nearly a good dance film. I say nearly because at four minutes and fifteen
seconds, it takes too much time to introduce dancers as "characters" in a city square outside a church.
There're the Gospel Singers, the Homeless Man, the Business Persons, the Young Woman and Her Love
Interest, the Token Ethnic Person, the Kids. And really, none of that mattered. Whether or not the dancers
were recognizable types had no impact on the accumulated images of skirts spinning, arms undulating, feet
hopping, jackets whipping which synthesized into a lovely and visceral intensity. It came to me as I was
watching, "ah, this is why people love to dance! This is what it feels like to love moving to music!" And just as
that pleasure physical movement began to register, the film ended. So it was almost a good film. It was good
for the last few seconds.
Another Canadian film "The Greater the Weight" (2009) has more success with building and sustaining the
visceral intensity that dance on film can have. A woman wearing a burgundy dress barefoot in a boxing ring
begins the film. Close-ups of her face, her arms, her back, her feet, her legs moving, always moving with
purpose and full-bodied commitment build. And the dancer-choreographer Dana Michel is a fantastic mover to
watch. She charges the frame with muscular activity -- now frenetic, now languorous. The screen fills with
images -- the sparsely lit set accentuates the muscles of her arms and her back, the blur of movement sweeps
across the frame until the viewer feels pulled to and fro with Ms. Michel and her percussive dance. Great
editing supports the excitement that this athletic dancer generates. All this builds, like the music to a high
octane and then ends at a peak. The music, sounding much like a Capo Verde fado, has immediate appeal
but because it sounds looped and goes nowhere, it begins to detract from the strength of the film. In terms of
content, "The Greater the Weight" has very little: a great dancer dances in great lighting in a well-edited film.
And that's okay. Sometimes it's enough to just watch something that inspires you to enjoy moving.
I try never to say negative things about under funded art forms with marginal audience appeal, but I also find it
interesting to explore why a work is particularly bad. Bad and yes, even ugly. Because dance on film is an
experimental form (yes, it's been in existence for a long time, but severely under funded for 98% of that time),
some mistakes are understandable. In the enthusiasm of exploring film technology with beautiful dancers as
the subject, films get made that look like show and tell: look what my toolbox can do! "2soon" is a prime
example of this kind of film. The dancing is splintered into different effects -- the kaleidoscope, the flickering
image, the still image with the moving image, the white noise image. It's a compendium of tricks.
One of the problems with dance on film occurs when the camera moves too much and the viewer becomes
aware of the camera. With "La Surprise" the quirky camera movements coupled with the dancers quirky
dancing result in a slight sense of nausea. The whimsical movement worked well with a still photography
montage of the dancers posed throughout the room but otherwise, the extraneous camera movement tended
to clutter the frame with too much quaintness.
Such a film makes the sublime and perfect dance film
"Of the Heart" stand out for its superb camera work
and composition. Whoever is behind the camera on
this short film directed by Douglas Rosenberg and
Allen Kaeja must have been a dancer in a previous
career. To the quiet music of Arvo Pärt, "Of the
Heart" opens with a shot of a man and woman wearing
black coats, their heads leaning together. In this
monochromatic frame, only the camera moves
seamlessly panning around the dancers. The wind
blows through her blonde hair as the dancers create
a silhouette of their bodies against a hayfield. It feels
like they are breathing and that the viewer is simply watching two people breathe. Then gradually the dancer-
choreographers David Dorfman and Lisa Race move but they dance with such subtlety that they seem almost
to be still. Perhaps the points where their bodies touch have become kinesthetic sensors for hearing the
weight of the other person's breath. They seem acutely attuned to minute shifts between each other. The
space between them pulses with awareness. The camera stays close, sometimes moving with the dancers,
sometimes ceasing to move in a seamless tango where the dancers and the camera listen to each other and
listen to the unfolding dance. Nuzzling into a kiss, they slide into "dance position" as if ready to ballroom dance
amongst bales of hay, but no, the camera follows their joined hands until they separate and it is just his one
hand. The camera acts like a choreographer drawing to the foreground one aspect of the dance that is
transpiring. She leans backward and he supports her spine. The camera pans down with her backbend and
the viewer can feel the weight of her body arcing back in space. Slowly, slowly, details are revealed: the
texture of their skin, the color of their eyes, the downturned mouth now open now gently set in a line, the eyes
looking inward and yet the two faces seeing each other without looking with the eyes. The camera draws the
viewer into the transparency of these two performers. They completely commit to the smallest of gestures.
There is no hiding behind technique here. There is no overkill that detracts from simplicity. We see the
closeness of the dancers -- the way they share their breath, the way they lean without reservation into each
other knowing that the other will take their weight, take their gestures and give back support, give back a
gesture that builds on the one before. We see the dance emerging between the dancers. We see the dance
and not just the dancers. Abruptly, the camera cuts to the man standing alone in the hayfield. As the camera
pans about ten feet back, it catches her dancing alone. Like a silent witness, the camera stops moving and
just records her movements without comment. Then the two dancers begin to dance together again. What is
this dance about? I'm not sure. It looks like what Rumi described as
When you see the splendor of union,
the attractions of duality seem poignant
and lovely, but much less interesting.
(from "Sheba's Throne")
It's perhaps unfair of me to describe the splendor of this movie with poetry, but the union of the two dancers
shows how interesting, how deep beyond words, how rich, how satisfying a good partnership can be with
another person. And like a third player in the dance, the camera both frames how much we can see and
orchestrates the speed at which we can breathe in this dance of union.
(See for yourself on the small screen of your computer the best dance film I've yet seen.)
Another sublime and nearly perfect film was the stunning "Becoming" (2009) directed by dancer-choreographer
Ayelen Liberona and director-filmmaker Joseph Johnson Cami. There is not a single wasted shot in this film.
The cinematography, animation, special effects, editing, music, movement, makeup, and structure create a
stunning and coherent narrative. From the first image of fireflies beside a river current, the viewer knows that
he or she has entered a different world of magical realism akin to the films of Guillermo Del Toro. An odd
shaped protrusion that is neither rock nor animal juts out by the apex of the river before it cascades down the
cliffside. That protrusion turns and becomes the head of a strange insect/animal woman. She crawls out of the
water onto the rocks and the camera pulls back to show the tableau of the woman stretched out like a sphinx
upon the rocks above a dusky waterfall. Then up close, she reaches one limb, then another from the right side
of the frame to the left and then she's slithering through a forest and crawling up a tree. Seen from the tree's
point of view she climbs with intent and purpose but to where? Within the tree is a soft, green-white light.
Pulling back, the camera frames her crawling toward the fireflies congregating inside the tree trunk. She runs
after a stream of fireflies through the forest and the thudding of her feet resounds against the damp ground.
Under a rocky bridge or stairs a congregation of fireflies lights up the night as if with thousands of electric
lights. The camera focuses on a single firefly puzzling the edge of the rock face while the animal/insect woman
pulses at the edge of the frame, out of focus, but ever present. Then the fireflies enter a cornfield and the film
shifts into daylight. A grim-faced man cuts down stalks of corn, his chest bare, his muscles gleaming with work
and sweat. He senses another presence in the corn beside himself and pivoting around he begins to chase it.
The animal/insect woman jumps high above the corn, higher than a human could jump to fantastic music. The
man and the woman play cat and mouse through the row upon row of green corn. Jumping again, she
pounces on him and they wrestle. She jockeys herself higher and higher up his body while he attempts to
subdue her. At last, she parades above him and he twists his head awkwardly to look up at her. She holds still
then with quiet deliberation, wrenches his neck and merges into the cornstalks as his body falls to the ground.
"Becoming" has a textural vibrance that engages the viewer's visual, aural, and kinesthetic senses through an
interplay of magical realism. Nature incarnates in the body of a she-animal/insect and nature conquers man
then returns to the bosom of nature, the film seems to say. Whatever the message, the imagery has a
richness that is a great pleasure to watch. The only misstep comes perhaps from Ms. Liberona being a dancer-
choreographer. From the mysterious underworld of a forest in eternal twilight, the she-animal/insect emerges
into a harsh sunshine of corn and plant. Where the scant clothing on the dancer-actress Jessica Keeling had
merged with the twilight forest, now in the corn field, the viewer can see clear edges of fabric adhered to her
nipples and painted over, the distinct outline of the boyshorts covering her hips. In the sunny cornfield, she
shifts from being a creature of imaginative fascination into a well-trained dancer garbed a sexy costume.
I would suggest that a dancer-choreographer, having spent a great deal of time creating movement and having
loved the lines and patterns formed by the dancers' bodies, then faces the dilemma of underlighting a scene to
preserve a mood while the choreography disappears into semi-darkness. It's so difficult to give up a great set
of moves generated specifically for a work and I sense, being a choreographer myself, that the desire to show
the choreography clearly won out over the desire to submerge the viewer in a consistent fantasy of a magical,
crepuscular half world. Still, "Becoming" is a truly gifted symphony of a short film on par with "Of the Heart," a
superb chamber piece.
(See for yourself by watching the 80-second trailer.)
On the other hand, the German "At Table" (2008) and the Cuban "Fragile" (2006) are just plain bad film
compositions. There are potentially interesting elements in both films but instead of framing those elements
and exploring them further, both films get sidetracked by other issues that frankly, don't add up to a greater
sum for this viewer.
The second man in "At Table" has a strange face -- real intensity in his blue eyes that say so little but seem to
see everything. His head is shaved and oddly shaped. He does strange things like draw on the table and
populate it with miniature plastic people. And this brings to mind the fact that in film, the performers do not
have equal value. This is not something over which there is a great deal of control and its certainly no
democracy. Genetics and background contribute to the mystery of what makes one performer more arresting
to watch than another. It's not an egalitarian art and to treat each performer as such is a misuse of resources
and a misunderstanding of how to bring out what is most intriguing about each performer.
Take for instance the sole woman in "At Table." First seen in splintered parts as a pair of feet walking on the
table in high heels, then as muscular calves framed by a black dress, then as bare arms and tranquil hands
that reach down to the table, then finally as a that torso slides into view as the woman descends to her chair at
the end of the table. Before we see her face, she's a mysterious presence. Unlike the men who are completely
covered in black clothing except for their faces and hands (and the second man's bare feet), the woman is
significantly less clothed. Her skin and muscles have an expressive quality that are never explored in this film.
And then once we see her face, which has an emotive beauty similar to the models in pre-Raphaelite paintings,
we are lost. We want to see some kind of narrative involving this intriguing face. Instead, the first man
dominates the action, even though he is not interesting to watch. I felt as if I was watching C-SPAN without the
sound on a day where the prime minister of France visits Congress. In this theoretical debacle, Mr. Sarkozy's
wife, the model-singer Carla Bruni, visits and all the politicians act like it's just any other day in Congress and
there is not a beautiful and intelligent woman to be acknowledged in the room.
In a different political vein, the famous film critic Pauline Kael once lamented that she couldn't lambast "Shoah"
for being a bad film without being considered anti-Semitic. She couldn't offer negative criticism for the simple
reason that "Shoah" is a film about the Holocaust. Similarly, if I criticize the Cuban "Fragile," which shows date
rape, drugged out nihilists at a party, and a couple re-enacting water torture, then perhaps I would face similar
accusations of being squeamish and prudish. But the fact is that content, staff, and compositional style do not
dictate what is good or bad art. If my subject is the holocaust, that doesn't mean automatically that I have
made a great work. If I am a Chinese dissident living in mainland China, my choreography would not
automatically demonstrate the power of art to transform the sleeping peasant into a protesting peasant. And
even if it could, it doesn't mean that I, the hypothetical Chinese dissident choreographer had created a
masterpiece of dance. Similarly, just because a writer eschews the bourgeois themes of marriage or family and
instead writes a novel about the Oppressed Working Class doesn't mean that the work as a whole should
automatically enter the canon of great literature. Again, what an artwork is about (even whether or not it's
abstract), who makes the art (and what their politics are), and what their style is do not dictate good or bad art.
These are neutral elements of artistic composition. That said "Fragile" was bad work.
The Executive and Artistic Director of Dance Camera West, Lynette Kessler, protested her disbelief at the end
of the screening that "Fragile" had contained extra footage not seen in the original submission, but the damage
was already done. No new territory was covered in terms of film technique, just slow and fast speeds,
rewinding and replaying footage. A great film does not need to break new ground with technology, but it needs
to have some substance. In the six vignettes that comprise "Fragile" nothing of import transpired. Here're the
conceits for each vignette:
1) A couple in begin an ideal date. She's in a red dress. He's in gray clothing. She touches his face. They
embrace and begin to kiss. A soft porn pseudo-tango commences and then the film stops abruptly in a burst of
reverse coloration and when normally colored imagery resumes she begins to fight his embraces. Over and
over again, she pulls her dress down. Over and over again he grapples with her. Then abruptly she stops
moving and he holds her sagging body. It's implied that this was a date rape that ended in her death.
2) Someone, whether a man or a woman, is dancing on the ground in a destroyed building and covered in
concrete dust. Harsh lighting travels toward and away from the person writhing in the dust. The end.
3) A woman wearing a clear plastic dress showing her breasts flings repeatedly herself against the corner of a
building. The end.
4) A woman wearing a black dress writhes in a puddle. She gets wetter and wetter. The puddle gets bigger
and bigger. Where is the water coming from? It's too dark to tell. The water sounds like a toilet running. I'm
thinking, "is this going to turn into 'Flashdance' at least?" Fade out.
5) Two girls and a guy lean against a wall and mosh to punk music. Depicted in a grainy film texture, the girls
catfight over the guy, then he becomes violent towards them and seems to slam them against the wall. The
end.
6) A supine woman in a courtyard leans over a green bowl of water at night and a man kneeling behind her
bathes her hair and face tenderly. Over and over again he washes her hair and her face. At first the
movement is sensuous, and then it increases in aggression and speed until he is forcing her head under water
and she fights him until she stops moving. The final end.
All these vignettes were choreographed by Isabel Bustos whose description of her work for the press release
reads "how fragile our lives are in love and life." I didn't see that. I saw that the director, Javier Garcia, has
revealed a depth of psychic scarring: every moment of passion, curiosity or tenderness ends in violence and
death in the reality of "Fragile." The problem is not so much one of subject -- rape and water torture -- as it is
in vision. The material stays at the level of self-expression where the artist is still using craft to exorcise
demons. It's therapeutic and the viewer has just paid a ticket to watch someone's therapeutic process. Similar
subjects developed beyond the scope of one's personal angst, on the other hand, carry a more universal
appeal.
Take for instance Clint Eastwood's latest film, "Gran Torino." A spunky Hmong girl, Sue, is always seen
speaking thoughts that reveal a keen, curious, joyful, and witty intelligence. But in the pivotal climax of the
movie (spoiler alert!), Sue returns into a home fraught with concern over her welfare. She has been missing
for hours and when she returns home, she is for the first time, silent, broken, and bleeding. Her rape is
implied, but Eastwood, who directed and starred in the film, chooses not to show her gang rape at the hands of
several Hmong gang members. He could have included an extended scene where we see Sue confront a
situation where her intelligence and nimble mind cannot compete with sheer brutality that revels in violent
abasement. Instead, the contrast between Sue's normal, highly articulate bubbliness and the bruised and
silent suffering lend gravitas to the film's final scenes. Reticence in depicting violence makes the violence done
to Sue more potent. Not so in "Fragile."
At the opposite end of the scale where a great deal of nudity is shown, Ang Lee's last film, "Lust • Caution,"
gained notoriety for its several marathon sex scenes. In the film, the graphic encounters between the two main
Shanghainese characters -- a high level Japanese collaborator played by Tony Leung and an erstwhile college
student cum undercover resistance fighter played by the young actress Tang Wei -- reveal unstated motivation
and character. The sex is awkward and graceless; both characters are naked and no alleviating melodies are
played in the background to make the sex less naked, less desperate in tone. Mr. Leung's character appears
to thrust his body into the acquiescent body of Ms. Wei's character as if he could bury all trace of himself. The
scenes seem to go on, and on, and on as if he were digging a trench. The sex takes work and has almost no
eroticism. He seems to seek a kind of transformation that he can't find at his high pressure desk job or even
with his own scheming wife. And yet he wants to lose himself. Ms. Wei's character forbears the onslaught of
torturous sex with him and in the process, she reveals the transition of her character from diametric opposition
to all collaborators to a conflicted and grudging compassion for her lover. She begins the movie as a fresh
faced college student caught up in ideological zeal (down with the traitors!) and begins to see the humanity in a
man that is so fearful of betrayal that he can't even close his eyes when he climaxes. And her transition is
seen most clearly in the way she has sex with him. It's complicated sex because it doesn't fit into any easy
categories. If the director of "Fragile" had taken sex and violence to a place other than violence, then the six
vignettes could have had some kind of visual impact. As they are, they had as much impact as reading a
description of a reality tv episode.
I write these things and I write them specifically for Shared Sacrifice because looking at experimental work and
watching films that aim for some kind of depth can provoke thought and awareness. When an experimental film
engages the viewer, there's an opportunity to look at things from a new perspective. But this engagement
requires a mutual agreement. The filmmaker must make work of substance and the viewer must agree to do
some work to understand and meet the film halfway. Unlike television and most American films, there's effort
involved. The viewer cannot simply sit and let images wash over his or her mind without some kind of alert
attention, a willingness to look beyond the surface of the image and what it represents, a curiosity to explore
possible meanings or rationales for abstract and surreal worlds. And frankly, with movies that require no work,
the mind becomes flaccid like an unexercised body.
An interesting thinker, Michael Tsarion, once said that the way we as individuals are most easily controlled by
government and religious powers is when we stop thinking for ourselves, stop trusting our instincts, lack the
imagination to perceive that things can be different from the way they are, avoid the courage to develop
solutions to different scenarios. The easiest way to cultivate independent thought, intuition, and imagination is
to do the work. That means not relying solely on anger and hatred against something negative or undesired
that exists. It means finding what would work better and under what circumstances, for which sector of the
population, and how it can be implemented. Anyone engaged
in that kind of work soon realizes that there are myriad ways to
create a better community on different levels -- in terms of policy,
in terms of inspiring individuals to embrace change in their own
homes, in terms of building a different model for harmony. The
possibilities are endless. Experimental art is a metaphor for that
kind of exploration while classic art can be seen as a metaphor
for a system of rules that create the desired effect whether it be
symmetry, chiaroscuro (showing lightness and darkness), poetic
justice, even beauty.
And so even if the things I write about might not be about Communist hippies protesting the evacuation of a
building where they have been squatting ("Cuba Libre") or how the U.S. government had inside knowledge of,
or greater involvement, in the attacks of 9/11 ("Zeitgeist" and "Farenheit 9/11"), these movies from Dance
Camera West are still in a medium that requires your engagement, your work, and your agency in deciding
what they mean, why they succeed or don't succeed as films, and moreso than narrative import, what they
mean to you. I write about work that invites you to be engaged in life and the expression of life.
Shuriu Lo writes, knits, and choreographs in Los Angeles.
25 June 2009
by Shuriu Lo
Dance Camera West
REDCAT Theater
Los Angeles, California
Saturday, June 6, 2008
6pm & 8pm screenings collectively titled "Screendance: A New Visual Language"
Don't get me wrong. I'm enamored of dance. I'll watch ballet, pole dancing, krumping, MTV videos, Lawrence
Welk -- you get the point. I like looking at craftsmanship, at presentation or technique, at individual dancer's
charisma and musicality, but most particularly, I like looking at composition. In evidence at Dance Camera
West's "Screendance: A New Visual Language" was a mixture of experimental dance films ranging from the
mediocre to the sublime.
In a mediocre dance film, dancing is used as a tool to get the viewer to pay attention to a message of some
kind. That's one way the average dance film is structured. Also in a mediocre dance film, the medium of film
itself gets the glorified role of recording dance. In "Risen" (2008), a beautifully-formed and virtuosic dancer-
choreographer, Shay Kuebler ostensibly shows up to practice street dance in a large, expensive dance studio.
(Yes, I'm sure the typical street dancer has access to studios with a sprung floor covered in marley that won't
splinter his skin and where a wall of windows opens to a city skyline.) It's a thin conceit for the message that
follows -- an uneven rehash of material where instead of Marlee Matlin posing as a photographer in "What the
Bleep Do We Know?" we get a hip dancer who simulates injury after negative thoughts. Masaru Emoto is even
quoted as images of water molecules flash across the screen with the appropriate "I hate you/I love you"
messages attached. It's the "Bleep" movie but shorter. At the end of this positive thinking à la quantum
physics film, Kuebler has become so proficient with positive mental imagery, that he levitates -- yes, he levitates
-- out of the frame. The overall effect is corny and uneven, although, the film is worth purchasing just to watch
great street dancing up close.
In the second category of average dance film
where the camera merely records dancing falls
"Wildmenspark" (2006) filmed in Holland by
Gonny Jüngst and Vloeistof. This thirteen
minute film documents a certain genre of post
modern dance that comes from the European
tanztheater tradition. In tanztheater, dancers
perform mostly pedestrian movements with
repetition, using elements of theater such as
spoken word and narrative interactions that
accumulate to stimulate the viewer's intellectual
investigations of life, politics, and art. Frequent
collaborators Yuri Bongers and Anja Reinhardt are listed as the choreographers in this film but the movement
appears to be structured improvisation. Placed on some kind of track, the camera spins around and around in
a circle as dancers run in a circular pathway around the camera. Fortunately the camera action is smooth
enough so that the viewer doesn't experience nausea. The viewer most likely experiences fatigue, though.
I can't emphasize enough how tanztheater relies heavily on repetition. Dressed in business suits, the dancers
run and a woman calls out to them as if she were a physical education teacher taking roll. The dancers run
and a man jerks spasmodically and says in Dutch (or German) a string of emotionally escalating absurdities
that culminate in his physical collapse against other runners. Of course we're meant, as the viewers to see the
dancers as participants in the rat race of life. Sometimes the dancers help each other move forward as they
run; sometimes they just throw each other down to the ground and speed ahead. The analogies are obvious:
in our society, we at time cooperate then compete with each other. At times the dancers merely observe the
action before rejoining the circular race. In other words, sometimes we observe life; sometimes we participate
in life. The dancers cluster; the dancers separate. Sometimes we are a part of a community; sometimes we
are alone. The repetitions become aggravating, as they tend to in tanztheater. Aggravation forces the viewer
to confront issues in his or her own life similar to what is being depicted. One gorgeous dancer throws off her
jacket, quits running in a circle, and performs idiosyncratic movements that are simultaneously luscious and
iconoclastic. It's Jessica Van Reuschen in an extended solo and when her face and name appeared at the
ending credits, several members of the audience clapped in appreciation. The film ended with a deliciously
silly movement: a dancer flees the race holding his arms aloft in an absurd gesture similar to the affectionate
whimsy of Monty Python.
Experimental dance films require a level of participation in the viewer that can be exhausting. I concentrated so
intently during the six o'clock showing that I fell asleep during the last film, "Captain" (2008) even though it, like
most of the films in both screenings, was less than ten minutes long. Many audience members came on dates
and I could hear restless movements and feel shuffling feet pressed against my seat from the non dance
enthusiasts. "Too much culture for you?" asked one date. And later on, "is this too arty for you? do you want
to go?" Non narrative films are much, much harder on the viewer than one would expect. Without any plot to
propel the action, the films require the viewer to be engaged from inside. By this I mean, the viewer is required
to trust that the sequence of images one is viewing do accumulate to some kind of vision. The viewer is
required to participate in creating his or her own meanings for what he or she sees. And the viewer is asked to
exercise a kind of imaginative curiosity that functions on a non verbal level. I say non verbal because in a
dance film, the primary method of expression is movement, body language, weight, velocity, kinesthesia and
not words and logic. Watching dance on film is an experience akin to interpreting one's own dreams, but less
personal, because someone else has created the dream. In normal reality, we have sound bites, simple and
easy categories of good/bad, proficient/lazy and other black or white notions of organizing reality. In the realm
of dance films -- even with some level of plot line as in dance musicals, the viewer is required to re-examine
what gestures mean, what is important, what is fun, what is possible.
For instance, in the workaday world, it's good to be on time, increase sales, and score a new customer. In
"After Dürer" (2007), it's unclear whether the world depicted is made better or worse with its focus on symmetry,
measurements, and mathematics. Is the monk animating the geometric world he inhabits or is he dwarfed by a
predominance of grids and compasses? In the final scene, the only portion in color, a monk holds a small grid
frame of four squares. He and the camera look through the frame as if it were a window pane through which he
can admire the sea at sunset. Even surrounded by the vastness of sand, sea, and sky, the monk still chooses
to reduce his world to a grid framework through which to perceive the world at large. Whatever the director,
Daniel Belton, intended, I felt that I had been submerged into a man's mind where his reality was constantly
informed by mathematical structures that both made his spirit soar and drove him to obsessively quantify the
world. He appeared to escape that world to The World outside of math, art, and mind in the final image but
only to an extent. The sea was too powerful to be measured or fully conceived by his mind so he fell back on a
small grid held in his hands to contain it visually. The film seemed like an artist's distillations of his personal
experiences with Dürer who wrote extensively on perspective, proportions, movement, and beauty. Perhaps
Mr. Belton had been deeply inspired by Dürer at some point. Whatever the director's reasons, I looked up
Dürer and read about him once I had access to my computer and a good cup of tea. The film had piqued my
curiosity about a world of which I knew very little.
The Canadian film "Baba" (2008) is nearly a good dance film. I say nearly because at four minutes and fifteen
seconds, it takes too much time to introduce dancers as "characters" in a city square outside a church.
There're the Gospel Singers, the Homeless Man, the Business Persons, the Young Woman and Her Love
Interest, the Token Ethnic Person, the Kids. And really, none of that mattered. Whether or not the dancers
were recognizable types had no impact on the accumulated images of skirts spinning, arms undulating, feet
hopping, jackets whipping which synthesized into a lovely and visceral intensity. It came to me as I was
watching, "ah, this is why people love to dance! This is what it feels like to love moving to music!" And just as
that pleasure physical movement began to register, the film ended. So it was almost a good film. It was good
for the last few seconds.
Another Canadian film "The Greater the Weight" (2009) has more success with building and sustaining the
visceral intensity that dance on film can have. A woman wearing a burgundy dress barefoot in a boxing ring
begins the film. Close-ups of her face, her arms, her back, her feet, her legs moving, always moving with
purpose and full-bodied commitment build. And the dancer-choreographer Dana Michel is a fantastic mover to
watch. She charges the frame with muscular activity -- now frenetic, now languorous. The screen fills with
images -- the sparsely lit set accentuates the muscles of her arms and her back, the blur of movement sweeps
across the frame until the viewer feels pulled to and fro with Ms. Michel and her percussive dance. Great
editing supports the excitement that this athletic dancer generates. All this builds, like the music to a high
octane and then ends at a peak. The music, sounding much like a Capo Verde fado, has immediate appeal
but because it sounds looped and goes nowhere, it begins to detract from the strength of the film. In terms of
content, "The Greater the Weight" has very little: a great dancer dances in great lighting in a well-edited film.
And that's okay. Sometimes it's enough to just watch something that inspires you to enjoy moving.
I try never to say negative things about under funded art forms with marginal audience appeal, but I also find it
interesting to explore why a work is particularly bad. Bad and yes, even ugly. Because dance on film is an
experimental form (yes, it's been in existence for a long time, but severely under funded for 98% of that time),
some mistakes are understandable. In the enthusiasm of exploring film technology with beautiful dancers as
the subject, films get made that look like show and tell: look what my toolbox can do! "2soon" is a prime
example of this kind of film. The dancing is splintered into different effects -- the kaleidoscope, the flickering
image, the still image with the moving image, the white noise image. It's a compendium of tricks.
One of the problems with dance on film occurs when the camera moves too much and the viewer becomes
aware of the camera. With "La Surprise" the quirky camera movements coupled with the dancers quirky
dancing result in a slight sense of nausea. The whimsical movement worked well with a still photography
montage of the dancers posed throughout the room but otherwise, the extraneous camera movement tended
to clutter the frame with too much quaintness.
Such a film makes the sublime and perfect dance film
"Of the Heart" stand out for its superb camera work
and composition. Whoever is behind the camera on
this short film directed by Douglas Rosenberg and
Allen Kaeja must have been a dancer in a previous
career. To the quiet music of Arvo Pärt, "Of the
Heart" opens with a shot of a man and woman wearing
black coats, their heads leaning together. In this
monochromatic frame, only the camera moves
seamlessly panning around the dancers. The wind
blows through her blonde hair as the dancers create
a silhouette of their bodies against a hayfield. It feels
like they are breathing and that the viewer is simply watching two people breathe. Then gradually the dancer-
choreographers David Dorfman and Lisa Race move but they dance with such subtlety that they seem almost
to be still. Perhaps the points where their bodies touch have become kinesthetic sensors for hearing the
weight of the other person's breath. They seem acutely attuned to minute shifts between each other. The
space between them pulses with awareness. The camera stays close, sometimes moving with the dancers,
sometimes ceasing to move in a seamless tango where the dancers and the camera listen to each other and
listen to the unfolding dance. Nuzzling into a kiss, they slide into "dance position" as if ready to ballroom dance
amongst bales of hay, but no, the camera follows their joined hands until they separate and it is just his one
hand. The camera acts like a choreographer drawing to the foreground one aspect of the dance that is
transpiring. She leans backward and he supports her spine. The camera pans down with her backbend and
the viewer can feel the weight of her body arcing back in space. Slowly, slowly, details are revealed: the
texture of their skin, the color of their eyes, the downturned mouth now open now gently set in a line, the eyes
looking inward and yet the two faces seeing each other without looking with the eyes. The camera draws the
viewer into the transparency of these two performers. They completely commit to the smallest of gestures.
There is no hiding behind technique here. There is no overkill that detracts from simplicity. We see the
closeness of the dancers -- the way they share their breath, the way they lean without reservation into each
other knowing that the other will take their weight, take their gestures and give back support, give back a
gesture that builds on the one before. We see the dance emerging between the dancers. We see the dance
and not just the dancers. Abruptly, the camera cuts to the man standing alone in the hayfield. As the camera
pans about ten feet back, it catches her dancing alone. Like a silent witness, the camera stops moving and
just records her movements without comment. Then the two dancers begin to dance together again. What is
this dance about? I'm not sure. It looks like what Rumi described as
When you see the splendor of union,
the attractions of duality seem poignant
and lovely, but much less interesting.
(from "Sheba's Throne")
It's perhaps unfair of me to describe the splendor of this movie with poetry, but the union of the two dancers
shows how interesting, how deep beyond words, how rich, how satisfying a good partnership can be with
another person. And like a third player in the dance, the camera both frames how much we can see and
orchestrates the speed at which we can breathe in this dance of union.
(See for yourself on the small screen of your computer the best dance film I've yet seen.)
Another sublime and nearly perfect film was the stunning "Becoming" (2009) directed by dancer-choreographer
Ayelen Liberona and director-filmmaker Joseph Johnson Cami. There is not a single wasted shot in this film.
The cinematography, animation, special effects, editing, music, movement, makeup, and structure create a
stunning and coherent narrative. From the first image of fireflies beside a river current, the viewer knows that
he or she has entered a different world of magical realism akin to the films of Guillermo Del Toro. An odd
shaped protrusion that is neither rock nor animal juts out by the apex of the river before it cascades down the
cliffside. That protrusion turns and becomes the head of a strange insect/animal woman. She crawls out of the
water onto the rocks and the camera pulls back to show the tableau of the woman stretched out like a sphinx
upon the rocks above a dusky waterfall. Then up close, she reaches one limb, then another from the right side
of the frame to the left and then she's slithering through a forest and crawling up a tree. Seen from the tree's
point of view she climbs with intent and purpose but to where? Within the tree is a soft, green-white light.
Pulling back, the camera frames her crawling toward the fireflies congregating inside the tree trunk. She runs
after a stream of fireflies through the forest and the thudding of her feet resounds against the damp ground.
Under a rocky bridge or stairs a congregation of fireflies lights up the night as if with thousands of electric
lights. The camera focuses on a single firefly puzzling the edge of the rock face while the animal/insect woman
pulses at the edge of the frame, out of focus, but ever present. Then the fireflies enter a cornfield and the film
shifts into daylight. A grim-faced man cuts down stalks of corn, his chest bare, his muscles gleaming with work
and sweat. He senses another presence in the corn beside himself and pivoting around he begins to chase it.
The animal/insect woman jumps high above the corn, higher than a human could jump to fantastic music. The
man and the woman play cat and mouse through the row upon row of green corn. Jumping again, she
pounces on him and they wrestle. She jockeys herself higher and higher up his body while he attempts to
subdue her. At last, she parades above him and he twists his head awkwardly to look up at her. She holds still
then with quiet deliberation, wrenches his neck and merges into the cornstalks as his body falls to the ground.
"Becoming" has a textural vibrance that engages the viewer's visual, aural, and kinesthetic senses through an
interplay of magical realism. Nature incarnates in the body of a she-animal/insect and nature conquers man
then returns to the bosom of nature, the film seems to say. Whatever the message, the imagery has a
richness that is a great pleasure to watch. The only misstep comes perhaps from Ms. Liberona being a dancer-
choreographer. From the mysterious underworld of a forest in eternal twilight, the she-animal/insect emerges
into a harsh sunshine of corn and plant. Where the scant clothing on the dancer-actress Jessica Keeling had
merged with the twilight forest, now in the corn field, the viewer can see clear edges of fabric adhered to her
nipples and painted over, the distinct outline of the boyshorts covering her hips. In the sunny cornfield, she
shifts from being a creature of imaginative fascination into a well-trained dancer garbed a sexy costume.
I would suggest that a dancer-choreographer, having spent a great deal of time creating movement and having
loved the lines and patterns formed by the dancers' bodies, then faces the dilemma of underlighting a scene to
preserve a mood while the choreography disappears into semi-darkness. It's so difficult to give up a great set
of moves generated specifically for a work and I sense, being a choreographer myself, that the desire to show
the choreography clearly won out over the desire to submerge the viewer in a consistent fantasy of a magical,
crepuscular half world. Still, "Becoming" is a truly gifted symphony of a short film on par with "Of the Heart," a
superb chamber piece.
(See for yourself by watching the 80-second trailer.)
On the other hand, the German "At Table" (2008) and the Cuban "Fragile" (2006) are just plain bad film
compositions. There are potentially interesting elements in both films but instead of framing those elements
and exploring them further, both films get sidetracked by other issues that frankly, don't add up to a greater
sum for this viewer.
The second man in "At Table" has a strange face -- real intensity in his blue eyes that say so little but seem to
see everything. His head is shaved and oddly shaped. He does strange things like draw on the table and
populate it with miniature plastic people. And this brings to mind the fact that in film, the performers do not
have equal value. This is not something over which there is a great deal of control and its certainly no
democracy. Genetics and background contribute to the mystery of what makes one performer more arresting
to watch than another. It's not an egalitarian art and to treat each performer as such is a misuse of resources
and a misunderstanding of how to bring out what is most intriguing about each performer.
Take for instance the sole woman in "At Table." First seen in splintered parts as a pair of feet walking on the
table in high heels, then as muscular calves framed by a black dress, then as bare arms and tranquil hands
that reach down to the table, then finally as a that torso slides into view as the woman descends to her chair at
the end of the table. Before we see her face, she's a mysterious presence. Unlike the men who are completely
covered in black clothing except for their faces and hands (and the second man's bare feet), the woman is
significantly less clothed. Her skin and muscles have an expressive quality that are never explored in this film.
And then once we see her face, which has an emotive beauty similar to the models in pre-Raphaelite paintings,
we are lost. We want to see some kind of narrative involving this intriguing face. Instead, the first man
dominates the action, even though he is not interesting to watch. I felt as if I was watching C-SPAN without the
sound on a day where the prime minister of France visits Congress. In this theoretical debacle, Mr. Sarkozy's
wife, the model-singer Carla Bruni, visits and all the politicians act like it's just any other day in Congress and
there is not a beautiful and intelligent woman to be acknowledged in the room.
In a different political vein, the famous film critic Pauline Kael once lamented that she couldn't lambast "Shoah"
for being a bad film without being considered anti-Semitic. She couldn't offer negative criticism for the simple
reason that "Shoah" is a film about the Holocaust. Similarly, if I criticize the Cuban "Fragile," which shows date
rape, drugged out nihilists at a party, and a couple re-enacting water torture, then perhaps I would face similar
accusations of being squeamish and prudish. But the fact is that content, staff, and compositional style do not
dictate what is good or bad art. If my subject is the holocaust, that doesn't mean automatically that I have
made a great work. If I am a Chinese dissident living in mainland China, my choreography would not
automatically demonstrate the power of art to transform the sleeping peasant into a protesting peasant. And
even if it could, it doesn't mean that I, the hypothetical Chinese dissident choreographer had created a
masterpiece of dance. Similarly, just because a writer eschews the bourgeois themes of marriage or family and
instead writes a novel about the Oppressed Working Class doesn't mean that the work as a whole should
automatically enter the canon of great literature. Again, what an artwork is about (even whether or not it's
abstract), who makes the art (and what their politics are), and what their style is do not dictate good or bad art.
These are neutral elements of artistic composition. That said "Fragile" was bad work.
The Executive and Artistic Director of Dance Camera West, Lynette Kessler, protested her disbelief at the end
of the screening that "Fragile" had contained extra footage not seen in the original submission, but the damage
was already done. No new territory was covered in terms of film technique, just slow and fast speeds,
rewinding and replaying footage. A great film does not need to break new ground with technology, but it needs
to have some substance. In the six vignettes that comprise "Fragile" nothing of import transpired. Here're the
conceits for each vignette:
1) A couple in begin an ideal date. She's in a red dress. He's in gray clothing. She touches his face. They
embrace and begin to kiss. A soft porn pseudo-tango commences and then the film stops abruptly in a burst of
reverse coloration and when normally colored imagery resumes she begins to fight his embraces. Over and
over again, she pulls her dress down. Over and over again he grapples with her. Then abruptly she stops
moving and he holds her sagging body. It's implied that this was a date rape that ended in her death.
2) Someone, whether a man or a woman, is dancing on the ground in a destroyed building and covered in
concrete dust. Harsh lighting travels toward and away from the person writhing in the dust. The end.
3) A woman wearing a clear plastic dress showing her breasts flings repeatedly herself against the corner of a
building. The end.
4) A woman wearing a black dress writhes in a puddle. She gets wetter and wetter. The puddle gets bigger
and bigger. Where is the water coming from? It's too dark to tell. The water sounds like a toilet running. I'm
thinking, "is this going to turn into 'Flashdance' at least?" Fade out.
5) Two girls and a guy lean against a wall and mosh to punk music. Depicted in a grainy film texture, the girls
catfight over the guy, then he becomes violent towards them and seems to slam them against the wall. The
end.
6) A supine woman in a courtyard leans over a green bowl of water at night and a man kneeling behind her
bathes her hair and face tenderly. Over and over again he washes her hair and her face. At first the
movement is sensuous, and then it increases in aggression and speed until he is forcing her head under water
and she fights him until she stops moving. The final end.
All these vignettes were choreographed by Isabel Bustos whose description of her work for the press release
reads "how fragile our lives are in love and life." I didn't see that. I saw that the director, Javier Garcia, has
revealed a depth of psychic scarring: every moment of passion, curiosity or tenderness ends in violence and
death in the reality of "Fragile." The problem is not so much one of subject -- rape and water torture -- as it is
in vision. The material stays at the level of self-expression where the artist is still using craft to exorcise
demons. It's therapeutic and the viewer has just paid a ticket to watch someone's therapeutic process. Similar
subjects developed beyond the scope of one's personal angst, on the other hand, carry a more universal
appeal.
Take for instance Clint Eastwood's latest film, "Gran Torino." A spunky Hmong girl, Sue, is always seen
speaking thoughts that reveal a keen, curious, joyful, and witty intelligence. But in the pivotal climax of the
movie (spoiler alert!), Sue returns into a home fraught with concern over her welfare. She has been missing
for hours and when she returns home, she is for the first time, silent, broken, and bleeding. Her rape is
implied, but Eastwood, who directed and starred in the film, chooses not to show her gang rape at the hands of
several Hmong gang members. He could have included an extended scene where we see Sue confront a
situation where her intelligence and nimble mind cannot compete with sheer brutality that revels in violent
abasement. Instead, the contrast between Sue's normal, highly articulate bubbliness and the bruised and
silent suffering lend gravitas to the film's final scenes. Reticence in depicting violence makes the violence done
to Sue more potent. Not so in "Fragile."
At the opposite end of the scale where a great deal of nudity is shown, Ang Lee's last film, "Lust • Caution,"
gained notoriety for its several marathon sex scenes. In the film, the graphic encounters between the two main
Shanghainese characters -- a high level Japanese collaborator played by Tony Leung and an erstwhile college
student cum undercover resistance fighter played by the young actress Tang Wei -- reveal unstated motivation
and character. The sex is awkward and graceless; both characters are naked and no alleviating melodies are
played in the background to make the sex less naked, less desperate in tone. Mr. Leung's character appears
to thrust his body into the acquiescent body of Ms. Wei's character as if he could bury all trace of himself. The
scenes seem to go on, and on, and on as if he were digging a trench. The sex takes work and has almost no
eroticism. He seems to seek a kind of transformation that he can't find at his high pressure desk job or even
with his own scheming wife. And yet he wants to lose himself. Ms. Wei's character forbears the onslaught of
torturous sex with him and in the process, she reveals the transition of her character from diametric opposition
to all collaborators to a conflicted and grudging compassion for her lover. She begins the movie as a fresh
faced college student caught up in ideological zeal (down with the traitors!) and begins to see the humanity in a
man that is so fearful of betrayal that he can't even close his eyes when he climaxes. And her transition is
seen most clearly in the way she has sex with him. It's complicated sex because it doesn't fit into any easy
categories. If the director of "Fragile" had taken sex and violence to a place other than violence, then the six
vignettes could have had some kind of visual impact. As they are, they had as much impact as reading a
description of a reality tv episode.
I write these things and I write them specifically for Shared Sacrifice because looking at experimental work and
watching films that aim for some kind of depth can provoke thought and awareness. When an experimental film
engages the viewer, there's an opportunity to look at things from a new perspective. But this engagement
requires a mutual agreement. The filmmaker must make work of substance and the viewer must agree to do
some work to understand and meet the film halfway. Unlike television and most American films, there's effort
involved. The viewer cannot simply sit and let images wash over his or her mind without some kind of alert
attention, a willingness to look beyond the surface of the image and what it represents, a curiosity to explore
possible meanings or rationales for abstract and surreal worlds. And frankly, with movies that require no work,
the mind becomes flaccid like an unexercised body.
An interesting thinker, Michael Tsarion, once said that the way we as individuals are most easily controlled by
government and religious powers is when we stop thinking for ourselves, stop trusting our instincts, lack the
imagination to perceive that things can be different from the way they are, avoid the courage to develop
solutions to different scenarios. The easiest way to cultivate independent thought, intuition, and imagination is
to do the work. That means not relying solely on anger and hatred against something negative or undesired
that exists. It means finding what would work better and under what circumstances, for which sector of the
population, and how it can be implemented. Anyone engaged
in that kind of work soon realizes that there are myriad ways to
create a better community on different levels -- in terms of policy,
in terms of inspiring individuals to embrace change in their own
homes, in terms of building a different model for harmony. The
possibilities are endless. Experimental art is a metaphor for that
kind of exploration while classic art can be seen as a metaphor
for a system of rules that create the desired effect whether it be
symmetry, chiaroscuro (showing lightness and darkness), poetic
justice, even beauty.
And so even if the things I write about might not be about Communist hippies protesting the evacuation of a
building where they have been squatting ("Cuba Libre") or how the U.S. government had inside knowledge of,
or greater involvement, in the attacks of 9/11 ("Zeitgeist" and "Farenheit 9/11"), these movies from Dance
Camera West are still in a medium that requires your engagement, your work, and your agency in deciding
what they mean, why they succeed or don't succeed as films, and moreso than narrative import, what they
mean to you. I write about work that invites you to be engaged in life and the expression of life.
Shuriu Lo writes, knits, and choreographs in Los Angeles.
| SHARED SACRIFICE ON BLOGTALK RADIO M-F 8:00-9:00 PM MT Saturdays 12:00-2:00 PM MT |
 | |  | |  |
| SHARED SACRIFICE PROGRESSIVE POLITICS AND CULTURE 25 June 2009 |
"Wildmenspark"
"Danse MacaBre"
"The Greater the Weight"
"Of the Heart"
"Becoming"
Two men and one woman dressed in black populate "At
Table." They sit at a table. They lie on the table. The
walk on the table. They grimace at nothing. They avoid
making eye contact with each other; they don't avoid eye
contact with the camera. None of this makes for a bad
dance film per se, but there seems to be a lack of
sensitivity as to how the participants appear on film. The
main dancer, a man in a suit, has a self-consciousness
and calculated quality that appear badly on film. Instead
of illuminating the subject of the film, this acute
self-preoccupation reveals the dancer's awareness of
performing. It's self-referential and begins to seem
self-indulgent. Watching this, I felt like I had gone to
listen to a lecturer discuss the development of microtonal
music in Southern California from the 1960's till now and
instead, the lecturer name dropped which pop culture
celebrities had attended his performances and hinted
which starlet found him worthy of note. Frankly, that's
just not worth the price of a ticket to listen to or to watch.
And it shows a lack of central focus in the film that
portends death to a short, non narrative film. Perhaps
the filmmakers, Regina Bartschi and Michaela Isabel
Funfhausen, trusted the dancers to generate interesting
material that they would then film. Whatever the case,
the film lacked clear direction.
Table." They sit at a table. They lie on the table. The
walk on the table. They grimace at nothing. They avoid
making eye contact with each other; they don't avoid eye
contact with the camera. None of this makes for a bad
dance film per se, but there seems to be a lack of
sensitivity as to how the participants appear on film. The
main dancer, a man in a suit, has a self-consciousness
and calculated quality that appear badly on film. Instead
of illuminating the subject of the film, this acute
self-preoccupation reveals the dancer's awareness of
performing. It's self-referential and begins to seem
self-indulgent. Watching this, I felt like I had gone to
listen to a lecturer discuss the development of microtonal
music in Southern California from the 1960's till now and
instead, the lecturer name dropped which pop culture
celebrities had attended his performances and hinted
which starlet found him worthy of note. Frankly, that's
just not worth the price of a ticket to listen to or to watch.
And it shows a lack of central focus in the film that
portends death to a short, non narrative film. Perhaps
the filmmakers, Regina Bartschi and Michaela Isabel
Funfhausen, trusted the dancers to generate interesting
material that they would then film. Whatever the case,
the film lacked clear direction.
| The viewer cannot simply sit and let images wash over his or her mind without some kind of alert attention, a willingness to look beyond the surface of the image and what it represents, a curiosity to explore possible meanings or rationales for abstract and surreal worlds. |
"At Table"
"Fragile"
"Of The Heart"