Charles Atlas, Rashaun Mitchell, and Silas Riener collaborate on a video/live performance. So what do you do if you meet a dancer who’s twice your size in every way, and he (or she) reaches out a hand to you? Well you could take off the 3-D viewing glasses that you were given as you entered BAM Harvey to see Tesseract. Or you could just sit back and ponder the enigmas of the virtual stage … [Read more...]
Filming Dance/Dancing Film
The 2016 Dance on Camera Festival. This year the Dance on Camera Festival celebrated its 44th anniversary and the 60th anniversary of Dance Films Association, which for the past 20 years has been partnering with the Film Society of Lincoln Center in presenting Dance on Camera. As usual, it was astonishing how many screenings, panels, master classes, workshops, and exhibits were fitted into … [Read more...]
Filming Dance, Dancing Films
The 43rd annual Dance on Camera Festival at Lincoln Center. The coats, the hats, the scarves, the shawls, the gloves, the bag, the boots. You needed them for the long, cold walk along West 65th Street in late January and early February. And then, when you got to the Walter Reade Theater, where most of the screenings in the 2015 Dance on Camera Festival took place, you had to shed these … [Read more...]
Documenting Dance, Part 2
The Dance on Camera Festival 2014 presents Chantal Akerman's film about Tanztheater Wuppertal and Fabrice Herrault's about Rudolf Nureyev. Chantal Akerman’s One Day Pina Asked. . . (1985, in French with subtitles), was advertised by the Dance on Camera Festival as a “rare retrospective showing.” It was shot during a five-week tour by Pina Bausch’s Tanztheater Wuppertal. What the fine … [Read more...]
Documenting Dance, Part 1
New York's Dance on Camera Festival 2014 premieres two documentaries: Miss Hill: Making Dance Matter and Paul Taylor: Creative Domain. We’re old hands at documentary films about major figures in the art world. That is, we pretty much know what to expect: we’ll glimpse the artist at work and hear him or her talk about it—alive or in grainy film clips. Various soul mates, friends, colleagues, … [Read more...]