Walter Reade Theatre
Lincoln Center Plaza,165 West 65th Street
co-sponsored by The Film Society of Lincoln Center
January 29-February 2, 2010
See schedule day by day
Jan 29, 1:30pm; Feb 1, 6pm
MEREDITH MONK: INNER VOICE
Babeth M. VanLoo, USA; 82M
A Buddhist Foundation documentary on the much admired composer/choreographer/filmmaker Meredith Monk with excerpts from her films. Introduced by the director
Jan 29, 4pm; Feb 1, 8pm
(Honoring Anna Halprin, in her nintieth year)
PINK NAVIGATOR
Naomi Stikeman; Canada, 2009; 6M
Choreographer Crystal Pite with the support of Bravo!FACT explores themes of birth, death, renewal, and the freedom found through reconnecting with one’s body.
BREATH MADE VISIBLE
Ruedi Gerber, USA, 2009; 80M
A stunning, inspiring account of one of the most important cultural icons in modern dance. Anna Halprin, the American dance pioneer who has helped redefine our notion of modern art with her belief in dance’s power to teach, heal, and transform at all ages of life. This cinematic portrait blends recent interviews with archival footage. Introduced by director See trailer
Jan 29, 6pm; Feb 1, 4pm
KEEP DANCING
Douglas Turnbaugh and Gregory Vander Veer, USA; 18M
Friends since the Broadway run of THE FOLLIES in 2001, Marge Champion and Donald Saddler still dance together in a studio twice a week. See trailer. Introduced by directors and performers
FORTY YEARS OF ONE NIGHT STANDS (Friday Sold
Jeff McKay, Canada, 2008; 72M
Born out of nothing in the middle of nowhere, The Royal Winnipeg Ballet (RWB) set the ballet world on prairie fire. From Flin Flon to Moscow, it wowed audiences and critics alike with its youth, vitality and innocent excitement. Through the diverse voices of RWB company members—past and present—40 YEARS OF ONE NIGHT STANDS recounts the saga of the obsessive commitment and vision of those who brought the lofty art of ballet to the people.
See trailer Introduced by director and producer Patti Milne
Jan 29, 8:30pm; Jan 31, 1:30pm
DANCING ACROSS BORDERS
Anne Bass, USA, 2008; 90M
Sokvannara Sar (Sy) was a young, gifted dancer living with his family in Cambodia when he was discovered by Anne Bass, an American enthusiast and supporter of ballet. The two of them set out on a risky journey from Angor Wat to New York City, where Sy dedicated himself to learning an alien art under the tutelage of the master teacher, Olga Kostritzky at the School of American Ballet. See trailer Introduced by director.
January 30 – 4 shows celebrating Alwin Nikolais,
the Merlin of Dance on his centenary.
Thanks to the following people for their assistance: Alberto del Saz and the Nikolais/Louis Foundation, Phyllis Lamhut, Murray Louis, Claudia Gitelman, Gerald Otte, Jana Feinman, and Tanisha Jones.
Alwin Nikolais was an innovator, a media darling and a cultural icon. He created multi-media dance theater that astonished the dance world in the 1960’s and 1970’s with his audacious use of masks, props, slides, eerie sound scores, slide projections, lighting effects and wild costuming that simultaneously concealed and revealed the dancer in motion. Motion was the key to his philosophy, along with his concept of decentralization which contrasted sharply with the prevailing taste for psychologically based dance narratives. There were no girl/boy ballets for “Nik,” as he was affectionately known—no gods or goddesses, sex obsessed humans, and, above all, no room for the cult of celebrity. He preferred a group dynamic but was particularly inspired by kinetically gifted dancers, prominently Carolyn Carlson and Murray Louis. As a choreographer he made his bow to modern dance pioneers Mary Wigman and Hanya Holm but soon evolved into a brilliant abstractionist with an impish sense of the absurd and an unstoppable curiosity about what the body could accomplish in environments he could create. From his Henry Street Settlement days of experimentation to extensive travels and multi media extravaganzas of the later period he remained the wide-eyed explorer of the mind/body connection, a wise child whose universe was an ever evolving garden of visual delights.
Jan 30, 1:30pm Magnetic Orbits: Nik and Murray
together and separately
Kennedy Center Awards excerpt 1987
Joseph Papp introduction to Awards Ceremony, short bio sketch and dance performance of “Tensile Involvement” 14m
Followed by documentary feature:
NIK AND MURRAY
Christian Blackwood, U.S., 1986; 82M
A portrait of choreographer Nikolais and his dance muse, Murray Louis. The film, not seen since its initial screening, explores the professional and personal lives of two unlikely but reconcilable artists, the first a gentlemanly Connecticut Yankee; the second, a Brooklyn-born charmer and one of the custodians of the “Nik” legacy. Through the intimate relationship of the two choreographers, each a director of his own company (the Nikolais Dance Theater and the Murray Louis Dance Company) the two artists created a dialogue that pushed the boundaries of modern dance in new directions. Introduced by Murray Louis
Guests to appear at screening: Murray Louis, Phyllis Lamhut, Alberto del Saz
Jan 30, 4pm
Interview and dance excerpts from “Eye on Dance”
Jeff Bush, U.S.; 1984; 29M
Nikolais reminisces about early dance studies and describes of evolution of his groundbreaking work emphasizing the special capabilitiesof videodance. Host/producer Celia Ipiotis to introduce
Repertoire Workshop from New York, 1964; 29M
This amazing archival record shows members of the first Nikolais Dance Theater Company, arguably the most adventurous of four generations of extraordinary dancers, performing one of his signature works, “Imago,” comprised of segments both light hearted and menacing.
THE RELAY, USA, 1971; 29M
A made for television media work featuring a potpourri of dance, sound collage and surreal special effects that still send shock waves. This was a creative collaboration between Nikolais, the BBC and NET.
Followed by: Onstage interview with Nikolais scholar Claudia Gitelman and dance critic Robert Johnson discussing the choreographer’s career.
Jan 30, 6:30pm
CAROLYN CARLSON: LE REGARD DU GESTE/visual poetry
Elisabeth Kapnist, France, 2009; 52M (in French and English)
Kapnist, with writer Christian Dumais-Lvowski, made this film celebrating the life and times of former Nikolais dancer Carolyn Carlson. Carlson who moved to France in 1968, was inspired and influenced by Nikolais and pays tribute to him from her Paris based Atelier de Paris between rehearsals of one of her famous pieces, “Blue Lady.”Introduced by Elisabeth Hayes, longtime Carlson associate and currently director of the French American Cultural Exchange.
DOCTRINE OF SIGNATURES
and DREAM STATE (2009)
Mimi Garrard, US, 2001 and 2009; 18m total
Another former Nikolais/Louis dancer, Garrard has created numerous works for the stage and more recently for video using digital techniques to transform dance material. The first work was performed in The Kitchen, the second, in collaboration with Ailey dancer Sam Roberts. Garrard will introduce
LIMBO, a work for visual electronics in color
Repertoire Workshop from New York, an arts related television show
Ray Abel, US; 1968; 29M
An experimental work designed for television featuring costumes and effects suggesting aquatic creatures and fish folk caught in a fire storm. Nikolais’ score enhances the antic mood as Murray Louis, Carolyn Carlson and Phyllis Lamhut plunge or float into magical realms.
Jan 30, 9pm
NIK AND MURRAY
Christian Blackwood, U.S., 1986; 82M
A portrait of choreographer Nikolais and his dance muse, Murray Louis. The film, not seen since its initial screening, explores the professional and personal lives of two unlikely but reconcilable artists, the first a gentlemanly Connecticut Yankee; the second, a Brooklyn-born charmer and one of the custodians of the “Nik” legacy. Through the intimate relationship of the two choreographers, each a director of his own company (the Nikolais Dance Theater and the Murray Louis Dance Company) the two artists created a dialogue that pushed the boundaries of modern dance in new directions.
FUSION
Ed Emshwiller, U.S, 1967; 16M
This rare film was one of two collaborations between the choreographer and the avant garde filmmaker. If aliens invaded the Museum of Modern Arts, it might look something like this—masked dancers, flying fabric, no beginning, no end, just color and motion.
Jan 31, 3:45pm
Dancing for Disney 60
Dance scholar Mindy Aloff, author of 2009 book HIPPO IN A TUTU, comments on 40 minutes of animation produced by the Disney Studio and references. Dancing to music was a part of Walt Disney’s own earliest animated films, “the Alice Comedies,” which he made in his native Kansas City, Missouri: and it remained important up to The Jungle Book, the last Disney feature of Walt’s lifetime. During the 1930s, when the Disney Studio achieved not only popular success but also the prestige of being considered the cutting-edge of movie art, dancing—ballet , ballroom, Isadora Duncan, tap and vaudeville—was central . Audiences found it in the plot-driven shorts that starred Mickey Mouse and in the “Silly Symphonies,” the music-driven line of Disney films without recurring characters that prepared the way for Fantasia, the all-music extravaganza of 1940. This program will give a taste of the range and artistry of the Disney enterprise as it met the challenges, under Walt’s command, of inventing not only “the illusion of life” but the choreography of dance action.
Followed by animation today 30M
ENTANGLEMENT THEORY
Richard James Allen, Karen Pearlman and Gary Hayes, Australia, 2009: 10M
A busy dancing man takes a nap in two realities. His live self dreams and his avatar self dreams. Neither reality is quite so simple when they wake. Introduced by dancer Sanna Lundstrom
GABRIELLE
Stephanie Weber Biron, Canada, 2009: 4M
A little girl discovers a praxinoscope, where she observes animated images of a ballerina. The animated image transforms into a real dancer who transports us from Paris to Montreal in a surrealistic magical world. Introduced by director
SHE
Kathy Rose, USA, 2009; 4M
An insectoid fantasy adapted from a live performance into a mesmerizing short using puppetry, collage, and dance. Introduced by director
ROMEO & JULIET BEFORE PARTING
Jay Field, Canada, 2009, 5′
Set to the Prokoviev score, an innovative animation spins around 2 dancers.
EN TUS BRAZOS
Edouard Jouret, Matthieu Landour, Fx Goby, France, 2006; 4M
Marvelously accurate tango animated with great style.
TRASH DANCEOliver Fergusson-Taylor, 2008, UK, 1M
Hip hop deconstruction of trash heap.
Jan 31, 6:15pm; Feb 2, 4:15pm
DANCE ON CAMERA SHORTS
BEGUINE – Nominated for Jury Prize for Best Short
Douwe Dijkstra, Netherlands, 2009, 4:44
One man’s response to losing his lover, a surreal short based on a poem by Giza Ritschl.
THE LAST MARTINI – Nominated for Jury Prize for Best Short
Vickie Mendoza, USA, 2009; 6:16′
Inspired by the noir films of the 1940s and 1950s and the posters that publicized them, “The Last Martini” plays out the rain-soaked reverie of a man whose psyche becomes tangled in a broken dance of passion and heartbreak.
DANSE MACABRE
Pedro Pires, Canada, 2009; 9M
The director, who worked with Robert Lepage on this stunning short writes, “For a period of time, while we believe it to be perfectly still, lifeless flesh responds, stirs and contorts in a final macabre ballet. Are these spasms merely erratic motions or do they echo the chaotic twists and turns of a past life?” Winner of Toronto Film Festival 2009 Shorts Category. Introduced by director or producer Catherine Chagnon.
JACKIE & JUDY
Phil Harder, USA, 2009; 4M
An ode to Canadian animator, Norman McLaren’s PAS DE DEUX, the New York based choreographers Rosanne Chamecki and Andrea Lerner choreographed, and performed their silhouettes which become multiplied by their momentum. Introduced by director & performers.
Little Ease [outside the box] – Nominated for Jury Prize for Best Short
ami ipapo and matt tarr, USA, 2008, 6:53M
A new take on a classic piece of choreography conceived in 1985 by extreme action pioneer Elizabeth Streb. Through the use of the camera, we remove obstacles to the conversation between performer, environment and witness, taking this inspiring and athletic movement out of its typical context.