In 1956 Susan Braun commemorated her love for Isadora Duncan and her distress that only 30 seconds of film existed of her with the founding of Dance Films Association. 50 years later, DFA is bowing to the continacy of that legend with a program of early dance films with live dance that reflects the sensibility of Isadora. The program was designed by Amy Greenfield, long time member of DFA, veteran filmmaker and programmer. DFA initially approached Galapagos about doing a program on early dance films and its connections to vaudeville, magic, and entertainment. Interestingly we found that the dance films had two paths from the beginning, one that reflects men and their fascination for machines and women and their sensuality, their love of nature and freedom. With another bow to tradition, we decided to let the ladies come first. We will return to the Galapagos in early summer with a program that ties John Rockwell’s line about dance on camera being “a new kind of magic” with old magic, short clips from Melies and other wizards.

The April 30, 7-9pm, $10 live dance and screening at the Galapagos Art Space, 70 North 6th Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York will feature solo performances by Lori Belilove with choreography by Isadora Duncan and by Andrea Beeman. The program include a fragment from TRANZ, 1997, 3’, a video of live multimedia byAmy Greenfield with performer/choreographer: Andrea Beeman followed by a live performance by Andrea. From the fascinating DVD VIVA LA DANSE (see ad below for UNSEEN CINEMA), TILLIE LOSCH IN HER DANCE OF THE HANDS by Norman Bel Geddes, 1930, 7’; 4 SOLOS FOR 4 WOMEN, 1980, 10’ director/performer: Amy Greenfield; dancers: Susan Hendrickson; Suzanne Gregoire; Sudabeh Keshmirian; A NYMPH OF THE WAVES by Frederich Armitage, 1903, 30seconds; DIANA THE HUNTRESS by Charles Allen and Francis & Francis Trevelyan Miller, 1916,10’ ; WILDFIRE, Amy Greenfield (with Thomas Edison) Dancers: Andrea Beeman; Francine Breen; Cynthia Demoss; Bonnie Dunn, 2002 12’ ANNABELLE SERPENTINE ?DANCES (after Loie Fuller) by Thomas Edison & company, W.K.L. Dickson & William Heise; Dancer: Annabelle Moore, 1894 – 1895; ORAMUNDE by Emlen Etting, 1933, 10’; Lori Bellilove performing live MOTHER choreographed by Isadora Duncan; SOUL OF THE CYPRUS directed by Dudley Murphy,1920, 8’ and closing with another solo by the acclaimed Isadora Duncan dancer Lori Bellilove.

Viva la Dance DVD provided by the film preservation project "Unseen Cinema: Early American Avant-Garde Film 1894-1941" sponsored by Anthology Film Archives, New York, and Deutsches Filmmuseum, Frankfurt am Main, and underwritten by Cineric, Inc."

Amy Greenfield explains that TRANZ was deliberately made in the style of early cine-dance especially “Fatima”(1896, Edison Co), “Princess Ali” (1895, Edison Co) and “A Nymph Of the Waves”. It combines two film projectors, slide projector, live feed video with live performance and classical Egyptian music. Originally performed at the American Museum of the Moving Image and Anthology Film Archives.

Wendy Perron in the April, 2006 Dance Magazine wrote that "Lori Belilove is arguably the best, most devoted Duncan interpreter in the U.S. When she performs Duncan's dances, you see the glorious sweep through space, the oppositional skips, the swooping torso. You see the emotional range from breathy joy to seductiveness to earthbound despair."

Andrea Beeman (aka Andrea Anwar) is both a dancer and filmmaker. She has performed Middle Eastern dance as a soloist and company member with Mosaic Dance Theatre Company, Elena Lentini’s Caravanserai, Anahid Sofian & Dancers, Jehan Kamal’s Ballet Exotiqa, and SaZ Dance Theatre. She is presently a member of New York Performing Artists Company (which performs Middle Eastern dance at public schools in the metropolitan area) and Ishrat Hoque’s Hindi Film Dancers. Andrea has been making dance related films and videos since 1987 which have been screened at the Grand Prix Video Danse, the Dance on Camera Festival, and Anthology Film Archives. Her films GUEDRA (1991) and BRINGING TO LIGHT (1992) were acquired by the Dance Collection at the New York Library for the Performing Arts. She also works as a freelance producer and editor. Andrea holds a BA in Studio Art and Art History from Georgetown University and a MA in Painting from New York University.

For more information, contact: Galapagos Art Space

FROM MAMBO TO HIP HOP to be shown at Dance Times Square, Just east of Broadway on 44th Street, New York City on April 30, 2006 3pm as part of National Dance Week. For more details, visit: www.ndw-nyc.com

After 5 years in the making, Jasmine Dellal has created an extraordinary film in which she followed WMI’s GYPSY CARAVAN concert tour and then went with the musicians to their homes in Romania, Macedonia, India and Spain). The film is a a celebration Romani music, culture and life - and a fascinating look into the artists' lives on the road and at home.

Screenings:
Monday, May 1, 6:30 pm, Regal Cinemas Battery Park 102 North End Ave (@ Vesey St.)
Wednesday, May 3, 6:30 pm, AMC 68th St. @ Broadway
Friday, May 5, 1:15pm, AMC 312 W. 34th St.
Sunday, May 7, 4:15pm, AMC 312 W. 34th St.

Tickets are on sale now and usually sell out, so please get tickets early.
www.tribecafilmfestival.org

5 Gypsy bands from 4 countries unite for the GYPSY CARAVAN, and take their music around North America for a whirlwind concert tour, astounding every audience they meet. Their musical styles range from flamenco to brass band, Romanian violin to Indian folk and with fire in their bellies and soul in their voices they celebrate the best in Gypsy music and the diversity of the Romani people in an explosion of music and dance. As this rich feature documentary follows the dazzling performances and behind-the-scenes action of the tour, we discover the real lives of these musicians; traveling to their homes, meeting their families and seeing what music brings to their lives. Shot by documentary icon Albert Maysles, the film journeys to Spain, Macedonia, Romania and India. Tales of the characters are woven between their performances, reflecting the imagery and emotion of the music. We get to know them and their bands intimately, allowing us to understand their music and to celebrate Romani history and culture.

Featuring: Taraf de Haïdouks, Fanfare Ciocarlia, Antonio el Pipa, Esma Redzepova, Maharaja
Director/Producer: Jasmine Dellal; Camera: Albert Maysles & Alain de Halleux; Sound: John Gurrin; Co-producer: Sara P Nolan; Executive Producers: Wouter Barendrecht, Michael J Werner, San Fu Maltha; Concert Producer: World Music Institute; Presented by Little Dust Productions in association with ITVS, Fortissimo Films, FuWorks
Post: Rhino Post, Sound One, 701 Sound, Goldcrest. Dedicated to The Decade of Roma Inclusion 2005-2015

DFA acts as fiscal sponsor for Nutcracker Nation

Produced and directed by Evann Siebens, NUTCRACKER NATION will be an hour-long documentary film for national television broadcast, based on dance historian Jennifer Fisher’s funny, personal and enlightening dance history book ‘Nutcracker Nation: How an Old World Ballet Became a Christmas Tradition in the New World’ published by Yale University Press in 2003.

Fisher’s book made the unprecedented choice in dance history to look at The Nutcracker as a North American ritual that had transcended regular ballet enthusiasm. Performed annually by professional companies and amateur schools alike, in versions as various as each community that hosts them, this seminal ballet is often a future dancer’s first exposure to ballet with its attendant tutus, sparkles and drama. Why and how did this ballet become so popular and enterit entered into the zeitgeist of American culture?

Using original photographs and archival footage from the 40’s and 50’s, the documentary will track the ballet’s progression to North America, first by Russian emissaries such as Anna Pavlova and the Ballets Russes and resulting, in 1944, in the first US production for the San Francisco Ballet mounted by William Christensen. Balanchine created his version of the Nutcracker for the New York City Ballet in 1954 and CBS did a live broadcast of Balanchine’s Nutcracker on Christmas Eve in 1957 and1958. Fisher proposes that these television broadcasts had an immense influence with choreographers and audiences across the country, in addition to stressing how important Balanchine’s version was and the influence it had on later Nutcracker versions from the 1960’s and 70’s.

Parallel to these developments was the popularity of the animated 1940 Disney film Fantasia, featuring a Nutcracker Suite to Tchaikovsky’s music with dancing mushrooms, thistles and flowers. As Fisher states, “the film’s lush musicality and inventive movement choices unwittingly did a lot to prepare North Americans for ‘real’ ballet and to nourish the growth of the annual Nutcracker movement… If North Americans didn’t know what to make of classical music and dance, they understood cartoons.”

Support for this project is welcomed. Donations to Dance Films Association are tax-deductible. For more information, write evann7@earthlink.net

Designing cameras and choreography
by Betty Jenkins

Open almost any book on filmmaking, and you will read somewhere that story is the basis for all choices in the design and production of moving images. From the colors of the wardrobe, to the types of lenses used, editing rhythms, the 'right' choice is the one which serves the story and its forward progression. While stylized visuals and expressive imagery certainly exist in the dominant narrative forms of documentary and dramatic fiction, they are rarely presented for their own sake - except in the realm of dance on camera.

Many dance forms contain little or no story at all. In fact, dance is more likely to have a design-based structure. Without a mediating story, dance
expresses itself more directly through the elements of design, rhythm, line,
shape, space, movement, tone, color, and sound. Of course, dance can tell a story, or move a story forward. But no story can explain pirouettes, repeated lunges, or the rhythmic stamping of a group. Expression through design, not story, which allows for much of the action of dance. To paraphrase choreographer Donald McKayle, “you can take the story out of dance, but you can't get rid of design.”

To illustrate design in action, let us look at the element of line in two very different works. First, the opening sequence of Pascal Magnin's beautiful film, REINES D'UN JOUR. Comprised of thirty-five shots, this sequence uses diagonal lines to create a cohesive visual design structure. In several shots, the edge of a steep hillside creates a strong diagonal line, dividing the earth from the sky and the screen from corner to corner. Diagonal lines are also created by the axis' of the dancers bodies, which are often oriented diagonally across the screen, echoing the line of the hillside. The path of the performers' motion creates diagonal lines as they move up to the left top corner of the screen, and then roll, slide, and even dive headfirst out of the bottom right corner. It is surprising and visually exciting to see the completion of the diagonal line created by the dancers' movement as they disappear from the bottom right corner. The sequence would not be nearly as effective if the performers had stayed in frame, if the line created in the wake of the movement had not been allowed to continue across the entire screen. This pattern of movement along a diagonal line from the top left to the bottom right is used and explored in twenty four of the thirty five shots. In one shot, the performers are essentially still and the camera creates the movement, drifting over them as they lie on the ground. Even here, the same diagonal path is used; new faces are found on the left, and they exit frame at the bottom right corner. Five shots give the eye a rest from the pattern, and four use movement along the opposite diagonal for contrast and to build the visual intensity.

A very different use of line is found in the title dance of the feature film SINGIN' IN THE RAIN. In this beloved sequence, vertical and horizontal lines dominate the background, created by doorways, windows, a lamp post, walls, and buildings. The line created by the axis of Gene Kelly's body is essentially vertical with his feet always remaining near the bottom of the frame. Kelly remains mostly centered within the frame and never exits, so his motion does not suggest a path or progression through the screen. The exception is the circle he creates near the climax of the dance. The most important lines in this sequence are those in his facial expression. This is supported by the shot design of the sequence. In the first six shots, the camera begins distant and moves quickly toward Kelly near the end of the shot, re-framed in a medium close-up or a close-up. The giddy joy rendered in the expressive lines of his face are as much a part of the dance as his tapping. The next two shots break the pattern. In these shots, Kelly expresses his joy in larger motion instead of facial expression. The final shot reverses the pattern, letting us see Kelly's face at the climax of his splashing, and receding as he sheepishly moves away.

All of the elements of visual design, line, shape, space, movement, tone, color and rhythm are present in every image of these sequences. Each of these elements are multi-faceted and offer infinite possibilities in structuring dances for the screen. A tremendous resource on theories of visual design for the screen is “The Visual Story, Seeing the Structure of Film, TV, and New Media.” In this unique book, author Bruce Block brilliantly and concisely defines and illustrates the visual components of the screen. For filmmakers accustomed to the supremacy of story, dance offers different kinds of problems to be solved, and the opportunity for design to dictate choices. For choreographers accustomed to the stage, the screen offers new ways of seeing and designing. Once a dance is recorded, the work of the camera co-exists with the choreography in the screen. This is obvious when the choreography and the shots are created specifically for each other. It is less obvious, but just as true, when the work is a 'simple' documentation of a dance made for the proscenium stage. A choice is made when a camera is placed in relation to a subject, and this choice will affect the outcome on the screen. With dancing images, the question is not whether the direction and choreography work together or not, but rather, how well they work together. The study of the elements of screen design and practice, can shed new light on this collaborative, creative process.

Betty Jenkins is a new board member of DFA, a former dancer/current professor who has arranged
for dance on camera this September at The Little Theatre, Rochester, NY

Spotlight on Joann Jansen

Joann Jansen, whose agent is ICM, is lapping up choreography credits in feature films. One wonders what she could do if she were given an unconventional story and director. So many of the recent Hollywood dance films are, of course, woefully formulaic, filmed with little imagination, offering poor press for dance and suggesting that the genre of dance films is ridiculously limited. Still, we can’t blame Joann for that and have to bow to her seeming dominance.

She has choreography in two feature films released this month: "Take The Lead," with Antonio Banderas and "Marilyn Hotchkiss' Ballroom Dancing and Charm School" starring Marisa Tomei, Robert Carlyle, Sean Astin, Mary Steenburgen and Danny DeVito. She worked with Dakota Fanning on "Houndog" and recently completed "Lonely Hearts" starring Salma Hayek and Jared Leto. Other recent projects include working with director Cameron Crowe on "Elizabethtown" starring Susan Sarandon, Orlando Bloom and Kirsten Dunst, "In Her Shoes" directed by Curtis Hanson and starring Shirley MacLaine and Cameron Diaz and with director Rob Reiner on "Rumor Has It" with Jennifer Aniston and Kevin Costner.

Other film credits include "Shall We Dance," "Havana Nights-Dirty Dancing," "Pirates of the Caribbean," "Along Came Polly," "Uptown Girls," "Remember The Titans," "The Mexican," "Lucky Numbers," "Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas" and "What Dreams May Come." In television, she has choreographed numerous shows including "Twins & Charmed" for the WB and the Lifetime series "Strong Medicine" produced by Whoopi Goldberg. Other television work includes two episodes of the innovative television series “X-Files,” with one episode directed by David Duchovny and another by the show's creator, Chris Carter. Her credits also include numerous commercials including the current on-air Target Design campaign.

JoAnn started in film production by choreographing music videos and commercials while working as a leading member of the creative team for A Band Apart Films. As an independent producer, she has co-produced several projects with Lawrence Bender including "Havana Nights–Dirty Dancing," "A Price Above Rubies" starring Renee Zellweger, and was associate producer on "Fresh and White Man's Burden." In addition, she has been the acting coach on numerous features.

She is directing the trailer for the upcoming film, "Dancin’ on the Edge" for producer Jonathan Krane. The film is a cross between "Fame" and "Cocoon" with a hip hop, a swing and an Irish dance team battling to win a talent competition on a cruise ship. Additionally, she has directed two shorts "The Whiskey Heir" starring Frances Fisher and produced by Lawrence Bender, and "Angel of the Odd", which was singled out for an award at the Canadian International Film Festival. Of JoAnn, John Travolta said, "She is like a chameleon. She can cross-reference dances throughout history and come up with just the right movement that suits the character and the film. She is brilliant."

What the critics say about TAKE THE LEAD
“It's easy to watch, the dance sequences are sporadically enjoyable (if hardly innovative) and Antonio Banderas is wonderfully magnetic and charming in the lead." William Arnold, Seattle Post Intelligencer

"[Take the Lead] hits all its marks, but never dazzles anyone with its footwork."
John Anderson, Variety

"The eye-popping dance numbers and affecting performances by the young leads, as well as Mr. Banderas and Ms. Woodard, make it worth the ride." Nancy Churnin, Dallas Morning News

"The latest ballroom dance-fever picture isn't very good, but some of the dancing is fun."
Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune

About "Marilyn Hotchkiss Ballroom Dancing and Charm School “.. a soggy, endless wallow in nostalgia and the healing power of very bad dancing." Jeannette Catsoulis, New York Times.

and one more ouch! ! "You've always suspected that going to dance class and charm school wouldn't be a lot of fun. Now a movie has come along that proclaims the truth: You were right all along." E! ONLINE.

Book Review: Dance on Screen
Genres and Media from Hollywood to Experimental Art
By Sherril Dodds. Palgrave Macmillan, 2004
by Elizabeth Zimmer

The troubling thing about the recent paperback reissue of Sherril Dodds’s Dance on Screen is that it was essentially obsolete before it was released. Originally published in hardcover in 2001, it was largely written well before that; its extensive bibliography and notes reference nothing after 1997.

Developed out of the research for her doctoral dissertation (Dodds lectures in dance studies at Britain’s University of Surrey), the book tends to get bogged down in theoretical quagmires. Dodds acknowledges in her preface that the work is a snapshot of a particular period—the early ‘90s—and of the universe of British screen dance. This was a rich era, paced by the terrific work of various television directors and producers, but the absence of any attention to more current material makes it a project in history rather than a survey of the contemporary situation.That said, there’s a lot of stimulating material here, largely cast in academic language. Her concern is “visual culture,” and her attempt is to provide theoretical frames for the various genres of filmed dance. If I were a working dance filmmaker, I’d be tempted to throw the book across the room, but as a writer always searching for ways in to the conversation about “screen dance,” I appreciate her analytical bent. Here’s a sample sentence, from a chapter called “Hybrid Sites and Fluid Bodies”: “There is clearly a danger of a simplistic polarization of intentionality in terms of equating commercialism with promotion and aestheticism with video dance.”

Huh? I think she’s talking about commercials, and the use of dance material to attract viewers to television advertising spots. Her sources range from the late Walter Benjamin (though it’s disconcerting to find her referencing without explanation a 1973 edition of the work of a man who died in 1940 and whose seminal essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” was in fact released in 1935) to contemporary British dance writers, and the films discussed include Alison Murray’s scary, antic Kissy Suzuki Suck (1992), some of the work of Margaret Williams and Victoria Marks, and classic video dances like those recorded by Merce Cunningham. A reader with the patience to wade through her thickly jargoned prose can learn a great deal about the first quarter-century of British video dance, view a portfolio of good stills from those recordings, and marvel at the level of complexity a British professor assumes her readers are capable of absorbing.

Frustratingly, in a note to Bob Lockyer’s forward, Dodds acknowledges the related book Judy Mitoma and I edited (Envisioning Dance for Film and Video, Routledge, 2002) but does not offer a full bibliographical reference. Her volume covers some of the same ground as our larger one, filtering all her sources through her own voice instead of letting artists and theoreticians speak for themselves.

Annette Macdonald produces a documentary on the genius
behind the divas, Jack Cole

Jack Cole (1911-1974) is the true father of American jazz dance, and has been recently named as one of “The 100 Most Irreplaceable Treasures in American Dance History” by the Dance Heritage coalition. He invented a new vocabulary of movement—a merging of ballet, modern, East Indian, Afro-Cuban, and African-American dance--and set this to contemporary jazz music. Anna Kisselgoff wrote his obituary in the New York Times in 1974: “On the Columbia Pictures lot in the 1940’s, he trained an entire generation of dancers in a jazz-influenced style that came to represent American show dancing throughout the world and that was widely copied on television.” The original dancers he trained at Columbia Pictures were George and Ethel Martin, Rod Alexander, Alex Romero, Bobby Hamilton, as well as Gwen Verdon and Carol Haney. Cole created the sensual, screen images of major female movie star divas such as Marilyn Monroe, Rita Hayworth, and Betty Grable. His choreography involved classical training and exceptional musicality which prepared the body for any kind of movement. He created an entirely personal mode of jazz dance which still prevails today.

Kisselgoff (1974) quotes Gwen Verdon: “Jack influenced all the choreographers from Jerome Robbins, Michael Kidd, Bob Fosse down to Michael Bennett and Ron Field today.” His influence still exists today in the work of Robb Marshall, Kathleen Marshall, Susan Stroman, and others. Jack built a significant bridge between serious concert dance and commercial dance, a bridge that did not exist before his time.

Annette Macdonald is Professor Emerita of Dance, 33 years at San Jose State University in California. Her MA at U.C. Berkeley was field research in dance anthropology, the “Big Drum Dance of Carriacou”, near Grenada in the West Indies. Macdonald made two shorts Dances of Mexico: Animal Origins and Tanko Bushi. With Allegra Fuller Snyder she made the award winning film When the Fire Dances Between The Two Poles: Mary Wigman 1886-1973. Besides the documentary on Jack Cole, she is also working on a film and monograph on Lavinia Williams for the Schomburg Center, and a documentary film of the ballet and musical theatre career of Gemze de Lappe. Annette was a solo tap dancer on the Mississippi Queen steamboat, and performed in summer stock theatre.

Smith College invited Annette MacDonald to give a lecture and a class in Jack Cole’s technique on May 27th. Hampshire College dance history and dance for the camera teacher Constance Valis Hill and the students went wild over the rare footage of SING SING SING. Your support for this project, created under the fiscal sponsor umbrella of DFA, and input is welcomed. Contact: Annettemac@aol.com.

Victoria Dance for the Camera Workshop 2005
by Mariah Malec

I first became involved in recorded dance in graduate school at Arizona State University. I did a piece that used dance footage as a backdrop projected on the cyclorama while live dancers were in the foreground. My second foray was as a performer for Ellen Bromberg’s “Falling to Earth”, which was an evening-length work that was performed in both Tempe and Tucson, Arizona, and again at the International Dance and Technology Festival in 1999. Ellen Bromberg is Associate Professor of Dance at the University of Utah, and a leader in the field of D4C. In Falling to Earth, Ellen collaborated with video artist Doug Rosenberg  who shot the dancers in a variety of ways. Some of this footage stood alone, and some was projected on screens while the dancers were moving in the space.

In 2004, Ellen sent me her newest work at the time, titled “Tether”. I loved it. I decided I wanted to obtain the knowledge necessary to create something that I could never create for the stage, as Ellen had done with “Tether”.

When I saw that Ellen was to be giving a workshop, I decided to sign up. I am a self-professed technophobe, but I know how warm and nurturing Ellen is from experience. I might have been afraid to take the workshop from someone else out of the fear of looking or feeling stupid, but I knew Ellen would never make anyone feel that way. Toward this end, I decided to attend the Victoria Dance for the Camera Workshop 2005, in beautiful Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. This was the inaugural year for this workshop; it is being offered again for the summer of 2006.

The charm of the Victoria D4C  workshop was it’s absolute acceptance of any and all levels of professional experience regarding filmmaking and dance. The participants included professional and amateur cinematographers, choreographers, dancers, camera-persons, editors, and general lovers of movement. Some people had vast technological experience but no experience in dance; others, like me, were dance professionals who were there to not only learn about shooting dance, but also to assuage their paranoia regarding today’s technology. (It is quite embarrassing when your students know more than you do about all matters technological, and in today’s age, this gap is getting wider and wider.)

There were eighteen participants at this workshop, which was housed in the beautiful studios operated by the Victoria Dance Connection. The hosts of the workshop, MediaNet, were also attentive enough to put out a call for dancers who were asked to volunteer their time for the participants. Eighteen dancers graciously donated their time; these dancers were from Victoria and nearby Vancouver, B.C. It should be noted that the caliber of the dancers was extremely impressive; clearly, there is some excellent dance instruction and training going on in this area.

The first thing we did was look at several D4C’s, and discuss in what ways dance for the screen is different from live performance. One of the hardest things for me as a traditional choreographer was the notion of the non-linear practice of presenting movement. This is the most liberating aspect of D4C, and one that required that I completely re-wire my creative thought process.

A choreographer can tell a linear story (or not) through a D4C, but the movement itself does not (and often should not) be linear in and of itself. That, is, a documentation of images that faithfully follows a movement phrase. This is an idea that could as easily be accomplished on the live stage, so why record it for the camera? What is so creatively liberating about D4C is the unending scope of possibility. This can be something as simple as a slow-motion leap; obviously, something impossible in real life because of that pesky Law of Gravity.

Regarding location for our shoots, Grace Salez of MediaNet put together a compact disk with literally hundreds of locations on Vancouver Island. This was supremely helpful, as some of us had never been to British Columbia, let alone Victoria and Vancouver Island. I ended up using a local college campus; the weather in Victoria is brilliant during July and August, so there were no weather-related problems for anyone.

As a result of my two weeks with Ellen Bromberg, MediaNet and the Victoria Dance Connection, we now have a dance media component at my university. While we do not yet have the resources or approval to offer Dance for the Camera as a class, I have been able to change two aspects of our program: One, we now analyze D4C in Issues and Trends, a philosophy class that covers current ideas in the field of dance. The class is asked to pair up; each pair is given a two-minute excerpt of a D4C; they are asked to analyze their D4C based on choreographic content and artistic intent. They are also asked to address the more practical matters, such as camera work and editing. Second, the students create a D4C in the advanced choreography class. As of this writing the students have recently completed their D4C; their response was quite enthusiastic, and many of them said this was their most fulfilling project of their entire dance education.

In addition, I have an extremely valuable new component to my choreographic works. As a tenure-track college professor, it behooves me to maintain my own education and artistry. And, from a practical point of view, any Dance for the Camera I create is highly portable and presentable with minimum effort. My production company, M/M Movement Projects, recently debuted its first concert. There were eight pieces, of which three were D4C’s. While I was the main dancer for most of the concert, I only had to physically dance in three pieces that evening. I was able to show my community something completely new to them, and at the same time go fairly easy on my thirty-something body! And any D4C I create can be mailed to D4C festivals around the globe; I don’t even have to be present.

Without my thorough training at the Victoria Dance for the Camera Workshop none of the above would be possible. In this day and age, every viable dance program needs to address dance media; the Victoria D4C is a great way to access this knowledge and apply it to one’s program or to one’s artistry as an individual. And there is no finer environment than Victoria. I highly recommend that any participant of this year’s workshop take a few days at either end to explore the area; one could truly make this a dream working vacation, with invaluable outcomes that will enrich one’s dance education for years to come.

Mariah Malec is Assistant Professor of Dance at Oakland University and
Artistic Director of M/M Movement Projects, both of which are in Rochester, Michigan.

Ten day intensive summer workshop 2006 in British Columbia with Ellen Bromberg
July 24 to August 5; Fee for workshop ~ $850 (Canadian dollars); Early bird entries before May 1st, ~ $700. Download entry form at www.media-net.bc.ca and click on "Dance for the Camera 2006". Contact: Grace Salez - gsalez@island.net