Philadelphia Dance Projects
with Scribe Video Center
presents Motion Pictures '07
in partnership with DanceBOOM’07
at The Wilma Theater, Broad & Spruce Sts., Phila PA
June 7-8, 14-15, 2007

Curated by Terry Fox and Gretjen Clausing

June 7 at 7PM - Shorts Blowout

AFTERNOON OF THE CHIMERAS
Daniel Conrad, Canada, 2006, 15m
Filmed in collaboration with choreographer Aszure Barton, this dance for camera merges humanity, movement, and the environment with admirable simplicity. See website www.rhodopsin.ca

FOUND OUR WAY
L. Capco LIncoln, USA, 2006, 3 min
Choreographed by Misia Denéa
This “choreo-film” performed by the Nzinga Arts Collective, explores how queer women of color navigate relationships and focus on collective healing.

HERE IT GOES AGAIN
Trish Sie, USA, 2006, min)
Winner of both Grammy for best music video and a YouTube award, Trish Sie’s music video for herbrother’s band OK Go, known in online circles as “the treadmill video,” is an inspired piece of choreography for the camera. 

HOUSE
Kate Watson Wallace, USA  2006, 5 min.
Dance takes place in every room in this house, created from live/video performance.

THE INN OF FLOATING IMAGERY
Kathy Rose, USA, 2007, 8 min)
Filmmaker and performance artist Kathy Rose creates and populates a richly colored world below the surface drawing inspiration from the supernatural and eerie stillness of the Japanese Noh theater.  Through her "self-puppetry" she explores her identity as the artist and process of the art using fabrics, figures and miniature sets, to create an enchanting operatic vision.

KALEIDOSCOPE FACE
Gabrielle Revlock, USA    2007  5 min)
A fanciful dance, harkening back to the era of fin de siecle lawn dances.LIGHT BOX WOMAN
Jaamil Kosoko USA, 2006, 4  min.)
The first film to be commissioned by DFA, features Megan Mazarick as she attempts to understand the natural forms and nuance within her body while also trying to break free from its physical constraints.

TRUCK STOP DANCE
Megan Mazarick USA 2007 5 min.
This site specific piece has a breezy informal quality as Mazarick performs in a truck stop parking lot with passing 18 wheelersas her partners.  She then moves inside to haunt the florescent lit hallways, video arcade and souvenir shop appearing more as a ghostly apparition.  Guaranteed to spawn a new urban legend of the truck stop dancer.  Move overTrucker Phantom 309.

And very Short Shorts…under 2 minutes: 

City Steps 
Graham E. Hancock USA, 2006, 1 min
Choreographed & Performed by Zoia Cisneros...Taking it to the streets.

Hans Project
(USA, 2006, 1 min)
Filmed & Edited by Stan Sadowski  
Choreographed by Anne Marie Mulgrew
Dance takes inspiration from 15th woodcarvings.

Table Dance
(USA, 2007, 2 mins)
Collaboration between Jen Simmons & Jodi Netzer
A post-lunch nap evolves into a table dance in a Center City food court.  Filmed as part of the 2006 Dance and the Camera master class with Carmella Vassor-Johnson.

Tim
(USA 2006  2 min.)Directed by Devynn Emory
A  portrait sketched with dancing, shown at Dance On Screen in the UK.

9PM - BREAK
Shona McCullagh, New Zealand, 2006, 14m
A moving tribute to a family’s dynamic from the perspective of a young boy that plays inventively with rhythm and narrative. From the director of wildly popular dance short FLY and the choreographer for KING KONG and the THE LION, WITCH, AND THE WARDROBE. For more information and to purchase her other shorts FLY and HURTLE, please e-mail Human Garden
with
ONE FLAT THING, REPRODUCED
Thierry de Mey, France, 2006, 26m
William Forsythe carved a formidable career in Europe with infrequent returns to NYC. His collaboration with Thierry de Mey, acclaimed for his screen adaptations of works by Anna Teresa de Keersmaeker, brings us insights into his ingenious choreography. Thierry de Mey follows a formal strategy to capture “the play of triggers, moments of waiting, visual and sonic cues, and to follow the conducting voices of Forsythe’s choreographic melodic montage and contrasting mounting rhythms that penetrates inside the playing space."

June 8 10PM

MOVEMENT (R)EVOLUTION AFRICA (A story of an art form In four acts)
Joan Frosch & Alla Kovgan, USA, 65m
In an astonishing exposition of choreographic formentation, eight African choreographers tell stories of an emergent art form and their diverse and deeply contemporary expressions of self. Stunning choreography and riveting critiques challenge stale stereotypes of “traditional Africa” to unveil soul-shaking responses to the beauty and tragedy of 21st century Africa.

Artists: Company Kongo Ba Téria (Burkina Faso), Company Rary
(Madagascar), Sello Pesa (South Africa), Company TchéTché (Côte d'IvoireCompany Raiz diPolon (Cape Verde), Company Jant Bi (Senegal) and Kota
Yamazaki (Japan), Nora Chipaumire (Zimbabwe), Jawole Willa Jo Zollar (USA),
Faustin Linyekula (Democratic Republic of Congo) www.movementrevolutionafrica.com/

June 14 7PM

FROM MAMBO TO HIP HOP
Henry Chalfant, U.S., 2005, 56m
A more recent generation know it as the place where, out of the ashes, hip hop and break dancing were born. An older generation remembers when this turf produced salsa. We are in the South Bronx and the speakers are not camera shy. In fact, you would be hard-put to find a more gregarious bunch of folks who chronicle the rise and fall and rise of a vibrant neighborhood and its generations of survivors who can testify to the neighborhood’s power to revitalize itself through music and dance and to take the world’s pop culture by storm. Henry Chalfant will introduce.

9pm TODO EL MUNDO DANCE
USA, 2000, 24 mins
This short produced by Philadelphia high school students as part of Scribe Video Center's Documentary History Project for Youth explores the rich history of social dance in Philadelphia's African American and Latino communities.  Colorful interviews with renowned area professional and amateur dancers including Rennie Harris, Myra Bazell, Kim Bears and a Parking Authority supervisor who dances his troubles away several nights a week provide a rich social and political underpinning for why Philadelphians just "gotta dance!"

This program is presented in partnership with Scribe Video Center as part of their Producers’ Forum series.

MIRROR DANCE
Frances McElroy & Maria Teresa RodriguezUSA, 2005, 54 min)            
Frances McElroy & Maria Teresa Rodriguezhe story of Cuban-born identical twins Ramona and Margarita de Saá, who become estranged through politics when one moves to the United States and the other remains behind. Ramona joins the National Ballet of Cuba and Margarita founds the Narberth Ballet Academy outside Philadelphia. Though separated for almost 40 years, both continue to share a passion for dance.   Mirror Dance, directed by Philadelphia based documentary filmmakers Frances McElroy and Maria Teresa Rodriguez, reveals the complexities of the sisters’ relationship: the worlds in which they live, the choices each has made and the conflicts each has endured. Set within the context of the turbulent dynamic between the two countries, the film focuses on the twins’ story of division, difference and ongoing efforts at reconciliation. It is a universal story that speaks to the personal pain, loss and waste that can result from international hostilities.

June 15

7PM (Screening location is Scribe Video Center, 4212 Chestnut St.)

TRACING LINEAGE
Lisa Kraus & Carmella Vassor-Johnson, USA, 2005, 40 min)
For her solo dance performance 50 Moves, choreographer Lisa Kraus fashioned a palette of fifty individual movements selected from her lifetime of dancing.  Kraus collaborated with filmmaker Carmella Vassor-Johnson to make Tracing Lineage a  playful video that is part informative primer the history of contemporary dance and part intimate portrait of an artist.  

I AM A DANCER IN MY HEART
Phally Chroy, USA, 2006, 20 mins
Phally Chroy has crafted this intimate portrait of his uncle Chamrouen Yin, who learned Cambodian Court Dance in the refugee camp after his family escaped Cambodia from the aftermath of the Khmer Rouge regime in 1979.  The importance of dance and identity are revealed through his art alongside the preparation of the dance and his daily duties.

Presented in collaboration with Scribe Video Center as part of their monthly screening series Storyville.

10PM -BREATH (NEFES)
Huseyin Karabey, Turkey, 2005; 40m
(in Dutch, with English subtitles)
A taciturn Pina Bausch, the heralded queen of European dance theatre who studied at The Juilliard School in New York, smiles, nods, and takes notes for the marvelous dancers of her Wuppertal Dance Theatre, seen rehearsing and performing in Istanbul. Enigmatic as always, the choreographer nevertheless offers a privileged glimpse of herself at work with her handsome, playful dancers who solicit approval from the master choreographer with their improvisations.

EZEIZA
Andrea Servera, Argentina, 2005, 27m
This magical film that captures the essence of a women’s prison in Buenos Aires while demonstrating how the inmates, who may never have had such a gentle experience ever in their lives, are all drawn into the creative process. Choreographer/teacher Andrea Severa worked for two years with these women so that they can leave the prison somehow enriched. Without elaborate choreography, their simple movements became dance and reveal a sense of joy and of being. Composed by Sebastian Schactel, this project was supported by The Secretary of Culture of Buenos Aires City Government, Arts International, and the Fundación Teatro del Sur/Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. For more info. on the director www.arteamundo.com

For further information, contact Terry Fox, Director, Philadelphia Dance Projects, c/o Philadanco9 N. Preston St., Philadelphia, PA 19104 USA T: 215.676.1540 info@philadanceprojects.org

Philadelphia Dance Projects contributes to the cultivation of dance art in Philadelphia and the region, by providing professional development and services for dance and movement artists, enrichment for their audiences and exposure and learning experience in dance for youth through various projects and presentations. www.philadanceprojects.org

Scribe Video Center seeks to explore, develop and advance the use of video as an artistic medium and as a tool for progressive social change. "Scribe" is a metaphor for the use of video as amodern medium to record significant contemporary concerns and events.

* This program was made possible in part through DFA's touring program sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts, the members of DFA, and the Susan Braun Trust. To become a touring partner, see the Touring Partnership Page

 

 

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