Introduction to Screendance - Dance Film Festival
Romance and Dance in the City
I have separated these dance films into two main settings; city surroundings and apartments. This dance film festival focuses on films that directors place the apartments shown in popular cities like New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and so on. The camera work for these two locations are similar in that they attempt to isolate the relationship as your only focus and goal to understand as a viewer. It places the audience in the center of what the relationship is, whether they are losing love, trying to gain it, or within it.
While romance can be found anywhere unexpectedly, there is a social popular demand for romance to be captured in the city and continue with optimistic domestic life in a dingy, cozy, tiny apartment. I have been interested as to why this is a common theme, and I have linked historical entertainment past to fuel the idea of romance being found in the city enhanced with the magic of dance.
City Surroundings
The Way It Begins
The Way It Begins focuses on two strangers that cross paths on a train. They dance their way through New York City, each step closer to love. The story between the two lovers was written and directed by Chris Wright. The romantic film follows the popular film La La Land, in its panning camera shots and romantic easy jazz beats. The dancers, Robert Roldan and Jessica Lee Keller, hop, skip, and snap through the streets, subway, and central park. Their choreographer, Becca Sweitzer, incorporates styles of commercial contemporary-jazz dance which tends to highlight the dancers great ballet technique and weightless qualities. This combination of the city, effortless flow from the dancers, and the choreography highlighting their playful chemistry helps hold a great opening film for this festival. It captures all the hope that the city might hold for such an optimistic and lovely new couple.
A Lovely Night (La La Land)
La La Land has become a seemingly inspiration for the first three films of the festival. I wanted to highlight that this movie's strong dance personality with choreography by Mandy Moore. It has lead her to more projects that have similar visions, and we see more projects being made to make the magic similar in La La Land. Many films through history have the romantic classic jazz feel that La La Land experiences but this film won multiple awards and stood out in the year 2016 of cinema. This is a one-shot panning camera choreography that accentuates the wide view of LA city lights and the range of traveling by Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling. Playful flirting through mockery canons of tap rhythms make the playful scene.The beautiful coloring of city sky, lights, and dashing costuming between the two help carve a big inspiration for this film festival. The love scene almost continues as they lean in for a kiss, when a phone call disrupts the wonderland that they created with dance.
Dancerpalooza - Playback Video 2016
Dancerpalooza is a summer dance convention that provides classes and performances for the Long Beach area. It is for all ages, but ages that are represented in this dance film experience is between the ages of 12-18. Choreographer Mandy Moore creates a love story between Mackenzie Meldrum and Trevor Lerma. The two main characters dance through the city streets and surrounding them are peers looking, swooning, and appreciating love. This film was created the same time that the previous films listed above like The Way It Begins and La La Land, we now see an even younger age group seeing the city as a source of opportunity in love. Mandy Moore had just finished working on La La Land moves with Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling. The premier of the movie was not long before Dancerpalooza's Playback Video screening. The dance convention helps young artists to experience what it's like to be in a large film production, it also helps them experience what the storyline and opportunity could be awaiting for them in city adventures.
This I Must Remember
This I Must Remember is part of the Wilder Film Project where Holly Wilder has danced, edited, and directed most films. The spoken word in this film is also written and spoken by Holly Wilder. The Wilder project is founded by Wilder siblings, their mission throughout their work is to capture raw humanity through movement and a lens. This film entered into the film festival as the representation of romance with only one person as the focus. Wilder goes through her poem speaking of love and loss and change. The romantic landscape of the city gives Wilder's performance of irritability an extra sense of an edge. She is in a blush, velvet dress with heels and socks which draws my focus on questioning where she came from or where she might go for the love that she is speaking of. The city has created a loneliness while hundreds to thousands surround her in Times Square. Wilder explains that this is her rendition of a visual poem.
Crashing Waves
Crashing Waves centers on two young working-class men who explore the intimacy and vulnerability of relationships in a combative dance against the backdrop of an inner city, risking all reputation within a tight-knit community. Emma Gilbertson, wanted to represent the struggle between a working class community and LGBTQ+ identity. During the time of premier, LGBTQ+ communities experienced 21 of the 201 pro-LGBTQ+ bills introduced in state legislatures became law, and two of the 110 anti-LGBTQ bills became law. The anti-laws focused on the rights of LGBTQ+ relationships and their right to begin families with adoption agencies in the respected state. This film provides an insight on the LGBTQ+ community, while being within the festivals urban setting guidelines, and how romance is represented for this group. I have found that LGBTQ+ relationships to be mostly represented as struggle within urban communities. I see that the choice to place the couple within an urban setting adds the sense of claustrophobic, judging community that they can not escape or express to.
Bridges Go Round
Bridges Go Round is the only film representing the city as its own romantic entity. Shirley Clarke created the experimental work in the late 1950s. Through the use of archived camera pan shots of New York City's bridges, this film reminds me of a romantic idea of driving through the city. The dance of passing by fixtures and lines of bridge beams has an eerie soundtrack to capturing the magic of man-made fixtures. The dark blues and black and vivid colors of red and yellow of the city make a confusing combination of beauty and intimidating tone. Shirley Clarke experimented with the dream-like quality by running the original film through the printer with a second piece of film over the original. This enhances the color and layers the panning shots. Each beam sways with the music as the shots enter from side to side. This film included in the festival brings the hypnotizing effect of New York City structures.
Apartment Settings
Night Dancing
Night Dancing is the collaboration between partner/editor Marco Perez and Barney Cokeliss. Night Dancing stars Jason Thorpe, well known for UK comedy, as a man whose nights are consumed by visions of a street dancer, Louise Tanoto. Thorpe is unsure whether she - or her partner, Jacob Ingram-Dodd, - are real. Shots between the visions of Thorpe's woman in the street and weekly talks with his therapist to attempt to understand where his sanity went, or find a way to free his body and soul similarly. Thorpe longs for Tanoto with romantic and intrigued eyes with a blue color-scheme amongst the historic feeling, stone streets of London. This film represents the urban setting as a place of longing and romance while incorporating of imagination and magic of dance. It is the representation of romance and dance in the city that this film festival looks for. The film is unique for its longing of freedom not only through romance but through ones self with dance. The award winning film La La Land premiered in 2016, making Night Dancing on the same trend with popular demand in regards to dreaming, dancing, and falling in love.
Sleeping With Frank
Filmmaker Lily Baldwin directed, produced, wrote, edited, and performed in her work Sleeping With Frank. The short dance film experiences life and romance within a couple's New York apartment. The film shows a conversation between the two through dance. The view of the morning in Queens, New York is cozy, intimate, and creates a sense of knowing for the audience. However, we see that the story unfolds in choreography queues that there is an underlying issue with domestic normalcy for these two. This piece makes the audience a part of the relationship. By the intimacy Baldwin provides, this film makes a relationship in the city something that people can imagine to, or can relate to. The close up shots of the two together, intimate partner work, and shots of being behind the shoulder of the other person as if we are in the conversation makes the audience point of view connect with each person.
GIMME ALL YOUR LOVE
GIMME ALL YOUR LOVE is a music video by the Alabama Shakes featuring dancers Alexis Floyd and Kristopher Terry. This film features a woman recalling a night with her partner the night before to expose what is beneath the surface of this relationship. She is showing a powerful yearning to understand the smallest moment out of last night and to discover the relationship between the two. The choreographer of the piece is Alexis Floyd, who is also featured. Alexis Floyd is an actor, choreographer, and singer-songwriter. She is known for her work with music videos and performance with popular companies such as The Cleaveland Ballet, DANCEVERET, the Ohio Dance Theatre, and many more. This film, like Sleeping With Frank, puts the audience intimately into the relationship. We travel from room to room with Floyd working out what the details where of last night. Traveling through the thoughts with Floyd in her apartment makes it more intimate and the setting of this film allows the audience to relate and understand her thoughts between her and her love.
Grey
To end this film festival is the film by Holly Wilder, Grey. The film explores a couple in their apartment with one of them suffering through depression. In Wilder's description of this film she explains that with mental health we experience the deepest depths of darkness. When everything seems too dark, even when we are with the one we love, we feel alone. This film recognizes a relationship that goes through the hardest times, and sometimes for the two of them it might still feel like they are alone. This like many other films puts us in an intimate space with the dancers. The dancers, Holly Wilder and Gabriel Lawton, live life through their apartment gesture through gesture. While looking into their relationship by entering their home we can start to understand what this couple is going through. The repetition of phrases and shots in this film highlight the sad repetition of depression that the couple is feeling.