For the
third year now, Kannon Dance School
and ProArte institute are
hosting The St. Petersburg International
Film Festival "KINODANCE". It has been
an honor working in collaboration with Deirdre
Towers of Dance
Films Association (New York) to curate an exciting mix of
programs featuring dance film/video works from around the world
– the United States, United Kingdom, Argentina, Switzerland,
France, Nigeria, Austria, Belgium, Canada, New Zealand, and
Slovenia.
Dance film
encompasses a variety of collaborative approaches ranging from
the mere documentation of a dance performance, to adaptation
of stage choreography, and the creation of the choreography
especially for the camera – from music videos and poetic
shorts to full length features that make dance their main character.
The history
of this genre traces back to the birth of the cinematograph
and its landmarks and key figures include Thomas
Edison’s films with Ruth St.
Dennis (1894); experiments of the French film magician
Georges Méliès (1903);
Louis Lumière’s films
with Loie Fuller; the era of Charlie
Chaplin and Buster Keaton;
dadaist experiments in the 1920s including “Ballet Mécanique”
(1924) by Fernand Léger
and “Entr’acte” by René
Clair; the golden age of Hollywood musicals with Fred
Astaire and later on with Gene
Kelly; “A study of Choreography for the Camera”
by Maya Deren; “The
Red Shoes”, a British feature by Michael Powell
and Emeric Pressburger that included ballet created specifically
for the camera; a wave within the American Avant-Garde Film
and Performance Art Tradition (Shirley
Clarke, Ed Emshwiller, Hillary Harris, Jonas Mekas, Henry Hills,
Amy Greenfield, Elaine Summers, Yvonne Rainer, Meredith Monk);
dance creations for television by Swedish Birgit
Cullberg and producer Måns
Reuterswärd in the 1960s-80s; “Dance
in America Series” on the PBS, “Dance
for the Camera Series” on the BBC and Dutch Television
(David Hinton, Wendy Houston, DV8, Margaret
Williams); Belgian dance film collaborations of Anne
Teresa De Keersmaeker, Thierry De Mey, Clara Van Gool, Wim Vanderkeybus;
French Philippe Decouflé;
Swiss Pascal Magnin; Canadian
Laura Taler, and many others.
This year’s
six programs aim to demonstrate the array of possibilities offered
by dance film/video collaborations and to introduce Russian
audiences to some of the different directions the hybrid genre
of dance film navigates as well as at allowing a glimpse into
the creative process of making dance films.
The program
“Dance
Stories” includes films where dance and
film come together to reveal a narrative story. The films featured
include a tale about Dædalus and Icarus in
“Fly” by Shana McCullagh from New Zealand;
a portrait of the lonely demented aristocrat possessed by long-repressed
memories of an opulent Germany before the third Reich in
“Duchess” by Eric Koziol the USA; a riveting
story of the Isle of Tears in “Ellis
Island” by Meredith Monk; a poetic journey dealing
with the aftermath of World War Two in
Laura Taler’s “Village Trilogy”, a light-hearted
playful vignette “Le Petit Bal”
by Philippe Decouflé from France, and a surreal
arabesque about Swiss rural life in “Reine
d’un Jour” by Pascal Magnin.
A young
girl dreams of becoming a dancer in the stop-motion “Minou”
shot by Magali Charrier on super-8mm
film; “glamorous and aging dancer” is entrapped within
“Motion Control” by David Anderson; a lonely
character stuck in the corner dances to a looped recording of
Maria Callas in “Cornered” by
Michael Downing; Sally Silvers navigates the struggles
and celebrations of the Weimar era in “Little
Lieutenant” by Henry Hills; “Hyperalarm
Dance” by Michael Cole features an electronic super-dancer;
a ghost dancer that multiplies itself performs as three-dimensional
drawings in Kaiser’s “Ghostcatching”
– these and other characters all appear in the program
“Almost Solo”.
This program is a multi-colored palette of works that are either
structured around a single protagonist, created by a single
artist who is both a filmmaker and a choreographer/dancer, or
determined by a single concept.
The title
of the program “Body
Tales from around the world...” speaks for
itself. Each film in this group is unique to the place/ country/
culture that it was made in or about. The program starts with
a collection of extremely short dance films produced by The
Place, a performance center in London, that encourages
the production of zero to low budget short films. Following
this is a visual Butoh essay “Curtain
of the Eyes” by Daniéle Wilmouth, a result
of the artist’s residency in Japan, which focuses on the
kinetic life of the body. A duet of the French filmmaker Benoit
Dervaux and Algerian choreographer Heddy
Maalem culminates in “Black
Spring”, a work that questions the clichéd
Western ways of looking at African bodies in motion. A voice
from South America is represented by Silvina
Szperling’s “Temblor” - a feminine world
moving to the beat of the drums. Made in 1993, the film gave
birth to the Argentinean tradition of videodance. And finally,
“Dom Svobode” by Saso Podgorsek
and Iztok Kovac from Slovenia, a surreal mélange
of memories from the Socialist world, is about an eternal quest
of the artist for space to create.
Among other
festival programs are an evening with Victoria
Marks, a California-based choreographer and a
dance teacher, who, together with Margaret Williams, a British
filmmaker, has created dance films that are among the most awarded
dance films in the genre’s history.
The two programs at the Theatre Museum
will conclude the festival in St. Petersburg.
“Two in the Director’s Chair” reveals
the mysteries of the twenty-year collaboration between Belgian
Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, one
of the most prominent modern European choreographers, and Thierry
De Mey, a film director and composer. Their creation
“Rosas Danst Rosas”,
one of the most significant dance films to date, will be accompanied
by “Dance Notes”, a documentary
by Michael Follin about the collaboration of the two masters.
Finally, to honor Maya Deren and introduce our audiences to
her legacy, we present a program that features
“In The Mirror of Maya Deren”, a documentary
by Martina Kuldaácek. This
film uses footage from Deren’s mesmerizing films along
with archival audio interviews from her contemporaries to provide
a glimpse into life of this reminiscent and influential artist
and creates a vivid portrait of the times she lived through.
I would
like to sincerely thank Deirdre Towers,
my collaborator in putting together this festival and director
of Dance Films Association (DFA), New York City. Founded
in 1956 by Susan Braun, DFA is a non-profit organization founded
to promote excellence in the merging of dance and film and to
act as a liaison between the maker and the user of dance films.
http://www.dancefilmsassn.org/
The festival
was made possible with grants from Trust
for Mutual Understanding, ProArte Institute, and the collaboration
of Dance Films Association, Film Society of Lincoln Center,
and the National Endowment for the Arts, to whom
we are tremendously grateful.
And finally,
I would like to express my gratitude to Kannon
Dance, our welcoming and dedicated host, and personally
to Vadim Kasparov, director
of Kannon Dance and to Anna Tarysheva,
our devoted interpreter and translator.
