Philadelphia Dance Project’s 5^th annual Motion Pictures
 

This mini-fest of dance films and videos is curated by Gretjen Clausing, Program Director of Scribe Video and Terry Fox, PDP Director and boasts an exciting and fresh line-up!

TICKETS to Motion Pictures

Thursday, June 7
7pm

Shorts  

Dancers seem to share a penchant for wanting to move contrary to the accepted norm in public spaces and natural landscapes.  For these choreographers and filmmakers motion media seems to be the perfect medium for them to live out their desires in this regard. Others have created their own filmic and fantastical space for motion. This program features mostly local Philly dancers and filmmakers and includes: 

Afternoon of the Chimeras (Canada, 2006, 15 min)

Directed by Daniel Conrad  
Choreographed by Azure Barton

Afternoon of the Chimeras was shot in the extreme wilderness of the Queen Charlotte Islands, in Canada where dancers and crew survival-camped for a month in total isolation. The images are deliberately lush, in the manner of Brueghel and Bosch. The theme, human transformation, is expressed by dancers in the roles of chimeras (creatures made up of different animals, e.g., centaurs, minotaurs). In the absence of other humans, chimeras emerged from the thick moss, volcanic rock, roots, tide pools, and sheer cliffs. Each colony of chimeras is perfectly suited to its environment, as if it had evolved there. “ – Montreal Film Festival

Found Our Way (USA, 2006, 3 min)

Directed by L.Capco Lincoln

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 (USA, 2006, min)

Directed and Choreographed by Trish Sie 

Winner of both Grammy for best music video and a YouTube award, Trish Sie’s music video for her brother’s band OK Go, known in online circles as “the treadmill video,” is an inspired piece of choreography for the camera. 

House (USA  2006, 5 min.)

Directed by Kate Watson Wallace

Dance takes place in every room in this house, created from live/video performance.

The Inn of Floating Imagery (USA, 2007, 8 min)

Directed and Performed by Kathy Rose 

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 (USA    2007  5 min)

Directed & Choreographed by Garielle Revlock)

A fanciful dance, harkening back to the era of fin de siecle lawn dances.

Light Box Woman (USA, 2006, 4  min.)

Directed by Jaamil Kosoko
The first film to be commissioned by Dance Films Association, 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 (USA 2007 5 min.)

Directed, choreographed & performed by Megan Mazarick

This site specific piece has a breezy informal quality as Mazarick performs in a truck stop parking lot with passing 18 wheelers as 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 over Trucker Phantom 309.

City Steps (USA, 2006, 1 min)

Directed by Graham  E. Hancock  

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 15^th 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.

Thursday, June 7
9PM  

One Flat Thing, Reproduced  
Philadelphia Premiere

(France, 2006, 26 min)

Directed by Thierry De Mey 

Choreography by William Forsythe

Break

Philadelphia Premiere
(New Zealand, 2006, 14 min) 

Directed & Choreographed by Shona McCaullagh

One Flat Thing starts with a burst. Twenty tables are dragged across the dusty floor of light filled warehouse to become the surface and horizon of all action which follows.  The elastic and electric charged moving bodies of the 14 dancers are cross-pass the composed space, creating a dance piece in constant tension, oscillating between disorder and symmetry.  Director Thierry de May has beautifully met the challenge of filming a pre-existing choreography of William Forsythe, well known as one of the world’s leading contemporary dance choreographers and the head of the artistic direction of the Frankfurt Ballet.  De May succeeds in the creation of a completely unseen creation, specially conceived as a film where the virtuosity of the dancers rivaled only by the prodigious complexity of the choreography, which he calls “an audacious model of auto-organization.”

Break is an emotional and sensitive portrait of a family in turmoil told with dance and movement performed by Ursula Robb, Thomas Kiwi and Arlo Gibson. Set in rural New Zealand, a nine-year-old boy and his parents struggle with an impending change. As their familiar world turns upside down, gravity seems to shift too.

Friday, June 8   

10PM

Movement (R)evolution Africa (A Story of an Art Form in Four Acts)

Philadelphia Premiere
(USA, 2007, 65 min) 

Directed by Joan Frosch and Alla Kovgan

Featuring: Company Kongo Ba Téria (Burkina Faso), Faustin Linyekula and Studios Kabako (Democratic Republic of Congo), Company Rary (Madagascar), Sello Pesa (South Africa), Company TchéTché (Côte d'Ivoire), Company Raiz di Polon (Cape Verde), Company Jant Bi (Senegal) and Kota
Yamazaki (Japan), Nora Chipaumire (Zimbabwe), Jawole Willa Jo Zollar and members of Urban Bush Women (USA).

"The film is a knockout…" - Village Voice

A realistic portrait of Africans who actively create the stories of their own lives is sorely lacking from many views of Africa. In an astonishing exposition of choreographic fomentation, nine African choreographers tell stories of an emergent art form and their diverse and deeply contemporary expressions of self. These exceptional artists, hailing from Senegal to South Africa, see themselves as part of the whole world, not the “Third World,” and, while proudly African, refuse to be marginalized as “African Dancers.”  Their  perspectives and creative processes present fresh images of Africa, and bring to life the continent’s contemporary identity.  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.  

Thursday, June 14 

7PM 

From Mambo to Hip-Hop: A Bronx Tale  
Philadelphia Premiere

(USA , 2005, 56 min)

Directed by Henry Chalfant

Henry Chalfant and producer Elena Martínez in person

along with local artists Les Rivera, dancer/filmmaker and  Merian Soto Choreographer 

From the director of Style Wars comes From Mambo to Hip-Hop, an invigorating chronicle of two generations, who grew up literally on the same streets, and both used rhythm as their form of rebellion - for the older generation it was the pulsating rhythms of Cuba; for their children it was the rhythms of rap.  This is a story of the creative life of the South Bronx.   For the past 60 years, the Bronx has been the great incubator of US urban culture. Recent generations remember it as the place where hip-hop was born.  An older generation remembers the time this turf produced a hot new sound that was to become salsa.  

Puerto Ricans migrated to the neighborhoods in the 1940s and 50s.  Their adoption of Cuban rhythms created the New York salsa sound.  From the late 1950s to 70s a combination of official “urban renewal” and forced shrinkage such as the construction of the Cross Bronx Expressway eroded the community and led to what has been characterized as the burning of the Bronx.  During the height of the destruction Black and Latino teenagers, like the Mambo and Salsa players before them, held parties and jams in schools, basements, parks and even burnt out buildings.  Musicians and dancers testify to the neighborhood’s power to revitalize itself through music and dance.   The film features well known figures in Salsa – Machito, Ray Baretta, Willie Colon, Tito Puente, the Palmieri brothers and Johnny Pacheco as well as key figures in hip-hop including Afrika Bambaataa, Grandmaster Caz and DJ Chase. 

Henry Chalfant is a sculptor, photographer, and filmmaker. With Tony Silver he co-produced Style Wars (1984) a documentary on hip-hop culture and graffiti art.  He co-authored the definitive account of New York graffiti, "Subway Art" and a sequel on the artform's world-wide diffusion, "Spray Can Art".

Elena Martínez is the staff folklorist at City Lore: The New York Center for Urban Folk Culture.  She is the primary fieldworker for Place Matters, and its sub-project, the South Bronx Latin Music Project, conducting interviews with musicians from the South Bronx, conducting photo and archival research, and producing public programs.

Les Rivera was a core company member of Rennie Harris Pure Movement, and toured the world with them for 12 years.  A self  taught filmmaker, he has worked in film with local groups Paul Turner/Court, nEWFestival and Winged Woman Dance Co. His short films have been screened at  festivals including Reelblack Present and Hollywood Shorts among others. He is a frequent guest speaker at Bryn Mawr College for studies in race and sociology.

Merian Soto  is a Bessie award-winning choreographer who has been creating and presenting solo, group, and collaborative pieces in her native Puerto Rico, across the US and internationally since the mid-seventies. In the 80’s she co-directed Pepatian an arts organization based in the Bronx. Recent work has made use of Salsa, the dance and music of Pan-Latino collective experiences as source and subject. Presently she is a Professor of Dance at Temple University.

Preceded by

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.

Thursday, June 14
9 PM

Mirror Dance 

(USA, 2005, 54 min)            

Frances McElroy & Maria Teresa Rodriguez

Mirror Dance is the 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.

Friday June 15 

10PM

A Breath with Pina Bausch (Pina Bausch’la Bir Nefes) 
Philadelphia Premiere

(Turkey, 2004, 40 min, in Turkish with subtitles)

Directed by Huseyin Karabey

Ezeiza 

Philadelphia Premiere
(Argentina, 2005, 27 min)  

Directed by Andrea Servera

A Breath with Pina Bausch is a near wordless documentary providing unprecedented access into the creative process Pina Bausch, one of modern dance's most compelling minds.  Her piece “Nefes - A Breath” was inspired by the city of Istanbul, the cosmopolitan center that the Byzantine, Roman and the Ottoman Empires all called home.  Bausch’s company members perform seemingly improvised sketches before her while she nonchalantly writes in her notebooks, smokes and offers a rare nod of approval.  These candid rehearsal scenes are then intercut with scenes from the actual stage work, a performance full of stunningly poetic images that take the breath away. The film is a fitting tribute to the twin worlds of rehearsing and performing that make up the lives of dancers and choreographers.

In Ezeiza, Choreographer/teacher, Andrea Servera, worked for two years with women in a prison in Buenos Aires. She draws them gently into the creative and freeing process of dance. Their simple movements in turn reveal a sense of joy and way of being that defies their surroundings.