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Dance
with Camera
Co-presented
by the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania
Wednesday,
March 17 at 7pm
The
Red Shoes
dirs.
Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, UK, 1948, 35mm, 133 mins,
color
Please join us
at 6pm Art @ International House Opening
Receptions
of PAFA and
InLiquid Art + Design Video Installation - Selected Portraits
by David S Kessler
 Starring
Moira Shearer as a prima ballerina torn between her love for
dance and her love for a man, this influential film combines
narrative drama with stunningly filmed dance performances. Both
film and the ballet within are roughly based on a Hans Christian
Andersen fairytale in which a girl puts on a pair of cursed
red ballet slippers and forced to dance until she dies. Recently
restored to its original Technicolor glory, The Red Shoes
premiered at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival to widespread
acclaim.
preceded
by
Clinic
of Stumble
dirs.
Sidney Peterson and Hy Hirsch, US, 1947, 16mm, 13 mins, color
Called
"an astonishing little dance film because the film and
the ballet are indivisible – neither could exist without the
other,"Clinic of Stumble is composed entirely
of layered images: three women dance, ride on old-fashioned
children’s scooters, and read magazines. The dreamlike spatial
environment is achieved by the repetition of at least two superimposed
frames, as well as through slow motion. The evocative, hypnotic
movement was choreographed by Marian Van Tuyl.
Thanatopsis
dir.
Ed Emshwiller, US, 1962, 16mm, 5 mins, b/w
In
Thanatopsis, Emshwiller created the choreography for
dancer Becky Arnold through in-camera editing. By superimposing
multiple exposures of the same gesture onto a single frame,
her movements appear blurred and pulsating. As she tightens
her orbit around an eerily still, seated man, Arnold ’s spectral
form emerges as an "Angel of Death," her deafening
chainsaw-like buzzing threatening to drown out the rhythmic
sound of the man’s heartbeat, as if to signal his imminent end.
Pas
de Deux
dir.
Norman McLaren, Canada, 1968, 35mm, 13 mins, b/w
In
this groundbreaking film, several phases of a single movement
in a ballet performance are captured by the camera within the
same frame, transforming the dance into a graceful cinematic
motion study. Pas de Deux belongs to a longstanding
concern shared by modern art and science over the graphic representation
of time and movement in space; think back to the late 19 th
century photographic motion studies of Eadward Muybridge and
Jules Etienne Marey. Still, the specific relationship between
dance and cinematic representation is intrinsic to McLaren’s
work, as he described: "For me, cinema is a form of dance."
Beehive
dirs.
Frank Moore and Jim Self, US, 1985, video, 15 mins, color
Beehive
is a rarely-seen
dance film choreographed by Jim Self, a former soloist in Merce
Cunningham’s company, and designed by painter Frank Moore, who
conceived the film’s neon, Dr Caligari-esque sets and
costumes. The story revolves around a clumsy drone bee who mistakenly
enables a fellow worker to be transformed into a queen. Moore
and Self, both active in the 1980s East Village arts scene,
first performed this playful collaborative work at the renowned
Kitchen performance space in 1983, and spent the next two years
producing the film version, which won a Bessie Award for Best
Dance Film in 1985.
Free
admission members above Internationalist level; $5 Internationalists;
$6
students + seniors; $8 general admission. In advance at
TICKETWEB
or 1/2 hour before showtime at The Ibrahim Theater Box Office.
Click
Here for Dance with Camera Archive
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