Choreographic Camera Thursday January 21, 9 p.m.
Film and dance have something basic in common, an affinity. Whenever dance is being specially choreographied for film, there arises a connection between the camera and the dancer. An area of tension, very often an intimate and physical form of co-acting. The camera leaves its role of an observer and actively feels sympathy for movement and rhythm, for instance by cuts and repetitions of particular sequences. Thereby the dealing with time and space, the time-line of movement will be extracted. Movement, camera cut and change of focus allow a new view on dance, rhythm and physicality.
The basis for this special form of approaching the dancing film established the 1917 born American director Maya Deren with films like A STUDY IN CHOREOGRAPHY FOR CAMERA (1945). For the first time the dancer was fetched of the statical environment of the theatre and put into a moving and explosive room. The New York documentary and experimental filmmaker Hilary Harris pursued this way with NINE VARIATIONS ON A DANCE THEME in 1966. The camera has been part of the modern dance with all its physicality, impulsiveness and fragility. Also PAS DE CIEL (1981) by Téo Hernández narrates the encounter, the confrontation and finally the nearly wondrous meeting of the camera and the dancer and choreographer Bernardo Montet. A body between the sea and the heaven, the quiet blow of the wind, some birds: elements of classical mythology alter to lyric abstraction.
