The 60 Best Dance Sequences in Film
March 14, 2010
Last week, Flavorwire posted thirty-five of the best dance scenes in film, with all thirty-five videos embedded in the post and arranged in chronological order. The list includes scenes from Swing Time, Saturday Night Fever, The Red Shoes, Dirty Dancing, and three scenes from West Side Story, choreographed and co-directed by Jerome Robbins. After receiving so many comments about scenes that didn’t make the list, Flavorwire posted another twenty-five best dance scenes in film. Here are a few of my favorites, along with a personal favorite that didn’t make the list, from the 1960 film version of Peter Pan. This scene (which has its fair share of Native American stereotypes) features the dynamite Sondra Lee as Tiger Lily and choreography by Robbins.
Big Eater at The Kitchen
March 11, 2010
Andrew Dinwiddie and Neal Medlyn in David Neumann’s Big Eater, photo by Paula Court
An inebriated David Hasselhoff, a Big Mac, Giselle, and pretentious panel discussions – these are just a few of the sources that shaped David Neumann’s Big Eater, which was performed at The Kitchen last weekend and continues through this Saturday. This may sound like a recipe for big laughs, but Big Eater is a dark, depressing work filled with piles of language and movement – not to mention a pile of chairs from floor to ceiling – that become denser and more disorderly as the work progresses. Self-destruction, discovery, frustration, and knowledge are themes that arise through dialogue, random remarks, varied movement sections, and a video featuring Frederick Neumann (David’s father) as “the man in the woods” who wanders through a thick, slightly ominous forest of trees.
What stands out most in the work is Neumann’s superb use of repetition. The six dancers (Natalie Agee, Andrew Dinwiddie, Kennis Hawkins, Neal Medlyn, Weena Pauly, and Will Rawls) echo one another, reverse roles, and layer spoken text to powerful effect. They are an eclectic bunch and have strikingly different stage presences, making the movement sections even more intriguing. Using sound from a video of David Hasselhoff being reprimanded by his teenage daughter for drinking, Neumann creates a re-enactment of the scene with Medlyn and Dinwiddie portraying Hasselhoff’s messy condition as they lay on the floor and eat a Big Mac. Later, other performers repeat dialogue from the video, contrasting the painful conversation with fuller, sweeping movement. In spite of all of the interaction among the performers and the repetition that pulses through the work, in the end, everyone seems isolated and alone, as if they were wandering through a forest with no clear path. It is sad and bewildering, even maddening at times, but it is an undeniable part of the human condition.
Tickets to Big Eater can be ordered online or by calling 212.255.5793. The Kitchen is located at 512 West 19th Street, between 10th and 11th Avenues.
Natalie Agee, Will Rawls (on table), Kennis Hawkins, and Weena Pauly, photo by Paula Court
A Choreography of Healing in Israel
March 10, 2010
Daniel Banks and Adam McKinney, the founders of DNAWORKS, recently spent time in Israel working with two young men – both of whom studied dance – left immobile below the ribs after a gunman opened fire last August on a safe space in Tel Aviv for gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender youth. The Jewish Forward recently wrote about Banks and McKinney’s experience and approach, which focuses on utilizing creativity and artistic expression to strengthen the healing process and build personal identity. Here is an excerpt from this inspiring story.
Last August a gunman entered the Aguda building in Tel Aviv and opened fire on the crowd at Bar Noar, a safe space for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender youth. He killed two and wounded a number of others before escaping without trace or identification.
Two of the wounded, 15-year-old “Alef” and 19-year-old “Yud” (names changed for privacy reasons) had studied dance, concentrating on ballroom and hip-hop, but their gunshot injuries left them without sensation or mobility below their ribs. Confined to wheelchairs, they believed their dancing days were over.
Enter Daniel Banks and Adam McKinney of New York-based DNAWORKS. Banks, originally from Brookline, Mass., and McKinney, a former Alvin Ailey dancer who grew up in Milwaukee, heard about the attack at Bar Noar, and through their friend Avi Blecherman — a social worker with the International Gay Youth Organization in Tel Aviv — they heard about the tragic injuries to the dancers.
DNAWORKS, the organization they founded, creates original dance and theater (plays, multimedia, etc.) with groups around the world, using an innovative organic process designed to draw out creativity and self-expression. A grant from the Jerome Foundation had enabled them to work in Israel with an Ethiopian dance company, Beta Dance Troupe. While working with the troupe, they connected with many different theater and dance groups, Arab and Israeli alike, specifically those that use performance as a way into identity exploration.
…Not wanting the young men to believe they got involved with them for publicity purposes, Banks and McKinney were extremely reluctant to speak of their involvement. Nor did they get involved with them in order to play hero. DNAWORKS is not a therapeutic dance organization and does not go into communities to heal pain. Still, McKinney and Banks cannot deny that their interactions have a nurturing effect. During one of their sessions, they assisted one of the young men in standing up for the first time since the attack.
“We are artists. We feel that the power of art is healing. We didn’t go in thinking about how this would help their rehabilitations from a medical perspective — we know that creativity can help in the healing process,” McKinney said.
In this case, they started by simply trying to be “four people experiencing joy and sharing in the creativity that each person brings to the room,” Banks said. Their lives in the hospital were challenging, with intense, daily rehabilitation, tests and physical therapy. McKinney and Banks tried to give to them a couple of hours a week where they could go back to something that they loved. And although Alef and Yud’s bodies have changed, McKinney explained, they did not work from a perspective of the bodies being “incomplete.”
koosil-ja’s Body, Image, and Algorithm
March 8, 2010
Ava Heller, Elise Knudson, and Melissa Guerrero in koosil-ja’s Blocks of Continuality/Body, Image, and Algorithm, photo by Yi-Chun Wu
Dance Theater Workshop was transformed into a laboratory last Thursday evening for koosil-ja/danceKUMIKO’s Blocks of Continuality/Body, Image, and Algorithm. Multiple flat screens hung from the ceiling, a musician sat upstage, a weird-looking contraption with tubes was placed in the downstage right corner, and a line of computer programmers worked on laptops along the front of the stage. These were some of the necessary components for koosil-ja’s exploration of movement, digital media, and visible and invisible aspects of the body. Based on her study of Gilles Deleuze’s philosophy, koosil-ja utilized interactive computer programming and Live Processing – a technique for generating movement in real time – in this complicated, frustratingly incoherent experiment.
The detailed program notes explained that the work was split into three parts. First, Melissa Guerrero, Ava Heller, and Elise Knudson explored the Live Processing technique. They mimicked and combined movements from multiple video sources that could be seen on the suspended screens. Although the sources included photos of paintings from Louvre collections, traditional dances from Africa, Tibet, and India, and fashion advertisements, the program noted that koosil-ja eliminates narrative and politics. Rather, her focus is on depicting movement as “pure data”. The result showed three stoic dancers that seemed dehumanized, removed from their bodies in order to become the “pure data” that koosil-ja investigates.
Sitting at table: Robert Ramirez, koosil-ja, and Madeline Best. Standing behind table: Melissa Guerrero, Ava Heller, and Elise Knudson. Photo by Yi-Chun Wu
The second section exposed the technology behind the third part, in which the dancers wore sensors that integrated their movements from part one with 3D avatars in a virtual environment called Slum. Additionally, Geoff Gersh’s brain waves were processed by a computer that triggered a sound installation (this so-called meditation was merely a repetitive tapping on the wall from the contraption mentioned earlier). Layering a virtual world on top of a live one seemed problematic. If koosil-ja is solely interested in pure data and the dancers’ pure potential to create new movement, then why bother providing virtual characters and environments? The Live Processing movement was unrelated to the themes and concepts in the video sources, yet the avatars were in specific environments. “Desire” was a dancer who never leaves her room; “Hack” was an orphan thief who lives in the basement of the slum; and “Strata” is a man who lives in the streets of the slum. Although the dancers were robotic during Live Processing, the avatars looked even more so as they were controlled by the dancers’ movements. What is the purpose of Live Processing – and live performance – if the result in part three consisted of virtual actions from what looked like a lame video game?
The concept for Blocks was ambitious, but the layout of the piece and the program notes were overwhelming, and the process that was shared with the audience was incoherent. koosil-ja’s fascination with integrating media and movement is admirable, but the result was not reflective of technology’s intricacies and advances. Furthermore, stripping content of its narrative and context ignores that which makes it human, real, and intriguing.
