Dance for the Camera

Mitoma, Judy, Elizabeth Zimmer, and Dale Ann Stieber, eds.
Envisioning Dance on Film and Video
New York: Routledge, 2002

This saying made the rounds on the Internet a few years back: ballet dancers defy gravity, jazz dancers make friends with it, and modern dancers dance like they are mad at the floor. It’s a truism I could giggle at and get behind until I watched the DVD that accompanies the book Envisioning Dance on Film and Video, edited by Judy Mitoma, Elizabeth Zimmer, and Dale Ann Stieber. This book is absolutely excellent for classroom research. Envisioning Dance covers all aspects of dance on film from the early days of dance on film and video, to techniques for filming dance, to choreography for the camera (as opposed to straight-up documentation), to preservation and rights. More to the point, the DVD samples are fabulous to watch.

Like text editor Elizabeth Zimmer, I came of age far from the New York dance world and viewing dance on film was a huge part of my dance education, forming the dance aesthetic I take into the studio with me everyday. To sit on my sofa and watch dance films like Wendy Houston’s Touched transports me in every way—through the art and content of the piece, through my own experience of Houston’s work, through the heady whirl of a party too late at night. And I can be transported over and over again, just by pressing the rewind button on the remote control.

On the Envisioning Dance DVD, performers of every dance form gain magical control over gravity. Kathak gestures can (and do) have literal subtitles, bringing the gestures to the forefront while the wild stomping—a hallmark of the form—becomes secondary. Ballet dancers fly free of gravity altogether, performing on what looks like the surface of the moon. Modern Dance choreographer Bill T. Jones creates a kinetic dance experience with animated figures—his rich voice wafts through inky black cyberspace; there’s not even a floor to be mad at in this dance. (Incidentally, Jones’s digital piece Ghostcatching will be part of Lincoln Center Institute’s 2009-2010 dance repertory and is also studied as part of LCI’s online courses.) Gravity isn’t a factor in any of these samples; the manipulation of time, space, and the audience’s point-of-view on the action become the principle choreographic concerns.

Mitoma explains why the marriage of dance and film is a natural:

Recording on film and video provided the first practical means of documentation. Dancers use cameras as research tools, to study technique, to review and analyze choreography, and to build performance skills. The ethnologist, who previously relied on written and photographic accounts, is able to capture moving images of dance in cultural contexts, providing a valuable tool for research. Film and video have spawned entirely new forms of dance, created when director and choreographer go beyond the constraints of the body and find new ways to capture human motion. Whether a documentation tool, a study aid, or a creative medium, the recorded moving image has forever changed the way we perceive and experience dance. (Page xxxii)

When you study dance and film, the first thing you usually see is Maya Deren’s A Study in Choreography for Camera (1945), and that is what we are shown here first. In A Study, Deren smoothly hand cranks a camera to create the illusion that the dancer is speeding up. “Through precise cinematic manipulation of dance motion, we see controlled visual composition within the frame while experiencing a dynamic of motion. The film climaxes with a leap, which was really Deren’s ‘leap.’ …The entire combination of cinematic manipulations created a leap that is impossibly long (30 seconds) and free of the laws of gravity” (Page 23). Talk about a choreographer’s dream!

In many of the Envisioning Dance DVD samples I was struck by how indebted choreographer/filmmakers are to Deren’s early experiments. Deren says, “The movement of the dancer creates a geography in the film, that never was. With a turn of the foot he makes neighbors of distant places” (Page 21). In Risible Chick, by Nick de Pencier, a high-energy, rock-n-roll cousin of Deren’s smooth, supple dancer in A Study steps/leaps/rolls from one environment to the next with no concern for narrative or transit time. Watching the two samples side-by-side essentially gives you a cinematic time warp, as well as excellent fodder for comparison and contrast.

The book features essays written by the artists who had a hand in creating the DVD samples. There is a resource and preservation guide that will help point you toward further research and a timeline to ground you in the history of the form. It is a testament to the quick-evolving nature of technology that the issues and primary outlets for dance films and videos are already completely transformed in 2009 from what they were in 2002 when this book was published, but that is to be expected. Together with the excellent video, the text is a great resource for information about issues surrounding dance/video and dance/film, about the dancers and choreographers featured, and about the specific pieces highlighted.

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Click on the following links to learn more about Judy Mitoma, Elizabeth Zimmer, and Dale Ann Stieber.