BY EMMALY WIEDERHOLT

John Watson is a photographer, videographer and arts promoter based in Eugene, OR who cofounded the Northwest Screendance Exposition in 2015 to encourage the making and viewership of dances created especially for the camera. He discusses the expo as well as the larger implications of dances for film, or screendances, both in terms of choreography and audience.

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How did the Northwest Screendance Expo get started?

I was the publicity and marketing house manager for the Lane Community College performing arts department. A huge part of that department was the dance program. I set up a Facebook page, got a little camera, and started posting short videos of dancers preparing for concerts. It was supposed to be a “behind the scenes” look at their processes. I went into a rehearsal one day for a faculty concert, and saw an amazing multimedia piece that two dancers and a video artist had put together. They were dancing in a spotlight between two scrims that had what they were dancing projected close-up. I looked at that and said, “My God, you can make art with this video stuff! That’s what I want to do!”

I started working with dancers, playing around. I made a couple short films. Then Doreen Carroll, a dancer in town, visited as an invited artist to our faculty concert one year. We hit it off, and she told me she’d like to work with me on a screendance. We were sitting around one day having coffee, asking ourselves what we were going to do once our screendance was finished. We didn’t just want to stick it on YouTube. We knew other people around town who had been making screendances, so we decided to put together a little festival.

That was in 2015 at a local arthouse cinema. We put out a call for entries and were surprised to receive some really cool screendances, even from overseas. The first expo sold out two shows. Doreen left after the second year to go to school, but I took it into the third year, and now we’re looking at year four.

How is the expo organized?

In the past, we’ve had one main event: the short films program. This was shown in the afternoon and evening of one day. The second year, we also opened the festival to documentaries, so we showed the short films in the afternoon, the documentaries in the late afternoon, and then the short films again in the evening. At the end of the evening Q & A, someone suggested it was too much to take in in one day. We couldn’t afford the theater rental for two days, but this past year the University of Oregon offered us the use of their dance theater for two days for only a cut of the box office.

How would you define screendance? Why is it relevant right now?

Screendance is a genre of dance wherein the choreography is created especially to be filmed, and the dance is completed in the camera and editing room. It’s a dance for film that would never have the same impact if it was recreated for the stage.

Every dancer I know under the age of 30 has started playing with screendance. A lot of it is just having fun; dancers will use their smart phones, go out into a field, make a video, and start to stitch together a screendance out of it. Then there are people who are really serious about it, and put together films that take a couple years to finish. Their production value and choreography is really developed.

It’s all in the cinematography, such as using the camera to zoom in, playing with different angles, creating distortions, or following the dancer around. It’s using the camera show more than you could see from a single point perspective.

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Do you feel like there are barriers to entry to making screendance, especially with regards to video editing software?

Most of the screendance artists I see are just dancers filming themselves with a camera. The cinematography is done by dancers by and large because most professional cinematographers don’t understand dance. Some cinematographers are open-minded and willing to work with a choreographer, but dancers, for the most part, are doing it for themselves.

As far as editing, there’s a program called iMovie that is standard on everybody’s mac. That’s where a lot of the screendance work is done. I used to use iMovie before I graduated to Final Cut a few years ago. It’s pretty straightforward to make a screendance on iMovie. Final Cut and Adobe Premiere are somewhat straightforward too, but they have so many choices of things you can do in the program, and that gets confusing to a lot of people.

I don’t see editing being a barrier to entry. Cameras certainly aren’t. If the camera on your phone isn’t good enough, you can go to a used camera store and find a basic camera for cheap. Also, there are incredible film editing programs that can be downloaded straight to your phone. I started with a free phone app called Splice, and I recently switched to another free program called Filmmaker Pro, which lets you crop and color correct right on your phone.

Dance is not as able to be commodified the way visual art, music or movies are. Do you foresee screendance as a remedy to that?

Usually, when people record dance, it’s from a single vantage point, maybe two, but it still records dance on a stage. If choreographers want their work to live beyond the performance, filming the piece is necessary, but it never looks as good as it does from the audience. Several screendance writers have discussed that if you’re watching a film of a dance, you’re watching it once or twice removed from the actual event.

With screendance, it’s not a recording of a performance; it’s a product in and of itself that involves the combination of choreography and cinematography. The point is to create something you’d never see on a stage. We need to find a way to create a connoisseurship so that we can create a market for people to collect screendance. I don’t see any difference in collecting screendances than in collecting classic movies. There are a few compilations of screendance floating around out there, so we’ll see how it grows. It’s all about educating people about what it is.

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What do you envision is the future of screendance?

As our dance artists in their 20s turn 30 and 40, I think we’re going to see screendance become a lot more prevalent and recognized as an art form. There will be more audience appreciation and exposure.

Technology-wise, I am so excited about some of the stuff coming out. Augmented reality is being used in a lot of different fields where some sort of scene or animation is mapped over a visual, like the Pokémon Go game that came out a couple years ago. In my own screendance work, I’m trying to figure out how one might stitch together a virtual reality dance project. The technology is coming.

From there the next question is: How do we get audiences involved? It’s important to find a way to enjoy virtual reality dance collectively, not just downloading it to your computer. Going to a theater and sitting in front of a stage is a huge part of the dance experience. When we figure out how to make that work with virtual reality, I think it’s going to transform dance.

Any other thoughts?

Our significant challenge right now is educating people about screendance. Once they see it, they love it, but explaining it before they see it is trickier. If you say it’s filmed dance, they’ll respond, “Oh I saw a show on TV of the Bolshoi doing the Nutcracker!” So the very first challenge is to come up with a succinct description that will make people interested in this new genre.

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To learn more, visit www.nwscreendanceexpo.com.

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Mary Trunk is involved in Muscle Memory, an interactive video project examining age and dance. The premise of her project is a reunion of sorts with peers from her college dance department, now in their 50s. Where has dance taken them? What role has it played in their life? And how has their dance continued?

What was the genesis of the Muscle Memory project?

Muscle Memory is a project that has been on my mind for many years. The desire to explore the core of my creative experiences ruminated in my brain for a very long time.

I started college at UCSC as a painter and visual artist but I had always loved dance. I was a late comer to it, and didn’t think it was something I had real talent for. My drawing skills seemed much more developed. What I found out was that it really didn’t matter what level my experience was. If dance trumped drawing, then I should go for it.

After seeing a student dance performance while eating my dinner in the dorm dining hall I thought, “Can I do that?” I auditioned for the dance department and I’ll always remember when the head of the department came behind me as I was warming up and said, “Where have you been?” I laugh about that; I have great feet and I think that’s why she said it. I’m not flexible and my body does not fit the dancer stereotype.

That was the beginning of my dance life. I abandoned all my art classes and fully immersed myself in dance and performance. I loved every very minute of it, even when I was absolutely terrified to perform or show my work. I look back on that time as the most creatively inspiring part of my life. In many ways, it gave me the permission to be creative, to find my own voice and to take risks in ways I never would have outside of that environment. That period and those experiences have stayed with me even as I became a filmmaker.

So that’s the long way of saying that I have had this strong feeling and need to reflect on that time, to see if others felt like I did, to examine why that time sparked such a drive in myself and possibly others. As the head of the department, Ruth Solomon, said to me in her interview, “It was the golden age of the dance department.” And it seemed that way to me.

As I entered my 50s, having just completed a documentary film about mothers who are also artists (www.maandpafilms.com/lostinliving), I realized it was time to investigate my former dance life. I wanted to reignite that passion for dance. I wanted to talk to my former dance partners and friends about what dance meant to them, if they are still dancing and how dance shaped who they are now.

How is the project organized?

I reached out to people I danced with in college. Specifically, people who had inspired me with their choreography, their performances and their commitment to a creative life. Some of these people I had stayed in contact with over the years while others I had not. Everyone I approached was enthusiastic and game for participating.

Many were nervous about the idea of actually dancing again. I convinced them that the movements would be gestural and open to their interpretation. I wanted the project to be a hybrid of sorts: part dance video, part documentary and part interactive web site. Since everyone lives in different parts of the world, I sent them written choreography and instructions to create other types of work to include in the project. This work includes sound, photos, archival footage, their own videos, text, etc. The work they send me will be compiled into a personal webpage for each participant so viewers can enter their world and their stories from different vantage points. A composer friend, also from college, will organize the sounds to create individual sound scores for each individual as well as for the entire project.

I have also visited some of the participants to film them dancing the choreography. I wanted them in their own environments, wearing their own clothes and moving in ways that felt most comfortable to them. We chose interior spaces and exterior landscapes that each person felt drawn to or had emotional feelings for. So far, I’ve filmed in New York, San Francisco and Santa Cruz. I hope to get to Toronto and Sweden at some point. This footage will be integrated into the documentary footage as well as part of a dance video. I want to use their movements to tell my own story through dance and that’s partly why I’ve decided to be in the project. The documentary element will include interviews with the participants, dance video footage and archival material.

Last summer I contacted the alumni foundation of UCSC to see if they would provide special funds for all of us to meet on campus to film and create new work. They helped us obtain the use of our former dance studio for a full four days of choreographing and filming. Some of that footage is in the first video excerpt, Muscle Memory #1. It was a fantastic experience to surrender once again to that kind of work. Dancing with others and creating movements brought back all those incredible feelings of being in the space of creative flow. No one cared what anyone looked like, that we weren’t as limber as we used to be. We just did it and it felt right.

Where does the project stand now?

The current video will be used to help raise funds to complete the project. It is definitely an excerpt of something I hope will be more comprehensive and multi-dimensional. I have accumulated a lot of footage already and I have plans to do more over the summer. I’m hoping to complete the project by summer of 2017. Either way I will continue to make sections to share.

What were some surprises you didn’t expect while making the project?

I was happy to know that people were so willing to dance again even if they hadn’t in a long time. For some it seemed like I was giving them a great gift, and that was incredibly gratifying.

The one thing that I might call a surprise is that some of the participants didn’t have the same experience I did in college. I expected that, of course, but I think my assumption was that everyone loved that time period. Not everyone did. Which is definitely good conflict for the project. Overall, though, I chose people who saw dance as a huge part of their lives and in some ways still do.

What do you hope to convey to others through the Muscle Memory project?

I hope that others can experience the delight and joy in expressing oneself at any point in one’s life. Why is it that a person who is in their 50s (or older) is sometimes considered less valuable or less expressive than a younger person? Especially in the dance world…

I also want to show how people remain creative in all kinds of ways even if they have stopped dancing. How life can push you in a direction you didn’t expect and how you make it work, how you deal with regret, pain, illness, family life, jobs, children and identity. Do we have the capacity to stay creative and be resilient and how do we do that? I hope Muscle Memory can show that.

Why is a dialogue on aging in dance important?

We as a culture are seriously conditioned to see youth as having all the value. It is ironic that our demographic of older people is growing so much. It’s obviously time to change the paradigm and see the beauty and worth in aging. Possibly that’s why I’m making this project – to come to terms with my own bias about aging. It shocks me that I sometimes feel embarrassed that I’m aging. But that doesn’t mean I can’t still dance and make work, and I plan on doing that.

I think video is a wonderful way to reframe dance in a different art form and show all ages moving. Just by way of composition, close-ups, camera movement, etc., I can focus on people in ways that will bring viewers closer and experience dance as something for all ages.

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More than once since launching the Dancing Over 50 Project, older dancers from around the country have reached out to me to express interest and support. When Gwyn Henry wrote me about Movement Artists Ensemble (MAE) – a group of women in Escondido, CA who are moving into their middle years and beyond and who come together to improvise, take video footage, and weave the footage into dance poetry on film – I wanted to learn more. Below are their thoughts on aging in dance as well as some of their poetic dances films.

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Gwyn

How did Movement Artists Ensemble come about?

I created MAE, the Movement Artists Ensemble, as an outgrowth of a modern dance class I was teaching to women who were moving into their middle years and beyond. The class eventually evolved into more and more improvisation. Some loved the improv exercises and wanted more, while others were less enthusiastic. For those who wanted to improvise, I started holding special “improv sessions,” which I began to film.

We enjoyed this so much we continued to meet and film periodically, and a process began to evolve; we brought regular home video camcorders to class and passed them around as we moved. We acquired huge swaths of fabric, and the women, on their own, began to construct “environments” within which we moved. As one movement artist said, “When we began to build the environment with the fabric… that’s when I could feel myself going into the zone.”

Her insight said to me that taking all that fabric from the bags, and beginning to hang and drape and manipulate it around the studio and in front of the mirror, served as a ritual that then segued us into the meditative zone of the movement. Later, I learned editing techniques to transpose those fabric constructed environments into seas, waterfalls, tents and other fanciful and abstract shapes. With the results, I felt the technology could peel layers off of ordinary reality and reveal new worlds beneath the apparent. The MAE experience began to open up whole new worlds to me.

Sessions are held seasonally, with varying regularity – sometimes six or seven sessions in one year, others with months off. This has been going on for about 10 years.

How has MAE facilitated your understanding of yourself as a dancer?

One thing I think MAE has taught me is that I AM a dancer. For many years I bought into the idea that one can’t call one’s self an artist or a dancer unless one is a highly successful professional, i.e. getting paid like a rock star with the accompanying fame and fortune. In my little neck of the small-town woods, neither I, nor my family or friends, had ever personally known anyone who earned their living as an artist.

I eventually formed the opinion that if one practices an art form, one is an artist. When I went back to dance classes at age 54, I rediscovered all those feelings of joy, strength and power I had felt as a dancing teenager. I allowed myself to follow where that newly-discovered passion led, and found the courage to call myself a dancer.

In fact, I believe we are all born to dance, for expression, for catharsis, to communicate, to explore ourselves and our inner landscapes… and my mission is to disseminate that knowledge. It doesn’t matter if you are out of shape, overweight, have had a lifetime of training, or two left feet. Everyone is a natural expressive mover, and can gain great benefits from a practice of it. And sometimes, in my opinion, those movements indeed, rise to the level of ART.

That’s what I want to show in my videos… the raw beauty of human expression living within movement that can come from non-professional dancers.

Why is MAE important to the world of dance? What does it contribute in terms of dialogue?

The fact that we are older movers goes somewhat against our cultural norms. However, today there are many classes beginning to be offered to older dancers, and I’m proud for MAE to be a part of that movement.

In the long run, so much of what I have done with MAE has been without knowing why I am doing it. It has seemed from the beginning that doors opened up, people came along, fallow periods rose and fell, and new paths became clear. I found things have gone best when we relax and let the journey unroll.

Another consideration: while we have built film installations in galleries and participated in film screenings, we cannot sell a five-minute video in the way one can sell a painting, a piece of sculpture, a book, or music album.  “So why,” some of my friends ask, “Why do you do this?”

Simple answer: I don’t know. Longer answer: when I upload the footage onto my computer’s editing program and start to work, I go into the “hum”… that other place where artists go when they know they’re doing what they’re supposed to be doing.

How is what you bring to your dancing now different than what you could bring when you were younger?

The 16 year-old dancer has now merged with the 71 year-old I am today, and she brought with her all of her years that fell in between. I discovered I like what I have gathered. It has its share of negatives, but all in all that collection of years and experiences, of life lived, is something I like… no, I love. As I carry it now, thanks to my rediscovery of the artistic mover in me, I feel sweetly content with this life I have made so far.  That’s called wholeness. And it feels really good.

Wendy

Tell me about your involvement in MAE. How did you come to be a part of it?

I am a member of Escondido Art Partnership Gallery in Escondido, as is Gwyn. I gave a presentation there about my book Circles of Healing and led the class in painting mandalas for each of our chakra centers. I shared photos of my Philadelphia dance company, Agape Dancers, and the mandalas we created as floor art and as part of the choreography.  Gwyn was present, we discussed MAE, and soon after I joined her improvisation at Escondido Center for the Arts.

How has MAE facilitated your understanding of yourself as a dancer?

This was the first time I danced in many years, and I had almost forgotten I loved to dance.  My life has been focused on survival issues, including a divorce, single parenting, losing a home, almost not having a home, re-locating, struggling to make ends meet, etc.  At 62, when I danced with MAE, I was so happy to discover I could still move in a creative and fluid manner. Also, I feel very tuned to Gwyn’s visual artist perspective and am fascinated by her video “poems.” The combination of movement and visual art, as well as her literary skills, pulled me in even more.  When I dance with MAE, all the years of martial arts, modern dance, Indian dance, yoga and my interest in animals and nature comes pouring through me! I have always loved improvisation for just this reason… I can acknowledge and channel the many sources of inspiration from my life.

Why is MAE important to the world of dance? What does it contribute in terms of dialogue?

My whole life, I have looked at myself with a critical eye. When I was in my 20s, I was upset because I was 125 pounds and not 110 pounds! At 64, I still do that. And yet the magic of MAE is that we are all beautiful movers, with inner light and years of wisdom to add to our dance vocabulary and expression.  At no age should we stop dancing. Regardless of our body’s mobility, size, speed or agility, we can all enjoy and benefit from movement and creative self-expression. Dancing alone is a healing statement, and even more healing with others as a form of exploration and communication.

How is what you bring to your dancing now different than what you could bring when you were younger?

When I saw myself on film, I was not happy to see my gut, and thought I looked too old. When I got past that, I could appreciate I still had the dancer in me! And I was happy to discover the more I danced, the younger I felt and looked! When I take ballet now and dance on a regular basis with Gwyn, I become more lifted, feel a more clearly defined separation between my ribs, chest and lower body. Ballet at my age helps me feel strong in my lower body and lifted in my upper body… and counteracts the tendency to slouch and compress.

In my younger years, I lacked confidence, was concerned how viewers saw me, and suffered from intense stage fright. After so many life experiences, including wife-hood, motherhood, losing parents and family, financial uncertainty, working as a massage therapist for 40 years, living with and caring for a variety of animals and observing and learning from them, teaching yoga and movement to a variety of bodies, being present at births and at deaths, I have so much more depth as a person, mover, collaborator and performer. And stage fright almost seems silly!

Yulia

Tell me about your involvement in MAE. How did you come to be a part of it?

I have never been a professional dancer, but dancing was always a big part of my life. Since my childhood, music – especially classical – had a mysterious power over me; like a great master playing an instrument, music “played” my body, made it move and freed my soul through the movements. Dancing would take me to another world, where movement and sound are in complete harmony.

I found MAE during a difficult time of my life when I was a 24/7 caregiver for my elderly paralyzed mother for 10 years. Browsing the internet several years ago, I’ve ran into a local ad: “Ballet classes for older dancers or someone who’s always wanted to be one.” BINGO! I was in my late 50s, and I’d always wanted to try ballet! After several classes, Gwyn invited me to join MAE, which has become a very important part of my life.

How has MAE facilitated your understanding of yourself as a dancer?

Our dancing is a complete improvisation: no rules, no limits, trust, freedom, and acceptance of each other. Music rules. The amazing thing to me is that even though each one of us starts improvising in our own individual ways, at the end, all our movements come into harmony, and sometimes it is difficult to believe that it is not staged.

Why is MAE important to the world of dance? What does it contribute in terms of dialogue?

MAE gives a chance to everyone, regardless of age or physical ability, to express themselves through dance, as well as to find ways to communicate with each other through movement. This is important to us as the participants, but it is up to the world of dance to decide further importance…

For more information on MAE, click here.

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Under an overcast sunrise, a stampede of people charge up a hill. The grass is wet, possibly from a nighttime shower, and the mud sucks and spits as each bare foot hurdles from step to step. With a steady sound of elbows, shoulders and toes hitting the earth, bodies fling to the mud like salmon hurling upstream. Relinquishing to gravity’s pull, they softly roll downhill, their summer dresses and white suit shirts sopping up the green trail of their descent.

The first thirty-three seconds of Pascal Magnin’s “Queens for a Day” have the kind of fervent energy and visual intrigue that could make any dance film fancier’s heart skip a beat. A few years ago, as a film dilettante watching this during my first foray into dance for camera, Milan’s work was an unintended muse. There was something about the concoction of dance and film that was exciting for me. The camera’s ability to frame my perception of movement and transport me to the Alps of Switzerland was intoxicating.

While the genre itself is not new (one could go back as far as Annabelle Moore’s 1895 “Serpentine Dance”), dance film as a medium is gaining increased recognition as an innovative and accessible forum for dance. Take the San Francisco Dance Film Festival, or ODC Theater’s annual Pilot series, which recently hosted residencies for dance filmmakers in mentorship with acclaimed Los Angeles dance filmmaker Carrie Ann Shim Sham, not to mention Jim James, lead singer of My Morning Jacket, who worked with San Francisco choreographers and dancers for his minotaur-seducing music video, “A New Life.”  Nationally, University of Utah recently rolled out a Graduate Screendance Certificate, while dozens of dance film festivals are popping up around the world — all highlighting the growing demand for and practice of crafting dance for camera.

Transformation happens twice in the making of a dance film: once during the choreographing of the dance and again during the editing of the film. In my collaborations creating dances for camera with Eric Garcia, the lens creatively disrupts our normal choreographic process. It introduces another dancer in the work.  We must constantly conjure shots, angles and close-ups as detailed and with as much intention as we would craft any choreographic bodily movement.  The camera also works as an objective third eye, providing us with a certain distance necessary to evaluate and experiment with the piece even after it’s filmed. This editing process provides us with the freedom to alter the composition in various ways–change the order of shots, remove material, experiment with visual effects—which adds an additional layer of storytelling to the final work.

Then there’s the accessibility of film, which can be a huge advantage to any artist. In this techno-savvy age, the ability for a film to go viral via video sharing websites like YouTube and Vimeo can generate both a global audience for the viewing of work as well as a global community of artists working around the craft.  Our films have enabled us to push contemporary dance into new conversations, especially ones that involved other artists like painters, documentarians and musicians in a way that we usually can’t onstage due to limited resources.  And yes, resources are definitely a point of consideration; touring internationally with a cast of fifteen can be exponentially more difficult financially than sharing a dance film internationally with fifteen performers in it.  Through curating a film festival and being part of other festivals, I’ve felt the vibrancy of this genre from Istanbul to São Carlos, and I revel in the immediacy with which this genre can instigate trans-continental conversations among budding and established artists, dance audiences and non-dance audiences, alike.

My ventures into dance filmmaking continue to be a fresh way for me to view and review dance, and disrupt the proscenium format I’ve grown accustomed to in the theater.  Minutia can be glorified and enlarged on the screen, dancers can jump in and out of sight without diving into the wings, and public spaces can be transformed into palettes for art that can then be preserved digitally. The magic of film translates into new territories for dance-making.

Kat Cole and Eric Garcia, artistic directors of detour dance, are launching the first Tiny Dance Film Festival this July 26-27, 2013 at the Ninth Street Independent Film Center. It will feature contemporary and experimental films from across the globe. For more information visit www.detourdance.com/TDFF.

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A silly film about the adventures of a particular pair of shoes…

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detour dance is a contemporary dance company that explores the inconspicuous through multi-media and site-specific work. Artistic directors Kat Cole and Eric Garcia  collaborate with dancers/performers, filmmakers, and self-identified non-performers through the use of gestures and contemporary technique to encourage audiences to reevaluate who can dance and where art happens.

detour dance hosts the Tiny Dance Film Festival, a film festival that celebrates dances made for the screen, particularly short works created by both emerging and established filmmakers and choreographers. The Tiny Dance Film Festival will be held at Ninth Street Independent Film Center in San Francisco on July 26-27, 2013.

For more information on detour dance, visit www.detourdance.com

For more information on Tiny Dance Film Festival, visit www.detourdance.com/TDFF

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A film sketch courtesy of overseas outlanders.

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=66ZB25ZJW6o]

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“Even A Dead Fish” is about how media affects our interactions with other people and our surroundings.  Using media images from the 1950s and today I created four different characters, each of whom is affected in different ways by the media images surrounding them.

The film will be presented at The Garage on December 19th and 20th and will use three projectors to envelope the audience in the performance.  The presentation will also include live feed – footage taken of the audience and simultaneously projected at various points throughout the work.

For more information visit thedancelens.com.

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