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April 9, Thursday, 19.30, Rodina, Main Hall
Program R1: Choreography in Silent Cinema with Dziga Vertov and Alloy Orchestra (live), USA

A Man with a Movie Camera (68 min, 1929, USSR)
dir. Dziga Vertov

“A Man with a Movie Camera” is an exposé of cinematic inventions – fast, slow and backward motion, double exposure, freeze frames, jump cuts, split screens, Dutch angles, animation artfully choreographed to present life in Odessa and other Soviet cities in the early 1920s without almost a single word.

Often cited as Alloy's best score, "A Man with a Movie Camera" score was written by Alloy with the assistance of film Vertov's own composer notes and with the help of film scholars, Yuri Tsavian and Paolo Cherchi Usai in 1995 and toured extensively. For a decade, Alloy has been unable to perform their score because of the unavailability of the print. The group has recently acquired a gorgeous new print of the film from Gosfilmofond (the Moscow Film Archive). The St. Petersburg concert is a revival performance – the very first one in 10 years.

April 10, Friday, 21.00, Rodina, Main Hall
Program R2: Choreography in Silent Cinema with Bastor Keaton and Alloy Orchestra (live), USA

The General (79 min, 1927, USA)
dir. Buster Keaton and Clyde Bruckman

“The General” is a true masterpiece – an example of an artful narrative structure and technical perfection. The film is full of playful comic inventiveness and realistic romance as well as gracefulness and fluid athleticism of Mr. Keaton notorious for his “great stone face”. Realistic stunts (without stuntmen to double for Keaton), intricate free flowing set-pieces, non-stop motion, and a preoccupation with authenticity make parts of the film a visual history of the American Civil War.

 

Alloy Orchestra is a world-famous three man musical ensemble (Ken Winokur, Terry Donahue and Roger Miller), writing and performing live accompaniment to classic silent films. KINODANCE is their first appearance in Russia.

Performing at prestigious film festivals and cultural centers in the US and abroad (The Telluride Film Festival, The Louvre, Lincoln Center, The Academy of Motion Pictures, the National Gallery of Art and others), Alloy has helped revive some of the great masterpieces of the silent era.

An unusual combination of found percussion and state-of-the-art electronics gives the Orchestra the ability to create any sound imaginable. Utilizing their famous "rack of junk" and electronic synthesizers, the group generates their scores in a spectacular variety of styles. They can conjure up a French symphony or a simple German bar band of the 20's. The group can make the audience think it is being attacked by tigers, contacted by radio signals from Mars or swept up in the Russian Revolution.

Alloy collaborates with some of the world’s best archives and collectors (such as the George Eastman House, The British Film Institute, Paramount pictures, Film Preservation Associates and The Douris Corporation) to present audiences with the very best available prints of some of history's greatest film.
The members of the group include: TERRY DONAHUE (junk, accordion, musical saw, vocals), KEN WINOKUR (director, junk percussion and clarinet), ROGER MILLER (keyboards)

The group has written scores for 27 feature length films.

Curator’s note: Alloy Orchestra’s residency responds to one of the KINODANCE’s aspirations – to define contemporary dance film in the context of cinema history. By hosting Alloy Orchestra, KINODANCE will expose and highlight the relationships between dance film and silent cinema as we strongly believe that understanding silent cinema is crucial to understanding choreography for the camera. Similarly to dance film, silent film uses choreography of the mis-en-scene and actors’ physical action (movement and gesture) to realize the director’s idea. In some of the best dance films, the filmmaker and choreographer are often the same person. Coincidently, filmmakers of early cinema such as Chaplin and Keaton both directed and performed in their own films. By bringing Alloy Orchestra, KINODANCE will allow the Russian artists and audiences to bridge between dance film and silent cinema as well as to re-discover "A Man with a Movie Camera," a masterpiece of montage choreography created by their compatriot.

 

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P01-P02 InstallationFR01FR02Closing: Awards and Encores


© Kinodance–Russia, 2009
akovgan@kinodance.com