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Program III: Almost SOLO:
Wednesday, March 26, 2003, ProArte Institute, St. Petersburg

Tippeke 18min, 2000
Director: Thierry De Mey; Choreographer: Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker
Distributor: ROSAS, C-Sales


photos: T. De Mey
Wandering through the woods and running across changing landscapes, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker narrates an old Flemish children's song about "Tippeke", a little boy who refuses to go home, unless his mother carries him. Tippeke was part of Rosas' 1996 production "Woud". The choreography and dance are inspired by the work of the German Valeska Gert.

Born in 1956, Thierry De Mey, a film director, composer and percussionist has collaborated with such renowned choreographers as Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, Wim Vandekeybus, Michèle-Anne De Mey and others. He is also a founder of the group Maximalist!, a creative laboratory for the young composers.

Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, one of the most prominent modern European choreographers studied at MUDRA in Brussels, the school linked to La Monnaie and to Maurice Béjart's Ballet of the XXth Century, and then at the Tisch School of the Arts in New York. On her return from the States, she founded her company Rosas and created Rosas danst Rosas – the creation that brought Rosas an international recognition. Together with Rosas and Brussels' Royal Opera De Munt/La Monnaie, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker has launched a new international school for contemporary dance, where sixty students coming from some 25 countries are trained, over a three-year period, by more than 50 teachers. http://www.rosas.be/

Little Lieutenant 7min, 1994 (USA)
Director: Henry Hills, Chorographer/Dancer: Sally Silvers
Distributor: Canyon Cinema


photo: H. Hills
Little Lieutenant is a look back at the late Weimar era with its struggles and celebrations leading up to world war, a period piece. Scored to John Zorn's arrangement of the Kurt Weill song, "Little Lieutenant of the Loving God", and drawing its imagery both from the original song and its somewhat idiosyncratic rearrangement, the film presents an internal reading of Silver’s solo scored to the same musical piece, "Along the Skid Mark of Recorded History".

Born in Atlanta, Georgia (USA), Henry Hills has made 22 short experimental films since 1975 which have been shown in numerous festivals around the world. Since 1990 he has worked as an editor and director for many film productions and music videos including LOOKING FOR RICHARD by Al Pacino (winner of the 1995 A.C.E. Award for Best Editing of a Documentary). http://www.henryhills.com

Minou 6min, 2002 (UK)
Choreographer/Director: Magali Charrier
Distributor: South East Dance Agency


photo: M. Charrier
Winner of Best Screen Choreography Award 2002 at the Dance Screen Festival in Monte Carlo, Minou tells a story of a young woman who, despite her solitary life, has her romantic aspirations and quirky relationships with the objects in her apartment.

 

 

Motion Control 2002, 8min (UK)
Director: David Anderson; Choreographer: Liz Aggiss / Billy Cowie
Distributor: South East Dance Agency


photo: D. Anderson
Take one glamorous and aging dancer. Trap her in the real world then smash into her private reality. Control her movement, contain her emotion. Well you can try but she has already beaten you to it. With hyper-sound and super-smart awareness submit to this bizarre journey of entrapment. Motion Control has won the Czech Crystal at the Prague Golden film Festival 2002 and received the Paula Citron Award at the Moving Pictures Festival in Toronto 2002 for “the seamless and fearless creation of a duet for the camera and performer”.

David Anderson’s work has encompassed theatre, dance animation and live action. David’s films have won numerous awards including a British Academy Award, the Hiroshima Peace Prize as well as San Francisco Golden Gate Award. His previous films include Deadsey and Door and are part of the collections of the Metropolitan Museum New York, the British Film Institute and Australian Museum of Moving Image.

Liz Aggiss and Billy Cowie have been artistic collaborators making dance for camera and live performance for many years. Numerous film Awards include BBC Dance for Camera, Meridian Taped Up, and Capture 2 Award. Liz Aggiss has recently been appointed as a Professor of Visual Performance at the University of Brighton.

Cornered 3min, 2001(Canada)
Director: Michael Downing; Choreographer/Dancer: Susanna Hood
Distributor: Michael Downing


photo: M. Downing
Cornered is a four-minute black and white film featuring a dancer in a corner. The choreography of both the performer and the camera, create a vertiginous attraction of right angles in this post-modern adaptation of the classic Fred Astaire dance sequence in the film "The Royal Wedding" when Fred Astaire is dancing on the walls and ceiling. Some sections of the film are optically printed in reverse, manipulating the forward and reverse movement of the dancer. This effect is also created in the music which combines a Maria Callas recording on vinyl being scratched, looped and mixed by a DJ. – Dance Screen 1999.

Born in San Francisco, Michael Downing performed with the National Ballet of Canada and later on established himself as an independent choreographer. At the same time, he attended the American Film Institute in Los Angeles and produced a number of commercials. Recently he has been focusing on creating short films that include dance as a social element. These shorts have been screened at the the festivals around the world including Toronto International Film Festival and Clermont International Short Film Festival.

Susanna Hood’s work explores the integration of voice and movement and the melding of artistic disciplines. With Toronto Dance Theatre from 1991-1995, she now works as an independent dancer and choreographer in Toronto, collaborating with such artists as Michael Downing, Joey Meyer and Gerry Trentham, among others.

Ghostcatching 7min, 1999 (US)
Directors / Choreographers: Paul Kaiser, Shelley Eshkar, and Bill T. Jones
Distributor: Paul Kaiser


photo: RS. Eshkar
Ghostcatching finds its place in the unexpected intersection of dance, drawing, and computer composition. The work is made possible by advances in motion capture, a technology that tracks sensors attached to a moving body… Here, the body of Bill T. Jones is multiplied into many dancers, who perform as three-dimensional drawings. Their anatomies are intertwinings of drawn strokes, which are in fact painstakingly modeled as geometry on the computer -- never drawn on paper. So, we may ask: What is human movement in the absence of the body? Can the drawn line carry the rhythm, weight, and intent of physical movement? What kind of dance do we conceive in this ghostly place, where enclosures, entanglements, and reflections vie with the will to break free? – Paul Kaiser, Shelley Eshkar, Bill T. Jones

Paul Kaiser is a New York-based digital artist whose work has been exhibited at many venues around the world. He has received numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1996 and the Congress of Research in Dance in 2000. Kaiser's early art (1975-81) was in experimental filmmaking and voice audiotapes. He then spent ten years teaching students with severe learning disabilities, with whom he collaborated on making multimedia depictions of their own minds. He later applied this approach to an interactive documentary on Robert Wilson's early work entitled Visionary of Theater (1994-97). Kaiser has collaborated on the virtual dances with Merce Cunningham, Shelley Eshkar, Bill T. Jones and Marc Downie. http://www.kaiserworks.com/

Bill T. Jones is the artistic director of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, and one of the greatest living solo dancers. He has received many honors and awards, including a MacArthur "Genius" award in 1994. http://www.billtjones.org/

Hyperalarm Dance 3 min 2002 (US)
Director / Choreographer: Michael Cole
Distributor: Michael Cole


photo: M.Cole
Hyperalarm Dance is a 4-minute computer animated modern dance music video. The movement material for the work was originally performed onstage and was later re-conceptualized and transformed into a dream sequence that takes place inside the workings of a digital alarm clock. "Hyper Alarm Dance" utilizes motion-capture techniques to bring the movement data into the computer. The resulting motion is just as sharp, precise and fluid as that in the stage version but is re-presented in a colorful and dynamic environment that could only be created through computer graphics.

Michael Cole makes computer-animated dances by means of his own body, a series of infra-red cameras and 3-D animation software. For nine years he toured the globe with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. After this point, he has worked on his choreographic skills at Arizona State University and on his animation skills at the Academy of Art College in San Francisco. He earned masters degrees from both institutions and currently lives both in New York and San Francisco.

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