Dance on Camera

Dance on Camera Festival — Programs 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7
Walter Reade Theater
New York, NY
January 3 — 7, 12 & 13

by Susan Reiter
copyright 2007, Susan Reiter

As in the past, the range of offerings in the annual Dance on Camera Festival is quite impressive. One program steeps you in the atmosphere of the mid-20th-century Paris Opera Ballet; another takes you on a series of cross-cultural explorations; another offers a straightforward documentation of one of Merce Cunningham’s most serenely gorgeous works.

The latter, “Biped,” a 2006 film by longtime Cunningham collaborator Charles Atlas, stands as the sublime highlight of the Festival’s first week. Filmed with its exemplary original cast, this 1999 masterwork by the then-80-year-old choreographer unfolds with leisurely, meditative beauty. The 14 dancers, in shiny metallic cobalt costumes, exude a creaturely clam and seem to exist in some magically suspended place, with properties of both air and water. The exquisite lighting — sometimes shadowed, sometimes luminous by Aaron Copp plays a large part in the total effect, as does Gavin Bryars’ shimmering score, one of the most exquisite ever composed for dance. Add to that the motion-capture images — computer-generated disembodied figures based on the dancers’ movements — that are projected on a transparent scrim in the performance, seeming to cavort and caper amidst the onstage bodies. In the film, they appear like visiting extra-terrestrials, benignly swooping down amidst these idealized earthly beings.

“Biped” was imaginatively paired (on Program 3) with “One Flat Thing, Reproduced,” an inventive film version of a hard-edged, unsparing William Forsythe work that is about as different as possible. The 17 dancers are seen at the start, dragging large rectangular tables as they dash forward through what looks like an abandoned train station. Once positioned in four rows of four each, the tables become the set with which the dancers’ interact constantly. They bounce and slide and jump over, under and around them. Often engaging in partnering that hovers on the edge of violence. Tension and suspicion fill the air, and the frequent cuts add to the unnerving sense of danger — one cannot truly follow the logic and progression of the piece. But clearly director Thierry de Mey was not so much interested in documenting the dance as in heightening the choreography’s impact through his use of the camera’s possibilities.

The Festival reliably programs valuable documentaries, and Program 1 featured an affectionate tribute to the groundbreaking and influential career of Josephine Baker, whose centennial was marked last year. Almost as entertaining as Annette von Wangenheim’s film (“Josephine Baker: Black Diva in a White Man’s World”) — which captured Baker at both her most fiercely sensual and her most diva-like glamorous — were the reminiscences by a quartet of introductory speakers (also featured during the film in interview segments) who either worked with Baker, admired her or — in the case of her adopted son, Jean-Claude Baker, were close with her. Arthur Mitchell recalled the impact she made when, while a high-school student, he saw her perform in 1951. Carmen de Lavallade choked up recalling the generosity Baker, the great star, showed to her, the younger neophyte, when she performed with her. Geoffrey Holder stressed how today we can learn “from an era when there were great ladies who were independent and who did it with style”; both her and Mitchell stressed how today’s younger generations should be made aware of Baker as a both a pioneering performer and influential humanitarian.

The Baker film was the centerpiece of a program that opened with the sensuously pretty underwater swoops and dives of a serenely pregnant Sara Joel in “Rapt,” which used an expanse of flowing red fabric to symbolize the umbilical cord and then devolved into over-the-top silliness when Joel began scattering an abundance of red rose petals. “Bone” showcased the dynamic Willy Tsao, who has spearheaded the development of modern dance training and choreography in China, who brought Canadian choreographer Nadine Thouin to his Beijing Modern Dance Company. The Chinese dancers are impressive technically and in their efforts to meet Thouin’s sometimes obtuse challenges, but a little of her pretentious pontificating goes a long way.

Another highlight of the Festival thus far was Dominique Delouche’s lovingly made documentary “Serge Lifar Musagete.” It is not a biographical representation of Lifar’s life and career but rather a compilation of rehearsal and coaching sessions comparable to those invaluable ones filmed by the George Balanchine Foundation, in which originators (or major interpreters) of roles coach today’s dancers in the choreography as they learned it from the master. Filmed over a period of years — so that we see such now-retired Paris Opera Ballet etoiles as Isabelle Guerin and Monique Loudieres, as well as Manuel Legris, Delphine Moussin and others during the 1990s when they were in their performing prime — these intimate sessions show such charismatic and eloquent past stars as Yvette Chauvire and Nina Vyroubova touchingly transmitting the intent of Lifar works created between the 1930s and 1950s. There is wonderful archival footage of the original performers, eloquent recollection of Lifar by a still-dashing Jean Babilee, as well as fascinating scenes of Lifar teaching. The film, very much a love letter to Lifar as an influential and idiosyncratic artist, steers clear of Lifar’s politics and activities during the Occupation — he has long been viewed by some as having been too cooperative with the German forces. This could have made for some lively post-viewing conversation, given that Delouche’s film was shown shortly after the film about Baker, who was also in Paris during the period and became involved with the Resistance.

Also noteworthy is “Terpsichore’s Captives II,” a 2005 sequel of sorts to an earlier documentary of that title. Shown together on Program 7, they provide intriguing, if disturbing contrasts. In the earlier one, the teenaged Natalia Balakhnecheva, an advanced student at the Perm Ballet School, endures brutally harsh coaching from the school’s driven artistic director, Ludmila Pavlovna Sakharova. Preparing for competition/graduation performances in both “Giselle” and contemporary choreography, Balakhnecheva is a sweetly sad-faced aspirant enduring a love/hate relationship to her chosen art. Her “Giselle” excerpts are poignant and dewy, if not yet fully formed, but in a performance of what is credited as her own choreography we see an assertiveness and fire that are a welcome contrast to her mopey fragility in the studio with Sakharova.

In the later film, the now-twenty-something ballerina is seen working — and receiving what amounts to artistic counseling — from Bill T. Jones. No explanation is given as to when and how — or for how long — they came to be working together. Devoid of any context, their experimental collaboration feels stagey, as though it was created expressly for the film. Jones, of course, is voluble and grandiose in his statements about dance and aesthetics to the camera. The purpose — or ultimate conclusion — of Balachnecheva’s working with Jones is not made clear, but it is a relief to see her lovely, slightly awkward smile during this film — something we never glimpsed during the earlier one.

[The Festival, a collaboration between the Film Society of Lincoln Center and Dance Films Association, continues on January 12 & 13, with repeats of programs 1 & 3 plus four additional programs. For schedule information: www.filmlinc.com or www.dancefilms.org]

Photos:
First: Josephine Baker: Black Diva in a White Man’s World, Directed by Annette von Wangenheim, Germany, 2006; 45m. Photo Credit: DFA.
Second: An image from Rapt. Directed by Sara Joel and Jody Oberfelder, 2006; 6m. Photo Credit: DFA.
Third: Beijing Modern Dance Company collaborates with Canadian Snell Thouin Project to create a new piece in Bone. Directed by Mila Aung-Thwin, Canada, 2005; 48m. Photo Credit: DFA

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Dance on Camera