Film Categories: dance

  • Puamana

    Aloha! This gentle portrait of Auntie Irmgard Farden Aluli, one of Hawaii’s best-loved composers, focuses on Hawaiian women’s contributions to family structure, art, music and dance. An intimate glimpse into the real culture of the islands.

  • Roadshow

    Shot entirely using a Steadicam. A video version of a dance piece by the Karen Jamieson Dance Company.

  • Scape-mates

    Dancers Emery Hermans and Sarah Shelton move in a mythic world created by using video synthesizers and computers to animate artwork.

  • Shadows

    “Shadows” is a marriage of dance, music, and digital visual effects. The choreography and the visual effects work integrally together to create a piece that could only exist in this medium. Images of a dancer and of a solo harpist are manipulated and combined electronically, so that they pass through each other, transform one into the other, and bend and ripple to the music, as the harpist plays one of John Weinzweig’s haunting “Fifteen Pieces for Solo Harp.”

  • Sisyphus

    A video of a dance performance by the Karen Jamieson Dance Company.

  • Slow Dance World

    In Hindu mythology, dance represents the rhythm of life and Shiva – god of creative and destructive forces- is master of the dance. As Shiva imagines the creation of the world in his mind’s eye, the forms, the textures and movements found in air, earth and water are revealed. Satisfied with his plan, Shiva brings the world into being and in the end is united with his creation. This film was created by animating three-dimensional objects on a colour photocopier.

  • Steam Ballet

    Those sensual machines, steam tractors, reveal a remarkable ability to perform to music.

  • Suspension

    An interpretation of a state of suspension through visual effects, dance, movement and sound. It represents a “state” rather than a “journey.” Events occur within the film as might be seen in an abstract painting that is in motion.

  • Swan, The

    Volumes have been written on “The Dying Swan,” the dramatic ballet solo first choreographed by Michel Fokine and made famous by Anna Pavlova. The dancer interprets the swan’s struggle for life in the face of the inevitable approach of death. In “The Swan,” as the dancer assumes the poses and movements of a swan, the animation dissolves in, transforming the human interpretation of the bird into an animated swan which continues the choreography of the now invisible dancer. The dance dissolves back in picking u,p the movement of the animation. This back-and-forth interplay continues throughout the film.

  • Thanatopsis

    Time exposures of dancer Becky Arnold create a flickering vibrating image juxtaposed against the immobile face of Mac Emshwiller. An experimental film creating and portraying a state of anxiety. Heartbeats and ripsaws on the soundtrack contribute to the intense effect.