DANCE:FILM 07

SHORTS PROGRAMMES

Beyond Scotland Programme 12.45, Saturday 3rd November, £6 (£4.50), Filmhouse

We've programmed an eclectic and diverse programme of work from beyond Scotland for you!

Fall of Adam

Director/Screenwriter – Gail Sneddon, England

The Fall of Adam is an urban regeneration of Adam’s fall from grace. Taking the story to new hi-rise heights and wrestling his descent down through the inferno, he finds his once beautiful eve has turned from the divine to the bovine. A bloody fight with a fat guy in stained underwear (Satan) ends Adam’s fall. His body descends the endless flights to his death. He turns back to the dust in which he was created.

Gail Sneddon is a UK-based director, choreographer and installation artist. She trained at the LABAN Centre for Movement and Dance in London, before touring nationally and internationally as a performer for Nigel Charnock, Athina Vallha and Ersatz. With a passion to apply choreographic technique to other art forms, she set up her own company, Modusforum, in 1999. In 2002, she completed her MA in Scenography at the prestigious Central St Martin's College of Art and Design in London. Since then, her work has focused as a director of film and single screen work as a format to capture her unique choreographic and sonic vision in a time-based medium. Her success has led to two new commissions, currently in pre-production. Thank you to South East Dance.

Nascent

By Gina Czarnecki, England

The work of British artist Gina Czarnecki confronts issues surrounding the convergence of biology and technology and the possible corruption of the human genetic mix. Nascent is a visual and visceral journey through and about being. Raw footage of improvised and choreographed performance by Australian Dance Theatre dancers is confronted with compositional techniques applied in the post-production stage in this award-winning film. The piece’s hybrid form exists between viual art, experimental media and dance, with soundscore by acclaimed Austrian musician Fennesz.

Nascent is produced by Forma and Australian Dance Theatre and commissioned by Forma and Adelaide Film Festival. www.forma.org.uk

Inn of floating imagery

Video, performance, theramin and sound by Kathy Rose, USA

This piece represents a kind of autobiographical vision. Kathy uses herself to create all the figures, sometimes employing masks from the Noh theatre to vary her persona. A sea of richly coloured figures floating and flying are accompanied by eerie sounds. The animated figures are constructed in the manner of puppetry and collage. The imagery continues until the artist’s involvement with her “canvases” is revealed, with her performing self finally emerging. The piece has also been expanded into a live performance.

Kathy Rose’s work has evolved from her early drawn animated films of the 1970’s, through her unique, pioneering performance work combining dance with film in the 1980-90’s, to her current surreal performance video spectacles and installations, with influence from symbolist art and the Japanese Noh theater. Rose received a Guggenheim in Performance Art in 2003, seven grants from the NEA, etc. She has given numerous performances including at the Museum of Modern Art/N.Y., ICA/London, Dance on Camera/N.Y., Akademie die Kunst/Berlin, etc.

Do your thing

By Alan Fleming, USA

Three dancers. Three different styles. Do Your Thing represents the street dance styles of Lockin', Poppin', and B-boying. In Hip Hop culture dancers use movement as a creative and complex expression of individuality. This video attempts to show the joy, creativity, and complexity of these improvisational street styles.

Alan is a performance/video artist based in Chicago, Illinois. He recently graduated with a B.F.A. from the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign. Alan has been bboying for five years and has been teaching Hip Hop and Breakdancing classes for the past two years

Self Placed

By Wendy Erickson, England

Six exciting and diverse dance artists were given the brief to find a special location in their region – the North East of England, and create a site-specific solo there. The performers visit memory, desire, loss, relics, and themselves. These solos have been interwoven to create an abstract portrayal of the relationships between people and the places they find themselves in.

Originally from Sydney, Australia, Wendy has conceived, directed and performed in many dance related projects in Australasia, Europe and the UK. Currently based in the North East of England, Wendy is constantly redefining the boundaries of her practice, exploring collaborations with artists from a range of disciplines.

Memory Pool

Flicker, Splice, Trace, Expanse, POV, Magical Thinking, Zoetrope, Surveil

By Chirstinn Whyte, England

All eight pieces have been developed as part of the Memory Pool project, a forty two piece cycle of work created as part of doctoral research into choreographic practice for screen. In Flicker, a single sequence of improvised movement is distributed between four quarters of the screen, creating a flicker effect reminiscent of early cinema. The compositing program Shake was used to render visible the movement patterning of a performer’s journey across the screen space in Trace. A single performer’s movement is transformed through the distorting effect of extreme close up in Expanse and P.O.V. follows the pathways of individual performers through a piece originally created for live performance. Magical Thinking captures fragments of the performers experience of dancing in and out of summer sunlight and shadow, while Zoetrope explores pre-cinematic optical forms and their effect on movement patterning. In Surveil, a performer is captured within the screen space using a mixture of still and moving image and colour and black and white footage, and in Splice, footage from four different performers is spliced together to create a single sequence.

Chirstinn Whyte has worked throughout Britain as a performer, choreographer and teacher for over twenty years, having held, among others, the post of Choreographer-in-Residence at Dance Base, and is currently completing doctoral research into choreographic practice for screen at Middlesex University, London. She is co-director of Shiftwork, a Cambridge-based dance and new media partnership, and her work has been shown at screendance and short film festivals and artists moving image events worldwide. Further work can be seen at www.shiftwork.org.uk

Slip

By Jeanette Ginslov, South Africa

A cheeky and playful glimpse into what lies beneath and what slips out. A man and a woman meet. They try to come to grips with each other. What do they do when they encounter a slippage of gender? A play on the word slip.

Jeannette Ginslov lives and works in Johannesburg, South Africa. She is the Founder & Director of Walking Gusto Productions – multimedia dance theatre, a choreographer, video dance maker (director, cinematographer & editor) and multimedia artist. She is the founder and curator of montage – video dance festival in partnership with FNB Dance Umbrella Johannesburg, South Africa. She coaches Alba Emoting™ privately and at AFDA Johannesburg and Cape Town. She studied dance in New York, France - CNDC, completed her MA in Choreography at Rhodes University and most recently a Video Dance Masterclass at the Place in London with Katrina Mc Pherson. In collaborations with other visual artists, her work mainly explores women and their identity, the moving body combining dance, music, text, video and interactive media in a stimulating exploration of the place of women in culture and how this notion is tied in with conceptions of freedom and otherness. Her work raises pertinent questions around feminine identity and the body’s relationship to text, words and culture questioning culture’s restrictions placed upon women.

Walking Gusto Productions receives annual company funding from the National Arts Council South Africa and Gauteng Department of Sports, Arts, Culture.

Three's a Crowd

By Andy Wood, England

A sequel to It Takes Two and also tango inspired, but this time the protagonists resolve their simmering attraction with direct contact. Initially they playfully explore each other’s movement but things get heated as the relationship progresses. Meanwhile the parents look on disapprovingly. Shot in one swirling continuous take, the camera improvises within the dance, an active participant in their passionate story.

Andy Wood is a digital media artist who works with moving image, audio and the Internet. He has a particular interest in screen-dance, live video improvisation, site-specific video installations and public projections that intervene in non-traditional spaces. His work has been screened at international film festivals, in shopping malls, on public buildings, and on television.

Andy studied Fine Art in Leeds and currently runs a new media company Sound Alibi Productions who provide integrated digital media production and editing services for the arts. He has delivered many video based education and community projects for agencies in the UK and is a member of The North West Digital Dance Forum, Open Source {Video Dance} group, and The New Work Network. He is a director of Leeds Media Centre and a registered Arts Award Adviser. www.soundalibi.co.uk

The Cacophony of Solitude

By Harper Piver, USA

A space unfolds as an unusual world for those who dwell in it.

Harper Piver is a choreographer, performer, and video artist currently based in Arizona. Her interdisciplinary work for the stage and site-specific environments is rooted in movement and incorporates her interests in music, text, media, and improvisation. In May 2008 she will graduate from Arizona State University with an MFA in Dance. Harper left her heart in Edinburgh in 1999 and would love to come back and reclaim it.