Award Winning Scottish Dance Filmmaker and Author, Katrina McPherson, who will be in residence at the University ofUtah's International Dance for the Camera Festival in September. She will conduct two workshops, a weekend workshop plus screenings of her award-winning work, September 15-17th, followed by a week long intensive, September 19-24th. It is possible to register for either one or both workshops. For more information go to:

http://www.dance.utah.edu/danceforcamerafest/

or contact Ellen Bromberg, e.bromberg@utah.edu

Photo Credit:Gao Yan and Song Wenjia/Beijing Dance Academy

Created by San Francisco Bay Area based artist Beth Fein in 2005, dance anywhere® has turned into a world wide dance party with thousands of participants across the globe!  Create your profile on the site to put yourself on the dance anywhere® map!

http://www.danceanywhere.org

http://www.facebook.com/danceanywhere

Call for entries: videodance, documentaries 

The International Festival VideoDanzaBA opens its call for

videos and papers

for its thirteenth edition, to be held November 2011.

Entries must be registered online at www.VideoDanzaBA.com.ar

Videos have to be delivered until May 16, 2011 to:

FESTIVAL INTERNACIONAL VIDEODANZABA

CENTRO DE INVESTIGACION CINEMATOGRAFICA

Benjamín Matienzo 2571 (C1426 DAU) Buenos Aires – Argentina

Jury for videos: Rodrigo Alonso, Diego Terotola, Silvina Szperling

International Symposium of Videodance Coordinator: Susana Temperley

We are waiting for your piece!

the sternberg project from zena bibler on Vimeo.

The Sternberg Project is a brand new site-specific dance film by Zena Bibler/Little Dances Everywhere that is an interactive, crowd-sourced, multi-media time capsule of the park made up of video submissions filmed by the community at the park this summer.

Dancers: Katie Schetlick, Ashley Hannan, Faye Min Lim, Ariel Lembeck, Jacob Liberman, Rishauna Zumberg, Malinda Crump, Ashley Murray

Sound Design: Chris Tabron

Seriously, when there is no music all I hear is the scuffing and dragging of feet and for the youth-fully challenged, some joints popping.  Unless I watch a video of you dancing and the music has been either disabled by youtube or there is simply no sound available.

I challenged you dancers to show me a dance sequence without any music.  Why?  Well, what else can a DJ blog about on a 'dance' blog?

What if you could have music made specifically to your talent, speed or routine?  How about a sound-alike music track? Matched precisely to your desire.

I use to customize a dozen songs for aerobic instructors.  Just a thought.

Thank You,

Roman-Gabriel

La danse est interdite en Iran. Alors pour le montrer au reste du monde, Ali Moini évolue avec un costume constitué de couteaux.

Ali Moini représente le danger de danser. Car dans son pays, l'Iran, cette pratique artistique est interdite. Dans le forum de Bonlieu, il tourné sur lui-même pendant 20 minutes pour dénoncer cette censure.

This edition of Test_Lab will showcase new technology-inspired modes of live musical performance that radically transform the performer’s relationship with the audience.

March 31, 2011. 20:00 - 23:00

V2_, Eendrachtsstraat 10, Rotterdam

http://www.v2.nl/events/active-listeners

The lyrics to Daft Punk’s “Technologic” – “Touch it, bring it, pay it, watch it, turn it, leave it, start, format it” – allude to the omnipresence of technology in our daily lives and the many different ways in which we engage with it. At a Daft Punk live show, however, it’s predominantly the artists themselves that interact with technology, through musical interfaces. The audience, by contrast, passively observes or dances but rarely touches, brings, starts or formats any of the technology involved in the performance. Yet there are artists who explore technology’s potential to radically break with the traditional performer-audience relationship.

According to Chris Salter, the concert hall has shifted “from a passive arena of listening to an interactive zone of improvisation between sound-making technical apparatuses and their players” (Entangled, 2010). The exciting new modes of performance resulting from this shift have recently gained much attention in publications and conferences. Exactly how these new performance modes affect the performer-audience relationship has however hardly been explored. What does it mean to be an active listener in an “interactive zone of improvisation”? And what does the audience gain from it all?

This edition of Test_Lab will showcase new technology-inspired modes of live musical performance that radically transform the performer’s relationship with the audience. While some of these projects and performances, such as CrowdDJ - Tom Laan, and Nomadic Sound System - Ben Newland; turn the audience into co-performers, others, like Microscopic Opera -Matthijs Munnik, Evolving Spark Network - Edwin van der Heide and SPASM 2.0 - V2_Lab; give rise to entirely new modes of listening. As always at Test_Lab, you can touch it, bring it, pay it, watch it, turn it, leave it, start, format it…

This event will be streamed live on v2.nl from 20:00  to 23:00 CET.

Include hashtag #dancetechtv in your tweets!

One poor and one 0 by BADco. (Croatia)

World premiere: 17.-19.10.2008 @ 19:30 Dom im Berg, Graz


In 1 poor and one 0 BADco. returns to the scene of the first film ever shot – Workers Leaving The Lumiere Factory: the factory gates. The first moving images ever made show workers leaving their workplace. The movement of the workforce from the place of industrial work into the world of film: the starting point for the problematic relationship between cinema and the portrayal of work.

From its outset cinema tended to leave the manual labor out of the picture, focusing rather on atomized stories of individual workers once they have left their workplace: their romances, their transgressions, their destinies in the course of world events. Cinema starts where work ends.

Starting from these initial images, 1 poor and one 0 sets about exploring the multiple ways of leaving the work behind. What happens when you get tired? When is the work we devote ourselves to exhausted? What comes after work? More work? What happens when there is no more work? What is the complicity between the history of contemporary dance and the history of post-industrialization?

1 poor and one 0 is a twofold performance: while the performers develop the manifold forms of dissolution of the working subject before the audience, the audience is slowly drawn into a process of transformation: from the popular medium of cinema to the political theater of populism. Theater exhausted in moving images, images exhausted in the theater of movement. A change of perspective.

Directors: Tomislav Medak & Goran Sergej Pristaš
Authors and performers: Pravdan Devlahović, Ivana Ivković, Aleksandra Janeva Imfeld, Ana Kreitmeyer, Tomislav Medak, Goran Sergej Pristaš, Nikolina Pristaš, Zrinka Užbinec
Dramaturgy: Ivana Ivković
Stage: Slaven Tolj
Costume design: Silvio Vujičić
Video: Ana Hušman
Light design: Alan Vukelić
Sound design: Ivan Marušić-Klif
Sound technician: Jasmin Dasović

Company manager: Lovro Rumiha

Inspired by the work of Auguste and Lois Lumiere, Samuel Beckett, Vlado Kristl, Jean-Luc Godard and Harun Farocki.

Coproducers: Steirischer Herbst, University of Zagreb – Student center – Theatre &TD

Supported by: Zagreb City Council for Education, Culture and Sport; Ministry of Culture of Republic of Croatia

First the body. No. First the place. No. First both. Now either. Now the other. Sick of the either try the other. Sick of it back sick of the either. So on. Somehow on. Till sick of both. Throw up and go. Where neither. Till sick of there. Throw up and back. The body again. Where none. The place again. Where none. Try again. Fail again. Better again. Or better worse. Fail worse again. Still worse again. Till sick for good. Throw up for good. Go for good. Where neither for good. Good and all.
– Samuel Beckett, Worstward Ho, 1983

Little by little we are replaced … by uninterrupted chain of images, enslaving one another, each image at its place, as each of us, at our place, in the chain of events on which we have lost all power.
– Dziga Vertov Group, Here And Elsewhere, 1972

This circulation of value in the cinema-spectator nexus is itself productive of value because looking is a form of labor.
– Johnathan Beller, Cinema, Capital of the 20th Century, 1994

The first camera in the history of cinema was pointed at a factory, but a century later it can be said that film is hardly drawn to the factory and is even repelled by it. Films about work or workers have not become one of the main genres, and the space in front of the factory has remained on the sidelines. Most narrative films take place in that part of life where work has been left behind… In the Lumière film of 1895 it is possible to discover that the workers were assembled behind the gates and surged out at the camera operator’s command. Before the film direction stepped in to condense the subject, it was the industrial order which synchronized the lives of the many individuals.
– Harun Farocki, Workers Leaving the Factory, 2001

Interview with vana Ivković and Tomislav Medak at the Balkan Dance Platform 2009, Novi Sad, Serbia

Another well deserved award: Best dance film at dancescreen 2010 in category C2 "screen choreography", subcategory "shorts up to 15 min".

See the whole award lis here: http://cinedans.nl/dancescreen

We make a toast and thank the Jury, and the co-organizers Cinedans (Amsterdam) and IMZ (Viena).

We dedicate it to the team and to the family of videodance.

Cheers!

playing with particles from Adam Scher on Vimeo.

I am so upset that the great flamenco artist Enrique Morente Cotelo just died, Monday, December 13, only 12 days shy of his birthday.

What a gift he had. He could make your guts burn with only a few notes. And he experimented with so many forms, always excelling.

Why do so many of the great & talented always seem to die young? Is it because someone upstairs says - "OK. You've done all you possibly can to remind the rest of them that the mysterious forces of nature are always there, available to be tapped."

Born on Christmas Day 1942 in Granada, Spain, Enrique Morente began his career in Spain in the mid-1960s, and performed at the Spanish Pavilion of the 1964 World’s Fair in New York and again in NY in recent years at BAM and Lincoln Center. Mr. Morente’s survivors include his wife, Aurora Carbonell, a dancer; and three children, one of whom, Estrella Morente, who is my favorite performer in Carlos Saura's latest film FLAMENCO FLAMENCO that Dance on Camera Festival will show on January 29, 2011.

“I like doing what comes from inside,” Enrique Morente told The Boston Globe in 2003. “If that means I’m innovating, it’s pure coincidence.”

Tomorrow is now the last day of the competition at the Fidor bank (https://banking.fidor.de/wersollsbekommen) and we're quite excited about it!

We're still in the first row, but you never know about the jokers other players might have and, lets be real - it is a game. So I see my self and all the people involved sitting in front of their computer, checking the website of Fidor every minute...

The last days we spent on writing emails and facebook messages and twitter messages and talked to people - all to mobilize the crowd so that they vote for us. This is not an easy job. It takes a lot of time. Especially if you try to make your mother vote as well. Not an easy one. Well, we need every vote.

The communication part on every platform is the most important point in the whole thing. If you know a lot of people and you make them vote for you - you made a good job in communicating your project. It also helps to ask your friends and partners to forward your request.

In the first action I sent 700 messages and emails - we have 60 votes by now. So you see what's left. But I have to admit, it is a boarder to register at a bank you don't know and all that stuff. Also the registration process is not just that you click on the project to vote. So people hesitate. It's a new way to fund project. People might have doubts and all. But never the less - we are optimistic!

If we win the competition, we will receive our first funding to produce the dance piece ROHRPOST.

Give it a try too!

Thanks and good night,

Johanna for mind_the_gut

UCR does "The Digital"-New Dance Moves

Eclectic weekend dance performances at the Dance Complex in Cambridge, MA, portrayed the diversity of talent and culture that is embedded in lifestyle, here, during the 21^st Century.  The Dance Complex itself, formed in 1991, in order to secure the historic Odd Fellows Hall as a means to “promote, advance, sponsor, facilitate, and nurture creative and artistic work,” is a creation born of democratic, intellectual, and aesthetic ideals.  A physical locality coupled with a visionary mindset where “securing a community of artists is a higher priority than establishing an organizational bureaucracy,” the Dance Complex is the perfect venue for producer Honey Blonder to promote mixed genres of hip hop, ballet, modern, jazz, disco, street funk, belly dancing, step, gymnastics, and an all-male cast of full contact, jazz-funk dancers dressed in Santa Claus hats. 

Rainbow Tribe, Kelley Donovan, B Side, Contemporarily Out of Order,

Disco Brats, Derrick Davis, Brookline Academy of Dance, Deepa Srinath, Bright Pearl Dance Company, Johara and Jim Banta, and Legacy Dance Company, marked the line-up for two evenings chock-full of synchronized, soulful, innovative and interesting choreographies. Some of the most memorable contrasts included:

Men dancing in sneakers, while executing 180 degree dips and flawless turns (Rainbow Tribe); perfect spirals, arabesque layouts and Graham contractions (Brookline Academy); Egyptian costuming and shimmies (Johara and Jim Banta); the effortlessly flowing hands, “petite winged arms,” and repetitive circles (conducted with bowl on the side of her angled head) by (Bright Pearl Dance Troupe); spectacular sparkling outfits, hot pants, and disco white boots (with taps), and full body lifts (Legacy Dance);  the all-maleness of Bside; and amazing modern physical feats by Samantha Wilson and Laurel Reveley (Kelley Donovan and Dancers). 

These were, of course, in accordance with inherent nature of all tensions associated with the art of dance and of the Christmas holidays, punctuated by a stilling, maybe even disquieting performance by singer Steffani Bennet of “winter Song, written by Sara Bareilles and Ingrid Michaelson, and “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” written by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane. Her beautiful yet haunting voice reminded me of our human frailties and imbalances, in the face of a holiday marked by rejuvenation, reconciliation, and renewal of spirit. 

Similarly, the opening 30 minutes was characterized by Alissa Johnson, a frozen white ballerina (stockings, leotard, skirt), accented by silver bands on her thin arms, a silver Tiara, and lone silver ball held lethargically in both hands, while she sat motionless on a box, her feet not properly crossed in the “fifth position” perfect mode. No breath or heart rhythms could be detected. Shadows cast from one bright light behind her right shoulder only intensified the ambiguousness of her being – at once childlike and innocent – evoking the holiness, peace and spirit of the season – while simultaneously detached and disassociated from any body or (seemingly) any emotion. 

Quieted in that moment, I couldn’t help feel the tightening in my temples, the crinkling of my brow, and the slow squeezing of warm tears out of my eyes’ corners, as memories of those loved and lost blurred my vision of that unmovable, meditative figure that resolved into the contemplations of my mind.  In acknowledgment of the emotional, spiritual, and aesthetic pleasures of the season and the night to come, I thanked God for the opportunity to celebrate a personal and collective humanness with an audience from Cambridge, Massachusetts, and 12 Dancers Dancing.  Hats off to Honey Blonder for a job very well done.