Video Excerpts: Slipped, Fell and Smacked My Face off the Dance Floor, dir. Lisa Freeman, Delivery Dancer's Sphere, dir. Ayoung Kim, Rhizophora, dir. Davide De Lillis & Julia Metzger-Traber, Moving or Being Moved, dir. Sabine Gruffat, Why Do I Always Survive, dir. Irishia Hubbard, Moune Ô, dir. Maxime Jean-Baptiste, Crip Mad/Archive Dances, dir. Petra Kuppers, Constance Anderson, The Truss Arch, dir. Sonya Stefan.
Screendance Cultural Tour 2024
Image Description: A large red triangle cuts across the image, two Irish light-skinned/white dancers are revealed on the other side of the triangle. They sit back-to-back on a pier, leaning on one another with their eyes closed and mouths slightly open. Their feet dip into a vast body of water lapping against the pier. Video Still by: Slipped, Fell and Smacked My Face off the Dance Floor by Lisa Freeman. Text over the image reads: “SALT LAKE FILM SOCIETY PRESENTS: SCREENDANCE”. The “a” in Screendance is a dark red sideways triangle, like the play button on a video player. Additional text reads “SAVE THE DATE! APRIL 9-11. BROADWAY CENTRE CINEMAS. Sponsored by: School of Dance and the College of Fine Arts at the University of Utah and the Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah.”
What is “screendance”? It is a question I receive when I introduce myself as the Program Director for the Graduate Certificate in Screendance and an Assistant Professor in Screendance within the School of Dance at the University of Utah. For friends, colleagues, and dancers who are not familiar with dance film, this word is new for them.
The Screendance Cultural Tour is an opportunity to “show not tell” an interpretation of screendance, one that highlights the moving body on screen and is experimental, inclusive, and identity-driven. This year we offer 7 film programs, including a solo screening of Mexico City-based filmmaker, Tania Hernández Velasco. Tania’s work highlights choreographies of the body, landscape, and memory, and we are grateful for her visit. In tandem with Tania’s visit, we welcome Stephanie García, Roxanne Gray, and Elena Shtromberg for a panel on Latine Perspectives in Filmmaking at the Marriott Center for Dance. In addition to this in-person panel, there are two pre-recorded conversations spotlighting different themes of the Tour. Tania, disability activist and artist Petra Kuppers, and U of U student Devin Etcitty, discuss integrating poetry and voice in their screendance practices. I am also honored to be in dialogue with U of U Screendance Program Founder and Director of the International Screendance Festival, Ellen Bromberg. As the College of Fine Arts celebrates its 75th year anniversary, our conversation about the legacy of screendance in Salt Lake City will be cherished for many years to come. These conversations are available online for the duration of the festival!
Thank you to the sponsorship of the University of Utah Teaching Committee and Tanner Humanities Center, as well as Will Maguire, Claudia Benítez, and the entire team at the Salt Lake Film Society for making this event possible.
I am looking forward to many future discussions, challenges, and attempts at defining screendance. For now, I hope you enjoy the Tour and all it has to offer to the SLC community, and beyond!
Kym McDaniel
Curator, Screendance Cultural Tour
Tuesday, April 9
6PM: OPENING RECEPTION at the Broadway Centre Cinemas
Join us in welcoming Mexico City-based filmmaker and featured Screendance Cultutral Tour artist Tania Hernández Velasco. Red carpet, refreshments and bar service provided! RVSP LINK.
7PM: TANIA HERNÁNDEZ VELASCO: SOLO FILM SCREENING
Choreographies of body, landscape, memory, and relationship converge in this solo-screening of recent film works by Tania Hernández Velasco. The screening will be followed by a short question and answer session moderated by MFA Dance + Graduate Certificate in Screendance candidate, Roxanne Gray. ASL interpretation provided for Q&A.
Image Description: Tania, a Mexican filmmaker with brown skin and long brown hair, peers down at the camera, a small smile on her lips and in her eyes. She wears a dark blue long-sleeved top with small white dots. Behind her, an angular glass building reflects green and whites of the landscape and sun.
Tania Hernández Velasco is a filmmaker born in México City. Through a poetic, ludic and sensory approach, her work explores questions of territory, nature, legacy and identity that traverse her intimate sphere.
Titixe (2018), her first feature documentary in which she holds directing, editing, producing and cinematography credits, has been selected in more than forty international film festivals and collected several awards.
In 2019, she was selected as a Flaherty Seminar – Professional Development Fellow (Flaherty Seminar, NY) and was awarded the Charles C. Guggenheim Emerging Artist Award (Full Frame FF, NC).
In 2022, she debuted as an opera stage director for Opera Lafayette’s Silvain which premiered in NYC’s Museo del Barrio and Washington DC’s.
Kennedy Center. That year, she also premiered “Eclipsis”, in which she holds directing, editing and producing credits, a short film produced by Mexico’s National University Cinematheque (Filmoteca UNAM).
She is working on her second film My Body Is an Expanding Star (2024), in collaboration with Semillites Hernández Velasco. This project has been supported by FOCINE-IMCINE (2021)and Firelight Media’s William Greaves Fund (United States, 2021). Hernández Velasco imparts documentary workshops and is currently a recipient of México’s Jóvenes Creadores grant (2023).
Image Description: A Super 8mm image of a brown-skinned dancer wearing a red shawl wrapped around her shoulders. She peeks out from beyond trees. Her faces turns to the sun which lights parts of her face.
Image Description: A silhouetted image of a man wearing a Stetson hat. He is silhouetted against a vibrant sunset sky. Dark and light oranges, blues, yellows, and grays fill the sky.
Image Description: A circular, micro-close up image of a butterfly. A spectrum of blues, yellows, greens, and blacks fill the circular image. Around the circular image is a black background.
PROGRAM:
Our Body is an Expanding Star [work in progress] (16mm - Video, México)
Two siblings make an imaginary pilgrimage through the memory and geography of their Brown bodies in order to discover their beauty and dignity. As they journey through the seas of their stretch marks, the fields of their hair, and the constellations of their moles, their ancestors emerge to accompany them.
Eclipsis (Super 8mm - Video, 2022, México, 16 min)
A recently discovered monarch butterfly subespecies (Danaus plexippus eclipsis) possesses strange toxines in their scales that provoke powerful nervous alterations in their predators.
Eclipsis is a sci-fi short film that especulates –narratively and sensorialy– around that which happens to human beings if they enter in contact with this imaginary butterfly. Intertwining the vivid microscopic colors and textures in 4K, the sway of human body registered in Super 8mm and archival footage, this film imagines a multiespecies crossroads.
Titixe (Video, 2018, México, 62 min)
A mourning tree, dancing sprouts, ghosts, stories and forgotten seeds. This is a Mexican family’s very last attempt to cultivate their land.
The last peasant of a family has died and with him, all wisdom to till the soil has been lost. Without experience, his daughter and granddaughter will attempt a last traditional harvest to try to convince Grandma, the widow of the peasant, to keep their plot of land. Together they will uncover the leftovers (locally known as the titixe) of this man and his world: a mourning tree, dancing sprouts, the language of clouds, ghosts, stories and the endless menace of losing the crops to a tempest. This is an intimate mosaic of the last harvest of a Mexican family, in a country that has forsaken its rural origins.
Wednesday, April 10
Image Description: A Super 8mm image of a brown-skinned dancer wearing a red shawl wrapped around her shoulders. She peeks out from beyond trees. Her faces turns to the sun which lights parts of her face. Text on the image reads: “Screendance Cultural Tour 2024 Presents: LATINE PERSPECTIVES IN FILM. April 10, 2024. 12:30-1:30PM. Marriott Center for Dance. Free and Open to all University and Community Members. Image Credit: Eclipsis, dir. Tania Hernández Velasco. Sponsored by the Tanner Humanities Center and College of Fine Arts at the University of Utah.”
12:30-1:30PM: LATINE PERSPECTIVES IN FILMMAKING
Panel with Tania Hernández Velasco, Stephanie García, Roxanne Gray, and Elena Shtromberg
Location: Hayes Christensen Theater - Marriott Center for Dance
Access Inquires: kym.mcdaniel@utah.edu
Free + Open for All
PANELIST BIOS
Tania Hernández Velasco is a filmmaker born in México City. Through a poetic, ludic and sensory approach, her work explores questions of territory, nature, legacy and identity that traverse her intimate sphere. Titixe (2018), her first feature documentary in which she holds directing, editing, producing and cinematography credits, has been selected in more than forty international film festivals and collected several awards. In 2019, she was selected as a Flaherty Seminar – Professional Development Fellow (Flaherty Seminar, NY) and was awarded the Charles C. Guggenheim Emerging Artist Award (Full Frame FF, NC). In 2022, she debuted as an opera stage director for Opera Lafayette’s Silvain which premiered in NYC’s Museo del Barrio and Washington DC’s Kennedy Center. That year, she also premiered “Eclipsis”, in which she holds directing, editing and producing credits, a short film produced by Mexico’s National University Cinematheque (Filmoteca UNAM).
She is working on her second film My Body Is an Expanding Star (2024), in collaboration with Semillites Hernández Velasco. This project has been supported by FOCINE-IMCINE (2021)and Firelight Media’s William Greaves Fund (United States, 2021). Hernández Velasco imparts documentary workshops and is currently a recipient of México’s Jóvenes Creadores grant (2023).
Stephanie García is a multi-awarded Mexican artist and independent curator. Dance, video, choreography, film, and performance art are the mediums García intervenes in the audiences’ realities that witness her work. She is co-founder and co-director of Punto de Inflexión Dance Company and PROArtes México with which she works as an arts advocate work she started in 2008. She has worked with important Mexican and international choreographers, performed in relevant dance festivals and venues in Mexico, and 11 countries in America, Europe, and Africa, and created more than 30 original interdisciplinary pieces presented in the USA, Mexico, Cyprus, Ireland, Peru, Panama, Spain, and Cuba. Her work has received grants and funds from Mexican, USA, Spain, Netherlands, and Canadian institutions. Furthermore, since 2016 she has founded, curated, and participated in various screendance festivals, platforms, and events in Mexico and abroad.
She is a member of the U40 México Network, Latinx Hispanic Dancers United, The Latin American Interdisciplinary Gender Network (CIEG/Yale), and the International Network for Contemporary Performing Arts (IETM).
Roxanne Gray is a Chicana Salt Lake City-based independent choreographer, filmmaker, teaching artist, and curator originally from San Antonio, TX. She is a current Modern Dance MFA Candidate and Graduate Teaching Assistant at the University of Utah. Gray works to build community through collaborative structures in her creative work while exploring the diversity of human emotion and identity through curated experiences. Her current graduate work explores borderland identity in movement and film through a Chicana feminist lens. Her creative work has been presented at LEVYdance, Shawl-Anderson Dance Center, Mission Dance Theater, Studio Azul, and SAFEhouse for the Performing Arts (San Francisco, Bay Area); as well as Covey Center for the Arts, 12 Minutes Max, loveDANCEmore, Clubhouse, Twig Media Lab, and 801 Salon (Salt Lake City, UT). Her films have also been screened at the Utah Dance Film Festival and the Cinnevox Dance Film Festival.
Gray is the Co-Founder and Director of 801 Salon, a monthly multidisciplinary arts and performance series; and PlayGround Dance Project, an annual flash incubator choreographic program (Salt Lake City, UT).
Elena Shtromberg is an Associate Professor in the Department of Art & Art History at the University of Utah. She specializes in modern and contemporary Latin American visual culture, with a specific focus on Brazil and the U.S.-Mexico border region. Her book, Art Systems: Brazil and the 1970s (University of Texas Press, 2016) explores visual forms of critique and subversion during the height of Brazilian dictatorship by tracing how the encounter of artistic practice with information and systems theories redefined the role of art in society. Her interdisciplinary research interests extend to gender and media studies, cultural studies, as well as communications, geography and postcolonial theory. She has been the recipient of grants from the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Social Science Research Council and DAAD, among others. During her research leave in 2011-12 she was a guest scholar at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles. She has also curated a number of exhibitions, the latest among them a co-curated screening of Contemporary Video Art from Latin America at the Getty Research Institute and In Motion – Borders and Migrations, encompassing a range of artistic manifestations along the U.S./Mexico border, co-curated for the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art in Salt Lake City. Her latest project addresses the history of video art, culminating in the exhibition “Video Art in Latin America” at LAXART (an alternative art space in Los Angeles) in September 2017 as well as the publication of an edited volume in 2019.
7PM: PROGRAM 2: DISABILITY DANCE SHORTS at the Broadway Centre Cinemas
ALL FILMS CAPTIONED FOR ACCESS
Image Description: The screen is divided into a grid of 5 sections. Alice is repeated in three sections. Alice, a multi-racial Black woman with coffee-coloured skin and curly brown hair, is flying intently towards the camera. Alice arcs so her belly is to the floor and wheels rise behind; thick black cables connect to her from above. The energy feels electric, jolted. In the top corner sections Brandon, a mixed race Black artist with black-brown locs tied half up, signs multiply in front of a bright white backdrop. Alice Sheppard of Kinetic Light; still from One + One Make Three/Safety Third Productions.
One Plus One Make Three dir. Kinetic Light (Video, 2022, UK, 25 min)
Commissioned and presented by ALL ARTS, this Emmy-nominated experimental documentary-dance film -- directed by Katherine Helen Fisher of Safety Third Productions -- takes audiences behind the scenes and into the studio as Kinetic Light creates their aerial dance production, Wired. Wired is an immersive work that explores the gendered, raced, and disability histories of barbed wire and traces the fine line between “us” and “them.” Dancers partner, spin, and soar as they reflect on art, dance, and disability as a creative force.
Kinetic Light’s ongoing research and development of aesthetic artistic accessibility can be flexibly experienced in One + One Make Three through two streams of ASL interpretation, multi-voiced enhanced audio description, and integrated open captions. We craft these access approaches as an integral part of our art, in collaboration with other disabled artists and community members. They are intentionally designed to be as challenging, provocative, and beautiful as the art itself.
Image Description: A Vietnamese dancer with brown skin and dark brown hair with bangs gesutres upwards towards the sky. One palm flat, an offering towards the green trees above, and their other hand is tucked behind their head. Their eyes are closed, as if in a moment of meditation or internal embodiment. The dancer wears black fabric around their neck and a bright green shirt, bunched up at their elbows.
Rhizophora, dir. Davide De Lillis & Julia Metzger-Traber (Video, 2015, Veitnam/Germany, 17 min)
Dancing between waking and dreaming, a day seen through the eyes of eleven young residents of the Friendship Village in Vietnam who are living with disabilities caused by Agent Orange.
[brief program pause]
PROGRAM 3: THE BODY AS AN ARCHIVE at the Broadway Centre Cinemas
Image Description: A sepia-toned image, blotches of light and dark colors filter across the photo. People are dancing joyfully in mid-movement, holding hands to form a line.
Crip/Mad Archive Dances dir. Petra Kuppers (Video, 2024, USA, 35 min)
How do disabled and mad people survive, dance, insert their differences in a world full of stigma? How do we live through bodymindspirit experiences of alienation and pain? This experimental documentary charts disability culture archives and embodied gestures of survival and creative expression. It draws on community with human and non-human others: media clips as performance gifts, archival footage from dance archives, environmental embedment and grounding in trees, water, desert and lakes. Together, we dance, and spring our binds. Please note: This experimental documentary shares instances of medical incarceration including insulin violence. It offers survivor testimonies of artful and agency-full reclamation. The film is fully subtitled in English. A full audio-description track is available on SoundCloud, at https://on.soundcloud.com/bv9pE. The documentary uses 'crip' and 'mad' as in-group signifiers, aware of stigma and histories.
Image Description: A dark brown hand holds up a photograph. The photograph shows an archival room that is stark and academic. Behind the photograph, a light grey brick building is in the background.
a so-called archive, dir. Oneyka Igwe (Video, 2020, UK, 20 min)
In Lagos, the former Nigerian Film Unit building was one of the first self-directed outposts of the British visual propaganda engine, the Colonial Film Unit (1932–1955). Today it stands empty. Its rooms are full of dust, cobwebs, stopped clocks, and rusty and rotting celluloid film cans. The films found in this building are hard to see, not only because of their condition, but also perhaps because people do not want to see them. They reveal a colonial residue, echoed in walls of the building itself.
Meanwhile, in Bristol Temple Meads, the former British Empire and Commonwealth Museum (2002-2009) was previously housed in the vaults of one Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s most famous railway designs. The museum included photographic, film, sound and object collections from across the former British Empire. However, it is now shrouded in ignominy after the alleged illegal sale of several items from its collection, leading to its closure. The monetisation and obscurity of its collection points to an attitude to Britain’s colonial past.
a so-called archive imagines the ‘lost’ films from both of these archives, using distinctive soundscapes, choral arrangements and a radio play within the confines of images from a disembodied tour of the exquisite corpse of an archive building.
Co-commission by Mercer Union, Toronto; Plug-In ICA, Winnipeg; and KW Institute of Contemporary Art, Berlin, with support from Julia Stoschek Collection and Outset Germany_Switzerland. Additional support from Adam Pugh and Tess Denman-Cleaver for the Projections programme. Supported using public funding by Arts Council England.
Image Description: Two Irish light-skinned/white dancers sitting back-to-back on a pier. They lean on one another, eyes closed and mouths slightly open. Their feet dip into a vast body of water lapping against the pier.
Slipped, Fell and Smacked My Face off the Dance Floor, dir. Lisa Freeman (Video, 2022, Ireland, 20 min)
Drawing on the town’s history as a site of leisure and respite, this work positions the human body in this now-defunct site of relaxation. The actors create intimate moments of dialogue in this public space, where the script touches on ideas of therapeutic infrastructures, tourism and the body as an archive. These moments are woven through this site of failed architecture, set to a live musical score performed by a saxophone player.
9PM: PROGRAM 4: FEATURE IN FOCUS at the Broadway Centre Cinemas
Image Description: Huahua, a Chinese woman wearing a black long-sleeved coat and multicolor skirt dances in public. In one hand, she holds up her phone. In her other hand, she gestures around her. She wears a bright headband with flowers and a light pink lace scarf. Behind her, a community of men, women, and children watch her. She smiles broadly at her phone as she dances.
Huahua’s Dazzling World and its Myriad Temptations 花花世界 dir. Daphne Xu (Video, 2022, China/Canada, 82 min)
Huahua, an eccentric and exuberant woman from Xiongan New Area, livestreams herself dancing, singing, and chatting with fans on Kuaishou for a living. Cell phone screens, beauty filters, and digital soundscapes reveal a world that Huahua creates with her own image.
Thursday, April 11
7PM: PROGRAM 5: DANCE ANIMATION SHORTS at the Broadway Centre Cinemas
Image Description: A hand-drawn image of a group of people with short black hair standing in a circle. In unison, the characters have one arm in the air and the other slightly extended to the floor, making a diagonal shape. The background is a light teal color, and the dancers are wearing a mixture of grey, dark blue, lime, and light green pants and long-sleeved clothing.
Bird in the Peninsula, dir. Atsushi Wada (Video, 2022, Japan, 16 min)
Children are dancing to music under the supervision of their teacher. A young lady witnesses the scene and disrupts their rituals.
Image Description: An 3D animated image of a Korean woman in a white motorcycle suit. She floats upside down above a street amidst stop lights and cars. The red fluorescent lights of food signs and street lamps illuminate her.
Delivery Dancer's Sphere, dir. Ayoung Kim (Video, 2022, Korea, 25 min)
Ernst Mo works for courier service Delivery Dancer. Every day, she transports an endless stream of parcels, following algorithmically generated routes through a labyrinthine Seoul. After she runs into an alternative version of herself, her reality slowly starts to crack – with all the attendant consequences. In her own unique style, artist Ayoung Kim creates a fascinating and pretty disturbing world.
Image Description: A 3D generated image of a beige-green toned figure, a woman with short dark hair sitting on a bright light blue couch in the middle of a desert. She wears dark navy pants and a black turtleneck. Her hands are slightly raised from her lap, mid-gesture. A dull light blue standing lamp is beside her and the couch. A robotic figure stands in front of the woman. Its body is composed of stacked beige cylinders, all different shapes and sizes. The robot’s arms extend out in a graceful curve, mid-dance. All around is a vast sandy expanse.
Moving or Being Moved, dir. Sabine Gruffat (Video, 2020, USA, 11 min)
The everyday performance of domestic labor is teleported into a surreal game world where an emotionally responsive AI chatbot provides no answers. In this world, motion capture technology translates movement into data that can be unbound from the human body. Yvonne’s No Manifesto becomes a framework for understanding the existential impact of this new dataset. What happens to movement when it is divorced from affect and feeling? What happens to dance without the basic premise of embodiment and breath?
[brief program pause]
PROGRAM 6: RHYTHMS OF RESISTANCE at the Broadway Centre Cinemas
Image Description: An African woman with dark skin wearing a multicolor dress holds a large musical shaker. Surrounding her are other people in brightly colored clothing, holding musical items. The people are various states of singing and moving.
Moune Ô, dir. Maxime Jean-Baptiste (Video, 2022, Belgium, French Guiana, France, 16 min)
"I close my eyes. The crowd makes me smile, breaks my body, and that's the end" By presenting the festive events which escorted the projection of the film "Jean Galmot aventurier" by Alain Maline, where the filmmaker’s father played a role, the images of Moune Ô reveal the survival of the colonial inheritance within a Western collective unconscious always marked of stereotypes. From little gestures of daily life, the resistance toward oppression comes in its own rhythm.
Image Description: A stone sink located on the floor, with a metal faucet and two metal pots. A small green plant is next to the sink. There is light-colored text in the middle of the screen that reads, “sun is pouring in”.
absent wound, dir. Maryam Tafakory (Video, 2015, Iran, 10 min)
the rituals of warrior training are seen in combination with the recitations of a girl.
Image Description: It’s dusk with purple blue skies and a hue of orange as the sun sets in the West. A andgrogenous body overlays the landscape with an arm raised to the sky.
Bury My Heart on Kit Carson’s Land dir. Devin Etcitty (Video, 2024, 5 min)
Filmed on Dinétah, the body and land converse with each other. In this experimental film, the landscape enthralls viewers with it’s vastness, beauty and isolation. Inspired by their upbringing on the Navajo Nation, the artist seeks to answer questions about trauma in the body.
Image Description: A dark blue collaged image of two BIPOC trans-identifying dancers. One dancer faces the camera with their arm on their heart and the other arm on their head. They have curly blonde and dark hair. The other dances faces away from the camera, a sparkle of stage light illuminating their body. They wear a sleeveless dark colored tank and have very short hair.
Dance, Dance, Evolution, dir. Jules Rosskam (Video, 2022, USA, 18 min)
In Dance, Dance, Evolution six trans-identified people explore their relationship to dance over time. As one participant says, “What I feel when I'm dancing is the very decomposition of myself.” This short, joyful documentary looks at the ways in which the body in motion opens up the spaces between gender, race, and time, producing pleasure in indeterminacy. This begs the question, how do we take that idealized moment on the dance floor—where nothing matters but the beat—and take it with us everywhere we go?
9PM: PROGRAM 7: UNIVERSITY OF UTAH SHORTS + THE TRUSS ARCH at the Broadway Centre Cinemas
Image Description: Four women stand looking to the left of the frame. They wear brightly colored folklórico dance costumes consisting of colorful skirts, ruffled blouses, and braided headpieces with ribbons and flowers. The women also wear skeleton bodysuits under their dresses and a skeleton mask over their faces.
Why Do I Always Survive, dir. Irishia Hubbard (Video, 2023, USA, 7 min)
A presence hangs suspended, a bridge between epochs and dimensions. Within this immersive experience, the ancestral voices reverberate through her essence, whispering secrets of our heritage. Why Do I Always Survive is a colorful exploration of corporeal existence through the unique perspective of the Black moving body.
Image Description: A black background with fragments of bright pink and purple. Abstract gestures and lines fill the frame, similar to a painting or drawing.
Un Poquito (a little bit) [excerpt], dir. Roxanne Gray (Video, 2024, USA, 7 min)
A mother and daughter explore borderland identity, community, and lineage through folklórico dance in San Antonio, TX.
Image Description: A distorted image of a female mannequin, her face curves along the frame, bended and collaged alongside other fragmented limbs and parts of the body.
What She Is dir. Constance Anderson (16mm - Video, 2024, USA, 3 min)
A 16mm film that explores freedom in female sexuality through the aesthetic of “cool,” inspired by the 1960s Americana beatnik movement. The film plays with tension between analog and digital and physical and metaphysical.
Image Description: A black and white 16mm close-up image of the shoulders and neck of a light-skinned/white dancer. Her dark hair is pulled into a low messy bun. She gently leans over her right shoulder. Behind her, a cold tiled wall juxtaposes the vulnerability of her body.
The Truss Arch, dir. Sonya Stefan (Video, 2021, Canada, 35 min)
Somewhere between an autobiographical piece, a heartfelt tribute to an immigrant mother whose fate is out of her hands, and a dance film rich in poetry and symbolism, this ode to freedom bubbles with reflections and experimentations—all set against the imposing backdrop of factory chimneys and a truss arch bridge.
History of Screendance at the U
In 1999 the Department of Modern Dance presented its first International Dance for Camera Festival and Workshop. Founded and Directed by Distinguished Professor Ellen Bromberg, the festival was an annual event until 2002, after which it has continued on a bi-annual or tri-annual basis. Professor Bromberg has hosted visiting artists and scholars from across the country and around the globe to screen their films, teach workshops and engage in symposia and critical analysis of this hybrid art form. Guests have included Douglas Rosenberg (the first four festivals), Victoria Marks, Ann Daly, Naomi Jackson, Brian Patrick (Dept. of Film & Media Arts) Bob Lockyer (England) Laura Taler (Canada), Katrina McPherson (Scotland), Simon Fildes (Scotland). In addition, throughout these years, Professor Bromberg has curated screenings that range from historical works to the most contemporary innovations in film, video and animation.*
In 2001, in conjunction with the Festival, a student competition was inaugurated. As a completely student run event (funded by College Fine Arts Fee Grants), this component has been adjudicated by professional dance filmmakers, educators and festival producers over the years, providing students with an opportunity to learn about the jury process. In recent years, a cash award for the Best of Festival was inaugurated.
*Support for these activities has been generously provided by: The Council of Dee Fellows, the University Teaching Committee, the College of Humanities, the Tanner Humanities Center, the University of Utah Office for Diversity, the Department of Film & Media Arts, and the School of Dance
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A Study In Choreography For The Camera, Directed by Maya Deren,
Choreographed and Performed by Talley Beatty9 Variations On A Dance Theme, Directed by Hilary Harris
Choreographed and Performed by Betty De JongBlue Studio, Merce by Merce by Paik , Directed by Nam June Paik
Choreographed and Performed by Merce CunninghamThe Black Boots, Directed by Bridget Murnane
Choreographed and Performed by Jeanine DurningTantalus, Directed by Kevin Cottam
Choreographed and Performed by David PressaultBardo, Directed by Douglas Rosenberg
Choreographed and Performed by Molissa Fenleyde l’eau, Directed by Douglas Rosenberg
Choreographed and Performed by Li Chiao-PingEmmy, Directed by Daniel Larrieu
Choreographed and Performed by Daniel LarrieuOutside In, Directed by Margaret Williams
Choreographed by Victoria MarksMothers and Daughters, Directed by Margaret Williams
Choreographed by Victoria MarksDance in the Sun, Directed by Shirley Clark
Choreographed and Performed by Daniel NagrinUntitled, Directed by John Sanborn and Mary Perillo
Choreographed and Performed by Bill T JonesDance Nine, Directed by Doris Chase
Barber's Coffee Break, Directed by Laura Taler
Performed by Tedd Senmon RobinsonGlasshouse, Directed by Robert Hardy
Conceived and Performed by Richard Lowdon and Charlotte VincentDaDance, Directed by Robb Horsley and Hugh Wheadon
Choreographed by Hugh Wheadon and Emmie ElmazSure, Directed by T.B. Mitchell
Choreographed by T.B. Mitchell -
First Evening – September 28th
“A Dedication To Anna Sokolow”
This evening is dedicated to the work and memory of choreographer Anna Sokolow, who died earlier this year. Sokolow contributed to the world of modern dance for nearly seven decades. Her renegade spirit and ground breaking choreography has and will continue to influence generations of artists and dance enthusiasts. The classic film of Sokolow’s signature work “Rooms” will be screened, along with Shirley Clarke’s film of Sokolow’s “Moment in Love”. Set to the music of Kenyon Hopkins and produced by WNET Television, “Rooms” depicts the loneliness and alienation of modern man, and is considered an enduring masterpiece of twentieth-century art. In Sokolow’s “Moment in Love,” performed by Carmela Gutierrez and Paul Sanasardo, Ms. Clarke utilizes inventive film techniques to further the expression of romantic love, poetically captured in Sokolow’s choreography. The screening will be followed by a discussion and an opening night reception.
Second Evening – September 29th
“Images Of Men Dancing”
Boy, Directed by Peter Anderson and Rosemary Lee
Emmy, Directed and Performed by Daniel Larrieu
Hands, Directed by Adam Roberts
Performed by Jonathon BurrowsElegy, Directed by Chris Graves
Choreographed and Performed by Douglas WrightBarber's Coffee Break, Directed by Laura Taler
Performed by Tedd Senmon RobinsonBruce, Directed by Ruth Sergel
Choreographed and Performed by Bruce JacksonTantalus, Directed by Kevin Cottam
Choreographed and Performed by David PressaultMan Act, Directed by Michael Stubbs Men, Directed by Margaret Williams
Choreographed by Victoria MarksMen, Directed by Margaret Williams
Choreographed by Victoria MarksThird Evening – September 30th
“Diverse Works”
Pas De Deux, Directed by Norman McLaren
Performed by Margaret Mercier and Vincent WarrenOffice Furniture, Directed by Rebecca Salzer
Echo, Directed by Mark Baldwin and Ross MacGibbon
Little Lieutenant, Directed by Henry Hills and Sally Silvers
A Sun Dance, Directed by Dikayl
Periphery, Directed by Douglas Rosenberg
Choreographed by Gus Solomons Jr. and Performed by Li Chaio-PingEterne Sangui, Directed by Sven Johansson
Synchro, Directed by Eric Koziol
Witnessed, Directed by Allen Kaeja and Mark Adam
Wake Up Call, Directed and Performed by Pooh Kaye
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PROGRAM A - Dance Screen on Tour
Birds, Directed by David Hinton
Short Cut, Directed by Jellie Dekker
Choreographed by Hans van Manen, Performed by Nederlands Dance TheaterZummel, Directed by Allen Kaeja and Mark Adam
Choreographed by Allen Kaeja, Performed by Kaeja d’DanceCaptives 2nd Movement, Directed and Choreographed by Nicole and Norbert Corsino
Moment, Directed by Katrina McPherson
Choreographed by Paula HampsonZikr, Directed by Jos de Putter, Clara van Gool
PROGRAM B
A devastatingly simple guide, Directed by Laura Taler
Measure, Directed by Gaelen Hanson and Dayna Hanson Performed by Dayna Hanson and John Dixon
Memento Mori, Directed by Frank Kresin
Choreographed by Yusuf DanielsIn the Heart of the Eye, Directed by Margie Medlin
Choreographed by Sandra Parker21 Etudes a Danser, Directed by Thierry De Mey
Choreographed by Michele Anne de MeyPROGRAM C - The Next Generation
STUDENT WORKS
URSA MAIRO
Maira Spangherd, Catholic University of Sao Paulo
BrazilFINE CHOCOLATE & BATTERY ACID
Christopher Anderson, California Institute of the Arts
USASOLO FOR VIDEO
Lily Gene Baldwin, University of Michigan
USASPACE INVADERS
Michael Cole, Arizona State University
USATWIST
Melissa Weigel, Concordia University
CanadaOBSCURED
Nic Kemp and Avis Cockbill, University of Brighton
United KingdomSTUFFED
Carrie L. Houser, Ohio State University
USAGLOMO
Melissa Lynn Strzelinski, University of Wisconsin, Madison
USALANDROVERS
Mario Jaramillo, University of Houston
USADOUBLE ONE
Adriana Daniela Pegorer, University College Chichester
United KingdomTHREADS
Claudia Alessi, West Australian Academy of Performing Arts, Edith Conan University
AustraliaANATOMIE NATURALIZA
Paula Giannetti, CIEVYG
ArgentinaBARCODE POPULATION
Thomas O'Hare, De Montfort University, Department of Performing Arts
United Kingdom -
Guest Artists
Douglas Rosenberg
Victoria Marks
Naomi Jackson
Keynote Speaker Ann Daly
Esther Rashkin -
Guest Artists
Bob Lockyer
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Guest Artist
Laura Taler
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Guest Artist
Katrina McPherson
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Guest Artist
Simon Fildes
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See information here
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See information here
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See information here
Still from De l'eau
Directed by Douglas Rosenberg
1999
Elegy
Directed by Chris Graves
2000
2001
2001
2001