STRICTLY NOT DANCING

I am sorry to rain on the parade and frankly I suggest the more fanatical of you start erecting the heretics’ pyre preparatory to hurling me onto it, but please, somebody tell me, exactly what Strictly Come Dancing is actually for or about, except yet another opportunity to allow the Meejuhmachine to mess even more with our already completely addled minds?
As if the Soaps with their endless, mindless, breathless and over-wrought trivialities about the lives of drab nonentities at the bottom of the social food-chain were not enough brain damage.

Strictly Come Dancing is neither strict, nor comely nor strictly dancing. It is a bunch of c-list lumpen-TV totty shoe-horned into dresses which frankly would disgrace a Nevada knocking shop, hulking stiff legged sportsmen and the oddest assortment of sundry other “faces” most of whom would get passed over instantly in any sort of breeding or natural selection programme without a backward glance.

These incredibly inappropriately chosen oddities from the ruling cultural triumvirate of Television, Sport and Journalism, gallump inelegantly and for the most part unmusically around in front of four “ Judges” all of whom look to a person to be suffering from a lethal combination of terminal embarrassment and personal plumbing issues.
Allow the entire sorry mess to be presided, or should that be, lorded over by Bruce Forsyth who has raised the art of banality and mugging in the Wunnerful Whirl of Showbizzyness to an act of such pornographically buttock-clenching embarrassment, frozen in time somewhere between the death of Variety and Sammy Davis Jrs final hair weave, and lo! we have a televisual phenomenon!

Throw in some Sports Dance partners, yes I said it, Sports Dance, which is the bastard offspring of Hairdressing and the final thrashings of rabies, without the soul, the focus or the duende (look it up if you like) and you have a nightmare world caught somewhere between Saturday Night Fever and a bad hand-job in the toilets at Madam Jojos. All to an accompaniment of a mediahype of white noise pitch and astonishing ubiquity.

SCD - it even sounds like a terrifying public health menace - is the perfect opiate solution for the masses – actually the very one George Orwell promised would end-up being delivered to the drooling classes the moment the Advertising Industry (aka Big Brother's mouthpiece) cottoned onto TV as an unique opportunity for mass mind control.

The contestants are not dancers, their professional dance partners are twinkly toed hair-dos who specialise in the mind numbingly banal world of competitive ballroom dancing –they are NOT dancers either. They are exercise fanatics in sequins and make-up and that's just the men.
The whole farrago has as much to do with the rest of the vast, creatively complex and challenging world of “real” dancing and dance making as Margaret Thatcher has to do with Thug Kultcha.

The judges have to a person, never actually featured as dancers of any merit whatsoever themselves - honestly, try and find their dance CV's - not their Step-Maker CV's a WHOLE different thing to choreography or dancing for that matter – have somehow been empowered like some fantastical Star Chamber, to hurl at these hapless non-dancers a hair curlingly vitriolic mix of patronising professional jealousy, spite and breathlessly delivered poorly scripted judgemental criticism week after week.

The fact is when it started, it was just a chance for some hapless slebs with too much time on their hands (aka rapidly fading careers and aggressive agents) to dress up as the amateur denizens of Cat Houses or 50’s gigolos to fill a cheap Saturday night telly slot for some Car-crash TV Fun commissioning wonks.

It is interesting that when the redoubtable Mr Sergeant, the first of the grown-ups on this odd merry-go-round finally and very politely asked to get down from the mad-hatters tea-party on the grounds that the joke had worn too thin, the first people to saddle up and ride out with the media-lynch mob, were those judges who clearly had failed to understand that the first defence of the terminally untalented, who have been shot through the ceiling of their relative competencies, is to take themselves waaaay too seriously.

There is perhaps an ironic symmetry in this, in as much as it requires no more than the truly incompetent to judge the merely incompetent for the edification of the uninitiated.

All of this is preamble to the key point that Strictly Not Dancing has been and continues to be held up as the summit of achievement in the current “dance world”.

We now have a situation in which seriously weak, under-rehearsed and amateurishly underpowered performances of appalling bland and banal “choreography” is being passed off week after week as dancing that anyone should take seriously.

As far as hoping that this will encourage the next generation of genuinely interesting, committed and aesthetically challenging dance artists to buckle down and aspire to any idea of excellence, it is tantamount to the world’s great Renaissance artists trying to guide the next generation of painters by showing them the daubs of children and letting them throw paint around rather than the brilliant inspirational glories of the great ecclesiastical frescoes of the Sistine Chapel.

If we balanced any of this arrant pap with the occasional flash of the vast store of available and truly inspiring examples of genuine choreographic design going on throughout the dance world, by getting it anywhere near our television screens, ever, it would not be so bad.

The problem is that Strictly Come Dancing, we are ALL now reliably informed ever more hysterically, is as good as it gets. In the absence of any competition, this may very well become true simply through repetition.

It was once opined by a wit far greater than mine that if you have been doing “it” whatever “it” may be for two years got away with it, you can call yourself a professional. The time frame seems to have drastically shortened.

A society gets both the government and the culture it deserves, particularly when both are clearly ever more willing to sell their souls for good ratings.

MORE ACADEMOBOLLOQUILISM - JOB SPEC

.....EXTRACT FROM A JOB SPECIFICATION FOR AN UNSPECIFIED MID-WESTERN USA ARTS FACULTY
ADVERTISING FOR YET ANOTHER TENURED INCONSEQUENTIALITY.

".......aimed at the individual level must pay attention to the professional as well as personal needs of faculty, and must consider both the stage of faculty members’ careers as well as the stage of their lives. This multi-prong, multilevel approach should be coordinated and integrated to assure that new initiatives on the same or across levels synergistically and strategically work together to further faculty development and retention. And in particular, faculty development strategies should be in alignment with the institution’s strategic goals and faculty tenure and promotion criteria so that individual career development simultaneously enhances the institution and rewards faculty.

Below five broad goals are listed that reflect and pertain to different levels of the institution, moving from the macro toward the micro level:

Goal 1. Create supportive institutional structures and policies
Goal 2. Revitalize the Center for Teaching
Goal 3. Develop a mentoring program
Goal 4. Enhance the quality of life for faculty on and off campus
Goal 5. Increase support for faculty scholarship.

All five goals are important and warrant the attention and resources of the institution. Several specific objectives have been identified for each goal.


At no point whatsoever, is there even the briefest description of what this chair is supposed to be teaching. I think the safe assunption is that it really doesn't matter, and actually no one cares.
More self-interested examples of the bland leading the blind..............

REGARDING AUDIENCES - ON THE dysFUNCTIONS OF PUNDITRY

Interesting and quite instructive that issue seems to be taken with a supposed lack of a focus in different approaches to the critical language developing around Dancefilm.

The prime aim of discourse is merely to be effective in motivating open discussion, rather than engendering partisan debate. In a truly Socratic tradition, argument needs be seen just like any other creative standpoint or artistic manifestation and remain entirely neutral. An engagement of points of view rather than didactical position statements.

The particular set of ideas around which so much syndicated outrage seems to be engendered is that of actually identifying the languages in which it might be agreed, effectively to engage with audiences - an aim as important, as vital and as central to the development of presentational artistic practice as are the initial imperatives driving the creative impulse per se.

It is the very presence of an ongoing pressure to conform to a particular and current zeitgeist, or indeed the arrogance of those who presume that their view on what constitutes something as ineffable, moveable and unfixed as a "zeitgeist", which allows so much slippage of intention, meaning and qualitative rigour in the creative endeavours of the world.

A pundit, be they veritably and academically gold-braided more gaudily than a Marx Brothers general, can and will never be in any position whereby they might require another individual or group to regard any point of view as erroneous, any more authoritatively than they are empowered to order the sun to shine on a prescribed hour or day.

The abrogative assumptions which are now a permissable sine-que-non of pseudo-academic authoritarian behaviour, so prevalent among Pedagocracies, ourageously assumes an automatic right to give permissions, like so many papal dispensations, to abjure quality measurement of, with or by "their" students.

This ivy clad, ivory-towered, boiler-plated attitude, prevails towards a veritably pathological demotion of craft-skills to the status of petty bourgeois affectation, at best and entirely irrelevant at worst.
In so doing, it ensures the fertilisation, legitimisation and perpetuation of the feudalistic anachronisms of tenured vested interest on the one hand and the elevation of mediocrity on the other.

All of this, with an added cordon securite which protects them from ever having to properly square-up to the struggle, knock-backs and the bloodied tooth and claw of Darwinian survival, which the making of art in the real world, brings as its natural inheritance.

The creative world is as much one in which strength, fitness, talent and superiority should be as entirely independent of environmental concerns or personal predilection as it must be on the Olympic running track or the Bear-pit of the Commodities Exchanges.

It is absolutely incumbent upon the artist, primarily to strive for unattainable levels of executable excellence. Once approaching the necessary and inevitable humility which accompanies hard-won glimpses of genuine competence, the artist perhaps then might qualify for the approximation of "a voice". With this voice the next goal would be a tenuous grasp on that which might be worth saying in terms of relevance to anyone outside the otherwise inevitable cozy coterie of sisters, aunties, cousins, teachers and funding bodies.

The moment there exists any pontification on the role of the artist, be it in the finest, elegant and most resounding of prosidies, in the fine tradition of a finger trying to point at its own end, the inherently corrupt position of the pedagogue will inevitably be incapable of understanding that it must, by its very existence, be standing in its own light, and worse, the light of those around it.

It is at just such moments that the pundits weigh in with vaccuous, oelaginous and entirely inappropriate personality garlands, such as "seminal", "luminary" and the ubiquitous "influential".

Unless the views held be that of another artist in its own right and on equal terms, they can only ever be merely those of a critic, of whom John Updike so aptly opined, they are... "...as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea".

We need no more critics for criticism's sake. We need consensus on what constitutes quality and appropriateness of execution. We needs examine creative output in a common light-temperature of competency and fitness of purpose. Only having agreed the medium can one effectively begin to carve out the message.
The rest is babel.

At this point we have left, a sensible option.
We admit we are all merely consumers, well informed as we may be, and turn our available, useful time and attention to our fellow audience members.

The real challenge is in finding ways to apply necessary disciplines inherent in developing honest, coherent, respectful and preferably unmediated dialogue between audiences and the creative forces focused upon them by the artists who purportedly, are there to serve them.

If not the audience, then whom do they serve?

Surely not themselves and most assuredly not the egos of their teachers?

Hold on one hot minute there Boy! What? I SAY what....?

I think we need to explore this one a little more deeply.

At Dislocate06, Hamilton, Southern, and St. Amand will presentRunning Stitch a project which explores how a track made with a GPS device changes our awareness and experience of place through the new vantage points and perspectives afforded by the use of satellite navigation. Visitors to the exhibition are given a GPS-enabled mobile phone to track their journeys through the city centre. These walks result in individual GPS ‘drawings’ of the visitor’s movements that are then projected live in the exhibition to disclose hidden aspects of the city.

Each individual route is sewn, as it is taking place, into a hanging canvas to form an evolving tapestry that reveals a sense of place and interconnection. The walker, who is aware of the line they are producing and of the audience at a distance, also becomes a performer of their relationship to a local place. It is only through being live and participatory that the audience perceives the push and pull of the relationship between themselves, the stitcher who sews the route onto the canvas, and the viewer at a distance and sees the city emerge from the canvas.

Thought for the day

.......only the educated are free.........

Epictetus

.....only the truly educated cease to be the slaves of their educators.............

after Epictetus

Excerpts from Douglas Rosenberg's address at ADF Screendance 2008

(WITH COMMENTS AND OBSERVATIONS BY Dance and Film IN RESPONSE TO YET MORE INTERMINABLE NEOCOLLOQUIAL PSEUDO-ACADEMIC BOLLOQUIALISTIC SOLIPSISMS).


From Douglas Rosenberg's lecture: 'Curating The Practice'

There are multiple strands apparent in screendance production,
And, as is often the case, one can identify a pendulum swing away from the dominant paradigm of the moment toward another model. One reaction to the ubiquity of spectacle and virtuosity as well as the trends that currently dominate dominant festivals, takes form in work that is intimate, socially conscious, humble and thought provoking. This is work that at its core comes from a conceptual impulse and is antithetical to spectacle.
(WHY CANNOT IT BE BOTH - SAVE FOR THE INABILITY TO FIND THE NECESSARY TALENT OR APPLICATION SO TO BE?)
This body of work often trades the veneer of polished surfaces for the more difficult gestalt
(THOSE PESKY GERMANISMS, THEY DO CREEP IN, DON'T THEY...?)of content and form.
(ONE THING LESS INSTRUCTIVE THAN POLISHING A BRICK AND THAT’S TRYING TO FIND BRICK POLISH )
In doing so, it raises question important questions about the very form it inhabits. (ER………….YES?...........ANY MORE ON THIS………..NO?.....OK, MOVING ON….)

The programmed festival model is one in which we usually find the most recent screendance creations being shown and rarely do we see a body of work by a single artist created over time.
(POSSIBLY BECAUSE THE KIND OF DISPOSABLE ONE-OFF ART CREATED BY THE PARVENUE TENDS NOT TO LEND ITSELF TO AMASSING ANYTHING WHICH MIGHT BE DIGNIFIED WITH THE DESCRIPTION “BODY OF WORK”)

While the festival model currently dominates the exhibition of screendance, (OPEN A CINEMA DEDICATED TO ONLY SHOWING CONCEPTUAL SCREEN DANCE ON A DAILY PROGRAMMED BASIS AND I WILL SHOW YOU A WORLD-CLASS TUMBLEWEED FACTORY) I would note here that this was not always the case, at least here in the states. Seminal exhibitions of screendance work took place on both coasts. (BOY WERE THEY BIG THAT TUESDAY NIGHT, SEMINAL! SEMINAL!!! THEY STILL TALK ABOUT THESE EVENTS IN THE SAME HUSHED TONES AS “THE LAST NIGHT AT PHILMORE EAST AND “JUDY GARLAND AT CARNEGIE HALL”) One of the earliest media collectives, Video Free America in San Francisco both produced and curated work from the late 60’s through the eighties. The Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, California screened curated programs, as did independent curators on both coasts in makeshift venues, underground cinemas and later in dance spaces such as The Dance Theater Workshop in New York.

Hans Breder, Professor of Art, created the Intermedia Area in the School of Art and Art
History at The University of Iowa in 1968, with which Elaine Summers was affiliated
and where she created some of her early dance film work. Summers was a member of the Judson Dance Theater in New York, the seminal group largely considered to be the founders of post-modern dance in the early 1960s. The group, which grew out of a dance composition class with Robert Dunn, included such luminaries

(THESE PEOPLE HAVE LIGHTED A STELLAR PATH FROM SOHO LOFT TO VILLAGE SALON, CREATING INCOMPREHENSION AND INTELLECTUAL INFERIORITY COMPLEXES AT EVERY CONTRACTON AND HIGH RELEASE. AT NO POINT IN THE LAST 40 YEARS HAS ANYONE OUTSIDE THE COGNOSCENTI SO MUCH AS HAD THEM PASS, EVEN MOMENTARILY, ACROSS THEIR CREATIVE RADAR SCREENS. WHILE DOUBTLESS BEING PEERLESS, COMMITTED AND TALENTED,SURELY "LUMINARY" IS KINDA PUSHING THE ENVELOPE OF CREDIBILITY FOR ALL BUT THE TINIEST OF TIPPY-TOED COZY COTERIES)

as Trisha Brown, Steve Paxton, and David Gordon. The Judson group questioned the very nature of dance and its practice,
(PLEASE SEND ME A COPY OF "THE LIST OF QUESTIONS ON THE NATURE OF DANCE" UNDER PLAIN COVER BY RETURN OF POST)

opening the door to a new set of possibilities,
(HOW, NEW, NO DANCE ON FILM UNTIL THEN, OH I SEEEE, NOT REAL DANCE – ONLY THE FAKE CLASSICAL, MARTHA GRAHAM, AGNES DE MILLE, FOKINE, PETIPA, FOSSE, ASTAIRE, KELLY KIND OF STUFF EH?)

including dance on film and video, and dance in a mediated environment. Summers worked extensively with projected film and images in a dance environment,
(COME AGAIN, MEDIATED ENVIR...)
beginning as early as the first Judson concert in 1962. She also made freestanding dance films.
(AS OPPOSED TO THE SORT THAT NEEDED SUPPORT STRUCTURES?)

She founded the Experimental Intermedia Foundation in New York as well as her own dance/intermedia company, the Elaine Summers Dance and Film Company, which toured experimental multi-media works from the 1970s forward. Summers’s work in multi-media, from its earliest stages, made dance an element in a kind of gesamkunstwerk
(ENOUGH ALREADY ...WITH THE ERSATZ GERMANERUDITIONISINGWERKENWORDEN)
of imagery that became a model for generations of other artists whose work involved synthesizing dancing bodies into an electronic field of activity.
( ACHTUNG...HANDE HOCHE TOMMY ENGLANDER SWINE - VE HAF ZE ZERIOUS KOMISCHLUSTIGERSATZENWERDEN COMINGZE UPPEN INDER NEXTE FEW ZENTENCENGERSTRUMPFEN....

Her films, including In the Absence and the Presence, (AKA – ALL OVER THE SHOP), Iowa Blizzard,(A CRITICAL SUCCES D’ESTIME) and Two Girls Downtown Iowa, 1973,(. “…BEG, BORROW, STEAL A TICKET FOR THIS ONE…” ROLLING STONE )deconstruct dance and re-present it as often formalist, abstract imagery that suggests, but does not demonstrate, dance. Summers’s use of movement in those seminal films was often excruciatingly slow and asked the viewer to forego expectations of more traditional elements of “choreography” in favor of a gestalt
(ICH WARNE DICH!!…….)
of cinematic motion. The resonance of her approach is evident in many subsequent dance films, and even more so in the very idea of intermedia or multi-media dance activity through the present. Yvonne Rainer is often cited as a seminal
(MORE OF THIS SEMEN, GET A GRIP YOU CONCEPTUALIST ONANISTS YOU…ON 2ND THOUGHTS, PERHAPS DON’T GRIP SO TIGHT……)
figure in screendance, which she clearly is.
(CLEARLY? I THOUGHT SHE ABSOLUTELY MAINTAINED THE NO TO PERSONALITY, NO TO...OH HANG ON, THE SHOOTING IN THE FOOT THING FOLLOWS...))
However, it is in her famous manifesto that she articulates a position regarding a theory of dance that is overlooked for its significance to the screendance debate. In Yvonne Rainer’s NO Manifesto of 1965, the choreographer/filmmaker states:

No to spectacle no to virtuosity no to transformations and magic and make believe no to glamour and transcendency of the star image no to the heroic no to the anti-heroic no to trash imagery no to involvement of performer or spectator no to style no to camp no to seduction of spectator by the wiles of the performer no to eccentricity no to moving or being moved.
(….ER….WHICH BIT ARE WE ACTUALLY ALLOWED TO DO……?)
Amy Greenfield reifies
(HMM, I HAVE A WEE PROBLEM IN "REIFYING" THAT WHICH IS MILITANTLY AND SO PALPABLY ANTI OBJECTIFICATION. CAN WE DISCUSS THIS AS A SEPARATE PHD STRAND?)
Yvonne Ranier’s manifesto in films such as Encounter (l970), For God While Sleeping (l970), Transport [1971], Dirt (l97l), and Element (l973). For Greenfield, technical dancing is irrelevant,
(OF COURSE IT IS, PARTICULARLY IF YOU CAN’T DO IT)
rather, the mise-en-scène of bodies in real, physical – as well as traumatic and repetitive – motion lies at the core of her cinematic exploration. In Transport, for instance, we see a group of people, not performers or dancers, but individuals who can only be immediately identified as humans engaged in a very visceral set of tasks, undertaken with deeply-felt conviction. In other words, there is no artifice and little evidence of the camera’s alteration of reality
(CRUSHING DULLNESS IS THE ONLY GUARANTOR OF A DIRECT AND APT DEPICTION OF REALITY. BUT WAIT...WHAT DO WE MAKE OF DOGME?)
as we see the group carrying a member aloft over rugged terrain, until exhaustion sets in and then another member is lifted above their heads and the process repeats.
( AT LAST! THE PERFECT INSOMNIA CURE!)
As in Ranier’s manifesto, there is no cinematic magic in these early films, no glamour and certainly no transformation. It is what it is and nothing else.
(INTRINSICALLY ANTI-ART, ANTI-EXPERTISE, ANTI INTERESTING)
Neither the movers nor the film are virtuosic.
(THAT IS PATENTLY APPARENT TO EVEN THE LEAST EXPERT OF VOYEUR)
The film is, rather, a moment in time, (WHEN IS IT NOT?) an intervention of camera and recording device into a mindful but seemingly meaningless version of what Allan Kaprow might call “child’s play.”
(MISSED IT! THE ONE TIME A GERMANISM SUCH AS KINDERSPIEL MIGHT EVEN HAVE BEEN HALFWAY APPROPRIATE...)
This work breaks down expectations of both performance and the art of filmmaking.
(IF ALL ELSE FAILS, BREAKDOWN EXPECTATIONS AND WHATEVER YOU DO, LOWER STANDARDS)
In Greenfield’s early work, nothing and everything happens simultaneously.
(NOW THAT QUITE A TRICK, ONLY ACHIEVED SO FAR BY THE HEADQUARTERS OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT, THE EX- UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS….REMEMBER THOSE GUYS….? AND IT WOULD SEEM MS GREENFIELD)
Her work is a connective thread from dance to what would later become known
(BY WHOM EXACTLY)
as performance art;
( I REPEAT, BY WHOM?)
it also connects to conceptual and minimal art
(ONE MUST DEFY ANY PUNDIT NO MATTER HOW ELOQUENT OR VERBOSE THE RIGHT TO DEFINE ANYTHING AS NEBULOUS, FREE-RANGE OR INHERENTLY ELASTIC IN DEFINITION AS CONCEPTUAL ART. ALL ART IS CONCEPTUAL BY DEFINITION.NO CONCEPT, NO ART, NO DEFINITION) Greenfield’s films are a flashpoint for hybridity
(WHOA THERE TIGER – FLASHPOINT – HYBRIDITY….?)
within the context of an evolving esthetic of screendance in a time of great change in the art world in general
(WHEN EXACTLY WAS THE ART WORLD NOT IN A TIME OF GREAT CHANGE, OR DO WE MEAN MERELY THE LATEST PAROXYSM OF ISM..ER..ISMS….ER……..) .
They are not dance, nor can one argue successfully that they are not not dance.
(SO NOT DANCE AND NOW NOT NOT DANCE ALREADY? PERHAPS THEY ARE NOT NOT STOP GO STOP NOT DANCE – THERE NOW - THAT SHOULD DO THE TRICK….)
They are exhortations to reconsider the nature of dance, community, and cinema. (EXHORTING WHOM EXACTLY EXCEPT FOR A TINY COTERIE OF SIMILARLY MINDED N.E.A. FUNDED LEGENDS IN A GREENWICH VILLAGE SUNDAY LUNCHTIME)
In 1983, Amy Greenfield and Elaine Summers curated and produced the important Filmdance Festival
( IMPORTANTLY PRODUCED ACRES OF MATERIAL FOR THE DENIZENS OF IVY-CLAD BOON-DOCK UNIVERSITIES TO PONTIFICATE WINDILY WITH THEIR DIGI-DANCE GURUS FOR YEARS AND YEARS AND YEARS – HELL WE EVEN FUND A UNIVERSITY TENURE CHAIR IN THIS IMPORTANT FESTIVAL ALONE – IT’S THE CULTURE SEE?)
which took place over two weeks at the Public Theater in New York, with more than one hundred films and filmed sequences scheduled in twenty-one different programs. .
(I SMELL AT LEAST THREE PHD’S FOCUSED EXCLUSIVELY ON THIS LITTLE GET-TOGETHER ALONE) They also produced a slim black catalog,
(CERTAINLY A TAD SLIMMER THAN THE MASSIVE EGOS WHICH MUST HAVE PONTIFICATED ENDLESSLY INTO THE NIGHTS TO PRODUCE IT….) which contains essays by both filmmakers and choreographers and is a highly prized document among students and scholars of the genre (OH THOSE PESKY STUDENTS AND SCHOLARS, SO MOVING, SO SHAKING - NEVER IN THE HISTORY OF THE PHD IN PHOTOCOPYING TECHNIQUES - HAS SO MUCH OF SO LITTLE CONSEQUENCE, BEEN REHASHED AND REHEATED, BY SO MANY…)

Both Summers and Greenfield as well as James Byrne who curated the 1989 series at Dance Theater Workshop were artists first, though artists that were interdisciplinary and often worked outside of the discipline of dance. Byrne’s notes for “Eyes Wide Open” at DTW state,
“Featured in this program are dance films and videos that demonstrate bracingly innovative approached to constructing cinematic choreography (AS DISTINCT FROM CHOREOGRAPHIC CINEMATOGRAPHY AND OF COURSE THE VERY LATEST IN GRAPHICHALISED CINEMINIMILISTOGRPAHY) from disparate and minimal movement sources. (SAY WHAT BOY?) All of these works strive to create new forms and structures for the presentation of a screen reality dealing with the human figure and movement. None of the films deal with a traditional approach to filming dance…(OH HEY, EVERYONE, LETS MAKE A DANCE FILM BUT NOT USE A CAMERA!!OR ER DANCERS, OR ANY IDEAS – YEAH, COOOOOLLLL!) This fascinating selection of new works presents a range of possibilities that push and expand the edges of dance video.”
(FORTUNATELY THOUGH, TAKING UP VERY LITTLE ROOM IN THE MIDDLE, SUCH A BADLY OVERLOOKED AREA WHEN THE PUSHING AND ENVELOPES AND ER, EXPANDING GETS SERIOUSLY UNDERWAY AND THE GARDE BEGINS TO GET REALLY DOWN AND ER … AVANT)
This curator’s statement puts his agenda out front of the work and creates a context for viewing. It makes evident that the selection of work both troubles and questions the nature of the form.(THERE’S TROUBLE…RIGHT HERE IN THE NATURE OF THE FORM…) It also operates as a kind of challenge to both makers and curators to answer by way of further exhibitions. (ONE ANSWERS QUESTIONS. ONE FACES CHALLENGES, …I THINK…)

In the catalog for Filmdance 1890’s-1983 Amy Greenfield notes:
“This catalog sets out to discuss the nature of filmdance. Each writer in the catalog was free to choose his or her own subject. No writer knew the specific viewpoints of the others. Therefore, the articles present varying, sometimes opposing, definitions, theories, and discussions on the nature of Filmdance…( CONTROVERSY IS THE SINGLE WORD WHICH SHOULD MORE OR LESS COVER THE ABOVE WAFFLE). The artists who responded to the invitation to write have made statements either on their own films or on their theories of filmdance. In setting down their thoughts, they further help to articulate the varying and changing nature of filmdance. (CHANGING AND VARYING IN THE INTENSITY OF THE OBSCURITY AND INACCESSIBILITY OR MERELY IN THE LEVEL OF THE MILITANT PATRONISING OF AN INCREASINGLY BEFUDDLED AUDIENCE BASE?)

James Byrne and Amy Greenfield each make their case for curatorial prerogative, but both point to the larger needs and desires of the field in general in their statements. The curator’s statements articulate a methodology for how the work might circulate conceptually, as a whole made up of individual voices. Likewise, the festival model creates a context for viewing and also sets parameters for discourse. However, the festival model, often lacking a thesis and leaning more toward an entertainment model is less clear in regard to a desired outcome. So, the gap between those two approaches has led me to a series of rhetorical questions around which this conference is built:

• What responsibilities do programmers and directors of screendance festivals have in regard to defining the field?(FIND SOME FILMS WORTH FORCING PEOPLE OUT OF THEIR HOMES TO COME AND SEE)

• Can curating function as a kind of critical thinking?(IS THERE ANY OTHER KIND OF THINKING IN RELATION TO CURATORIAL PRACTICE?)

• What part might curators play in creating intelligent and thoughtful programming that articulates a distinct point of view that sets one festival apart from another?
(THEY HAD BETTER START AND SOON. AT THE MOMENT THERE IS VERY LITTLE TO DISTINGUISH ANY ONE OF THESE DESPERATE EXERCISES IN WASTING ARTS SUBSIDY FROM ANY OTHER AND FRANKLY A PERILOUSLY DIMINISHING DEMOGRAPHIC ACTUALLY CARE.)

• What does it mean to curate a program of dances for the screen?
(OH BOY! NOW HERE'S A SERIOUS STROKEY BEARDY MOMENT.)

• What historical precedents are there to be found in fine art or experimental cinema models? (WELL LET’S DO THE FINE ART ONE FIRST – RECKON GAINSBOROUGH WAS A MAJOR INFLUENCE ON CONCEPTO-POST MODERN UN-CHOREOGRAPHIC PLASMA OUTCOME SCREEN WORK, BUT HE TRIED TO PLAY DOWN THIS INFLUENCE IN FAVOUR OF HIS POSH-PEOPLES’ PORTRAIT WORK, AND OF COURSE THERE ARE THE FAMOUS DA VINCI STORYBOARDS FOR DEAD DREAMS OF MONOCHROME MEN HOWEVER LLOYD NEWSON FOUND THEM A LITTLE TRITE AND UNDERPOWERED FOR HIS VISION OF THE PIECE.)

• How might curating function as historical documentation? (NOTE TO SELF, WHEN CURATING, KEEP A DIARY – HISTORY OF WHAT, PRAY?)

• Curating as writing: does an articulately curated program function as a text for understanding the form? (NAH! JUST SHOW THE MOVIES, ITS NON-VERBAL COMMUNICATION. CREATIVE WRITING CLASS NEXT DOOR LOVE, AND ASK THEM TO KEEP IT DOWN IN THERE, WE ARE TRYING TO SHOW SOME FILMS IN HERE!)

• How might curating shape a dialog about entertainment and the relationship of media to dance?(DIALOGUE KIND OF PRESUPPOSES THE EXISTENCE OF INTERLOCUTORS. UM…..ER…AM I THE FIRST HERE?....SHOULD I GO AND HAVE A COFFEE DOWNSTAIRS UNTIL THE OTHERS GET HERE…..?...ER HELLO …)

• What might curated programs allow for that programs chosen by other means might not? (WELL IT’S A LOT LESS MESSY THAN GETTING YOUR MATES ROUND TO READ CHICKEN ENTRAILS, IF THAT’S WHAT YOU MEAN.)

• Can curating define a model for criticality? (THINK I NEED A BREATHER AT THIS POINT WHICH MIGHT BE A GOOD MOMENT TO QUESTION THE ACTUAL WORD “CRITICALITY”.

UNLESS I AM MUCH MISTAKEN CRITICALITY DESCRIBES THE BEHAVIOURS OF SUB-ATOMIC PARTICLES WHEN IN THE PRESENCE OF FISSILE MATERIAL – DANCEFILM, MOVING IMAGE, CONCEPTUALISM, PARTICLE PHYSICS?...... OOOOHHHH! I SEE THE CONNECTIONS NOW. MORE IMPORTANTLY, I BEGIN TO UNDERSTAND WHY SO MANY DANCEFILM AUDIENCES BEGIN TO LOOK AND FEEL AS ALIENATED AS THE JEWS OF LINZ DURING THE EARLY HOURS OF KRISTALLNACHT IN MANY OF THE AUDITORIA I SHARE WITH THEM.)

• What kind of topics might be suggested as curated programs and what might those topical programs address? (DEAR DOCTOR OF MEEJUH STUDIES AND THAT AND EVERYTHING AND EVERYTHING. YOU ARE SO CLEVER AND ME LITTLE CURATOR HAVE NO IDEA WHAT'S WRONG WITH MY CREATIVE CHOICES. CAN YOU HELP ME DOCTOR…PLEASE?)

• How might curating help to enunciate genres in the field?(CAREFULLY NOW CHILDREN, ROUND MOUTHS AND E..N..U..N..C..I..A..T..E.. G.E.N.R.E.S…YES THAT’S GOOD, AGAIN…. GENRES, NOW LETS GO INDOORS AND TRY THIS AGAIN…..)

With curating or any sort of selection process in which some are chosen, others not, comes the question of elitism.

In other words, who gets to choose and why?

(I DO!!!! I, THE CURATOR!!! NO QUESTION. I AM THAT ELITE OF ONE. WHY? BECAUSE I GET MYSELF UP EARLY AND GO TO BED VERY LATE EVERY DAY, AND IN BETWEEN, PLOUGH THROUGH HOURS AND HOURS OF EARNEST, WELL MEANT, IF UNUTTERABLE DULLNESS, JUST TO WINKLE OUT THE OCCASIONAL FIVE MINUTES OF WELL MADE FILM IN ANY G.E.N.R.E.)

Curating is not however, simply about choosing. (BLIND, AHHHH I’M BLINDED BY THE LIGHT GIVEN OFF BY THIS PARTICULAR INSIGHT, AAHHH – YOU BET IT AINT!
MAYBE WE SHOULD MENTION IN THE PROCESS THE VENUE HIRE, THE LICENSES, THE RECALCITRANT AND GREEDY DISTRIBUTORS, THE MARKETING, THE TICKET OFFICE, THE LATE DELIVERY OF FLYERS AND THIRTY FIVE TYPOS IN THE THE BROCHURE PROOFS, ALL THE WHILE WATCHING EVERY POST FOR THE CHEQUE FROM YOUR MAIN SPONSOR WHO IS BUSILY GOING BUST JUST BEFORE THEY DESPATCH THE CASH…ETC, ETC, ETC....?)

It is a pro-active practice which by its very nature contains in equal parts, academic/pedantic/scholarly and teaching components.( WHATEVER IT IS IS IS NOT THE PEDANTIC BLAH OF PEDAGOGOPUNDITS, DREAMING OF INTERNATIONAL TRAVEL, AND THE UNDIVIDED ATTENTION OF TINY, SLEEPY AUDIENCES OF THE TERMINALLY UNDISTINGUISHED TUCKED AWAY IN DUTCH ARTS CENTRES.
YEEEEEHAAAAH, EUROPE AT LAST!!!!.AND ON AN N.E.A. GRANT NO LESS!!!)

There is in fact a high degree of responsibility that one undertakes as a curator,(YOU DON'T SAY!!) not only to the work, but also to the culture of the art form in general, its historical provenance, its way forward and its venous flow of inter-related tributaries often located outside of its own discipline.
(HIGH RESPONSIBILITY……. VENOUS……..TRIBUTARY…….. OUTSIDE OF ITS OWN DISCIPLINE.

IS THIS A BADLY BUILT SOVIET ERA DAM PROJECT OR A FEW DVD’S MADE BY SOME CONTEMPORARY DANCE STUDENTS WITH ILL-DEFINED AND UNUSUALLY MALEVOLENT DYSFUNCTIONAL ATTITUDES TO THEIR FATHERS WE HAVE HERE? FROM WHICH A BENIGHTED CURATORIAL SOUL IS ATTEMPTING TO WREST SOME SEMBLANCE OF A PATTERN, THEME OR PROGRAMMATIC INTEGRITY ONTO WHICH THEY MIGHT HANG THEIR WELL-INTENTIONED AND DESPERATELY UNDERSUPPORTED EVENT?

(ONE COULD GO ON, BUT ...........WHY?)
etc,etc,etc,etc,etc,etc


To represent fully this windy and occasionally tautological tract in a full version of the Rosenberg paper go here:
http://www.videodance.org.uk/pages/curating_the_practice_edited.doc

Thought for the day

On the occasion of his 75th birthday by the great Willie Nelson

...."I have outlived my dick"..................

Snippets from Critical Observations on Dancefilm - the Good, the OK and the Truly Awful....

THE GOOD



THE RAIN
Pontus Lidberg's beautiful, haunting feature length Dancefilm from Sweden.
Jury special mention at the Gothenburg Film Festival 2007.
Winner - Best Film, Best Choreography The London International Dancefilm Festival, 2007
Nominated for The Rose D'or Award 2008



Clarity of intention, intensity, claustrophobia, a sense of expectancy and real choreographic breadth of movement are not easy elements to synthesize satisfactorily in a frame as tight as the film maker has chosen here. Four well-thought through creative decisions, are the absence of any camera movement, the speed with which the action moves in and out of the viewfinder, the dancer's focus on the window about which we as viewers become persuaded to be increasingly interested and the quality of the backlight.
To make very little resources or mise-en-scene so resonantly about something important takes some skill and homework and this is evident in this piece. A great choice of vista within a frame when the window finally opens and a soundtrack that adds to the sense of angst without being obtrusive makes this a very satisfying experience.


Find more videos like this on Dancefilm and Film about Dance

A heavily pregnant woman, and an elderly man with cancer, meet at the same threshold.

‘When Life moves, the bones of Death move sympathetically. When Death moves, the bones of Life begin to turn too.’
Clarissa Pinkola-Estes

Jury Special Mention - The London International Dancefilm Festival 2008
Annabel Newfield - one to watch


OK I have to admit a predilection for well-trained dancing and although not an absolutely essential element of dancefilm, in circumstances such as this, an absence of really strong fine movement would have made this another exercise in cinematic futility.

As a personal choice of metaphor, I explored the notion that this piece is about personality fragmentation. Certainly if one was looking for a cinematic technique to personify this notion, the opening running manege in time -lapse and the lightning dissolve in the final shot were brilliant choices. Timing is always key, particularly in non-verbal art where you can't use linguistic smoke and mirrors to hide a weak idea. We get displaced from one place to entirely another without the film maker changing either the protagonists in the frame, a time shift or change of location. Quite a feat.
Great momentum in the tiny choreographic body-language shifts gives us a clear idea of exactly what their relationship is likely to be and the resulting choices in spacing between the two characters then delivers on an anticipated internal narrative. The developing of the nature of this relationship in which we are automatically interested and cleverly persuaded to stay with, is neatly complimented by subtle variations of repeat choreographic patterns. In this case a deliberate choice I think, rather than because the choreographic ideas have run out and there's time and space to fill which is what can happen all too often.
Sepia choice for the colour temperature and and the shape of the space all contribute layers of meaning, an appropriate dance space and unobtrusive environmental design. Nice work.


Wit, invention, cutting edge cinematic ideas, minimal resources and real dance - all only taking up 4 minutes of anyone's life. Congratulations Alexander!

Wit, inventiveness, animation, pastiche, camera angles, and a clear narrative idea with finally, hurrah!, a beginning, middle and what passes for some kind of resolution in the end.
The environment in which the film was made has been intelligently and inventively plumbed for opportunities to add meaning, creative depth and amusement for the viewer.
Poor Theatre techniques, popular, accessible and well composed images and a facility for investing the everyday with a greater meaning in a quick and dirty way, thereby colaterally adding value to both, denotes both intellect and an interest in sources outside the cliches of narcissistic and intellectually impoverished self-obsession so common of these kind of efforts. Good work.


THE OK


A promising cinematic start is marred inexcusably with ContempoBanalEography from the moment our inevitably and predictably expressionless and rather glum girls start their frankly derivative and endless push-me-pull-you movement cliches.
For this kind of dancemaking to approach an evolutionary plane of any significance, we are going to have sit the first and second year students at every one of the modern dance graduate courses in the United Kingdom, down in front of this and every one of the countless other versions of intellectually and emotionally vapid Labanesque Dunce exercises captured on video or film, for a period of no less than six months non-stop, 24 hours a day.
This might just create a kind of essentially therapeutic aversion reaction. This might at least persuade these benighted offerings to think twice before they are allowed to see the light of day, lest they be similarly inflicted on the next generation of misguided combined Posture adjustment, Photocopying, Pilates and Arts Admin option graduates, who do insist on continuing to attempt to coin genuine creative currency from the choreographic equivalent of damp paper and blunt colouring crayons.


A post-Freudian dialogue exploring the tensions between nourishment and sex-objects via a metaphorical pas de deux with a couple of sticks. Actually lacking the merest hint of competence choreographically, compositionally, musically, in execution, intent, framing, lighting or choice of angles, this film personifies everything that is all to often so abysmally awful about dancefilm and goes in some small way to explaining why dancefilm makers can't get a table at even mediocre restaurants, let alone get what is potentially a powerful and creatively vital art-form a decent audience.

Stop, think about it a great deal more, carefully choreograph and draw a storyboard and at least spend some time videographing the family dog in the garden or some ducks on a pond before attempting this kind of thing.
When it comes to the making of meaning, enthusiasm is no substitute for expertise.


A promising notion and nicely framed as a dialogue, dispute or correspondence which becomes fragmented. Slipped framing and time-lapse if used sparingly like this just stays on this side of ho-hum, although a couple of brilliant opportunities to deepen the spatial properties of the location were missed . Two important elements in this particular idea seemed meagre when set alongside similar themes and presentation ideas - choreographic intention easily slips into just so much arm waving and begins to communicate density without intensity very easily , particularly if what feels like it is intended to be meaningful transactions between two clealry connected antagonists continually fails to actually resolve or deliver. Second, if camera and framing choices require close focus on particular aspects of the human body in isolation, then the body or bodies in question have to be well trained enough truly to capture, focus and then express exactly what is meant or the choreographic intention has to be focused with much greater skill. If neither are present in sufficent measure the exercise quickly becomes dud as a spectacle and at most other levels as well.
If the expressive medium is primarily live human bodies who rejoice in the name, Instruments of Movement, then they must play in tune. Finally and probably not particularly helpful, is is not time to start making costume choices marginally more imaginative than the now badly overdone crumpled lingerie look which dogs so many of these exercises?

The Rose D'Or Nominations

Delighted to have been asked to go and represent Producers Filmlance and Director Pontus Lidberg of The Rain as nominees for Best Performing Arts Programme in the Rose D'Or - http://www.rosedor.com/ - television awards for this year at the always welcoming and generously appointed BAFTA.

Neither Pontus nor his producer Mathilde Dedeye were available - so Piccadillywards we wended on their behalf.

131 (or so) production companies submit 470 programmes from which 75 nominated programmes are shortlisted.

Three years ago the awards moved to Lucerne from Montreux, subsequently losing their slightly more upmarket
address moniker. Rumour has it that the festival had become a bit of a busted flush in terms of its former kudos when (particularly the Brit) TV companies, went, celebrated, tried to flog their programmes to eachother and fell about on the balmy shores of Lake Geneva with slightly naff Awards-night gala shows featuring the likes of The Black & White Minstrel Show, Lisa Minelli or Cliff Richard, usually backed by the Dougie Squires Dancers - I remember I was there on at least two occasions as one of those dancers in the white nylon flares and white platform boots....or was it the 3rd Gen, it was all soooo long ago, and I digress...

Recently these same Meejuhtypes have been somewhat spoiled for choice with the likes of MIPCOM, The Edinburgh Television Festival and sundry other Tristram Fests in usually rather more sunny and inviting climes to which they cart and attempt to peddle their wares such as, "I Ate My Wife and Dog" and "If They Were Your Own Kids - Would You Leave Them On A Desert Island With Ant & Dec?" etc, endless Gameshow/Reality slices and of course, the inevitable Soapy Sitcoms.

Added to which the whole satellite, cable and online marketing phenomenon now enables TV execs and producers worldwide to make, sell and distribute their product to the farthest reaches of the Empire, from the comfort of their overstuffed office chairs.

Lucerne being the new gaff, the event still takes place in a casino which is sort of appropriate given the fact that as with all Awards events and the other entirely meritricious activities of this nature, the whole thing is usually a bit of a lottery.

Dancefilm is still relatively poorly represented, however, I suppose we mustn't grumble as Opera which gets a far bigger slice of the arts programming pie only got the three noms.
One for "Peking Opera Children" (not strictly Opera) , one for "Mozart's Magic Flute - Onstage and Backstage", and as ever, the obligatory Peter Sellars directed overwrought nonsense, this year its "Dr Atomic", next year it will be "Nixon In China" or something...
This is, as opposed to the two dance programme nominations, Ballet Boyz (such a quaint and redundant name, now that both the "Boyz" have become grizzled codgers of the wind-swept and interesting ilk and the BIG one we were rootin' for, Pontus (STILL a boy) Lidberg's "The Rain".

Heart sank a little after a cursory scan of the 75 nominees threw up Fonejacker, Secret Diary of a Call Girl and The Mighty Boosh "Journey To The Centre of The Punk" slotted right up front and centre as prime examples of the very best that the whole of European TV (and Israel) could offer as "Entertainment"- not to mention Billie Piper and Charlotte Church (pert, nubile and fragrant as they doubtless are) walking off with a nomination apiece from a shortlist of only 8 of the Best Entertainers in the whole known TV universe!

This was what the entire intellectual weight of 24 of the European Broadcasting Union's finest minds could come up with??

I had a sudden flash of , "Quick! name one of the greatest thinkers and intellectual powerhouses in the last fifty years".
"Er, um, Mr Bean?" , however, keeping the mind open and the glass full we smiled, nodded and continued to raid the absolutely delicious trays of nibbles as they passed

Anyway, to business, as we were now mostly focusing on Herr New Direktor stepping up to the mic.

He rejoices in the name of Urban Frye which is understated by comparison with his boss and overall producer of this Alpine TV fest, one Freddy Burger, interestingly, notable by his absence... ...anyway, we were then treated to a quick video round-trip of the highlights of the twilight that is Lucerne, complete with alpenhorn and yodelling accompaniment and the obligatory shots of roadies wheeling flight cases off vans into casinos and lots of Media types at cocktail parties smiling broadly as they waved perspex Gongs around, shaped like oversized, double function Back-Scratcher/Doorstops, or perhaps the other way round...

The new Director of the Festival at least, has had the vision to separate the arts strands into Documentaries AND Performance, rather than lumping the Turns in together irrespective of the POV of the camera or the relative creative and/or directorial choices and approaches.

However, for only two "Arts" strands" we had 6 others which were as general and frankly unedifying as is possible, namely: "Comedy", "Drama" (why cannot they be both I wonder?), "Entertainment" (as opposed to the two previous mentioned, which presumably are not to be classed as entertainment), "Game Show", "Reality" and "Sitcom", which from my admittedly cursory television watching time these days, have now seem to have become inextricably muddled into one single genre, usually called something breathtakingly creative such as "How do We Solve A Problem Like Big Brother Singing Lloyd Webber on The X Factor" or somesuch.

Urban waxed far too apologetically about the recent slightly dusty history of the fest, threw out a few strained analogies involving gardening, roses, cultivation, pruning and er, new growth (perhaps I just lost these in translation), listed the 75 nominees, each, slowly, by name, and category, and roundly exhorted our small if perfectly formed group to congratulate them, which we duly did with great pride and enthusiasm.

Entirely to his credit, Urban later informed us that he personally had brought the delicious chocolates and Swiss cheese nibbles being served, all the way from Switzerland, which we thought a very fine gesture and waaay beyond the call of duty.

The Festival occurs May 2-6 as previously mentioned, in Lucerne and if we go by the charming if somewhat keen glint in Urban's eye, is set to become a relatively significant pin in the map of European culture for anyone interested or involved in making, flogging or measuring the relative demographics of TV-Tube- Prole-Food.

Interestingly it remains to be seen if the same can be said for what the newly minted 48th Rose D'Or Television Programming Festival can do for Arts programme makers when the flight cases roll back onto the vans and the circus finally rolls out of town on May 7th.

We are definitely going, if only to cheer "our" guy to win, get some more of that delicious cheese and watch Mick Jagger (2 Nominationss - Performing Arts "Rolling Stones - The Biggest Bang" & Best Entertainer) turn up and naked mud wrestle Billy Piper for one of those Back Scratchers....
With a generous commission for the wonderful Pontus to choreograph it, they should make this the gala event for the evening and blow Cliff off the stage. Now THAT's what I'd call a TV show!
It sure would beat the hell out of the Slinky Act and Boyz -2- Men who appear to have been what passes for a Cabaret at last year's Awards show.

PS.
For those of us who thought that UK plc and its creative output, at least in telly terms had gone to hell in a handcart, the good news is that overall UK Television companies received 31 nominations, their next nearest rivals being Germany, with a grand total of 8.

LIDFF selection Criteria

I am often asked "How do you go about selecting work to feature in your festival?".
As a contribution to the current interest in and growth of the the whole curation notion, herewith some thoughts.

There are two parts to compiling the London International Dancefilm Festival programme.
The first is inclusion by invitation. Films are watched either at other festivals, online, on commercially available DVD’s or through suggestions and submissions made directly to me by third parties. The curator and a small group of choreographers, dancers and general film audience look at the selections in various forums and make a shortlist of possible exhibitees.

These will already have been filtered through a number of considerations including but not exclusively:

• the particular focus of attention of the current festival as far as current trends and future development of the form as far as professional practitioners are concerned
  
• whether there have been a particular group of films and other work made by practicing, professional artists which has offered a coherent "pattern" or creative "drift" in the relevant festival year
  
• are there any unusual levels of activity and critical attention currently being paid to areas in moving image and dancefilm making, which might benefit from closer scrutiny in a festival environment
• the particular aesthetic predilections of the curator and his or her team
  

The makers of work to be shown are then invited to give permission for their films to be shown at the Festival through their agents, distribution channels or directly with the film makers themselves.

A second curatorial process is that of canvassing for submissions online, in the press and by word of mouth. Submissions are then processed, watched shortlisted and the filmmakers are informed of the decision to exhibit their films

The criteria for selection for a work to be shown are numerous, subjective and occasionally entirely emotionally based.
There is, however a shortlist of particular, practical objective considerations given to members of the selection groups which includes:

• Is the film well made cinematographically – ie well shot, well composed, well lit, well designed with discernible production “values” appropriate to and concomitant with, the style and scale of the enterprise?

• If not, is this because the artist has deliberately chosen to ignore craft-skills for a particular effect and if so has this been creatively successful?

• Are the ideas contained in each film sufficiently well developed intellectually and aesthetically to generate informed critical debate on review?

• Do the films contain well developed movement ideas irrespective of the choreographic medium of expression chosen or utilised?

• Do they truly engage the audience at a narrative, conceptual, emotional, intellectual or aesthetic level?

• Is there a discernible link between the performances and the creative intentions of the filmmaker(s)?

Every film must satisfy a minimum of four of the above criteria from a majority of those given the responsibility for making these judgements. At this point an entry qualifies for second consideration in the shortlist of potential exhibitees in the festival programme.

From the this shortlist a final programme of work to be shown is then published.

Once the main event has been programmed, the secondary considerations such as talking shops, evaluative debates, critical forums, guest lectures, seminars and papers and all of the attendant miscellaneous programmatic activity associated with gatherings of the self-interested can be looked at and a selection of the more informative and relevant activities can be programmed around the film-showings.

For consideration for inclusion in LIDFF, please contact Sandy Strallen in the first instance by email: sandy@londondancefilmfest.com

UK Dance and why it has failed to develop in the last 30 years.

British Dance – How we got here from there….

The 1970’s and 1980’s was a thin time for serious professional classical dance in the UK.

In the 60’s Nuryev and his ilk delivered a galvanic kick in the arse as they hurdled immigration barriers across the free world.

Despite their avowed desire for creative freedom it was actually the ever expanding opportunities to earn top-capitalist wedge and escape Shitstreetsky housing projects which really drove them. However, they brought a new athleticism and balls to the effete and dusty corners of the capitalist Opera Houses, all the while humming the freedom songs of the revolting bourgeois capitalist students.

Newly available videos of the work that continued behind the Iron Curtain during this period clearly demonstrates there was plenty of innovation happening there all the while. It was just harder and more dangerous to attempt and carry off.

Courtesy of their new found notoriety, the big, stellar fees that could be commanded by this group of elite dancers, and increasingly their colleague designers, film-opera directors and choreographers began to match the already monstrous demands made by the opera divas and their agents in the internationl Opera House circuit. The golden egg laying goose began to look increasingly sickly.

This drain on available resources inevitably reduced interesting, innovative creative decision making, to desperate fiscal strategising on how to avoid ever widening funding black holes. These self-defeating processes by default were still presided over by an immovable old-guard of ancient eminences grises headed by the redoubtable, the fearsome and the controlling of the Ninette de Valois type, sundry other superannuated Dames and Sirs and The Board of the ROH, made up as it was by Establishment Pillars, eminent bankers and the grand Ladies Who Lunched.

A group no matter how well intentioned, whose collective mindset was not exactly welded to the pulse of contemporary culture, and certainly not to any kind of notion that great art might require a modicum of innovative thinking, new blood and actual involvement with the real world to evolve.
There was also a marked tendency by this elite to regard Covent Garden - jewel in the crown of United Kingdom Arts Subsidy - as their personal advertising hoarding and networking club.

On careful examination this situation continues to exist in only a slightly moderated form to the present day.

While Ashton and Macmillan et al, were busy being funded, garlanded and wined and dined around the world by the grateful British Tax-payer, their hegemony was also holding back the best of the incoming influences from the places in which they would be most noticed.

Furthermore there seemd an almost quixotic resistance to any requirement to look with particular care and attention at what was happening in Europe, where the scene was certainly a great deal more eclectic, democratic and far less class and caste bound.

As with all great avant-garde, the word on the street about the work of the dance pioneers, Dunham, Graham, de Mille, the glamorous and better paid upscale showgirl offshoots Robbins, Fosse, Ailey, Artie Zane and Bill T Jones who bridged the gap between Opera House, street dance and variety halls and the edgy neo-classical and dance-theatre practitioners on mainland Europe, Cranko, Neumeier, Bejart(at a stretch), Ek, Kylian, Forsyth, Bausch et al.
All of these influences were also beginning to filter into the Britdance consciousness.

This gave grist to an ever busier mill, kick-started in particular by the London based Graham offshoot Robin Howard funded and Bob Cohan founded, London Contemporary Dance Theatre.

Meanwhile Marie Rambert with the prescience and freedom to move not enjoyed by The Louis Quatorze Appreciation Society staggering from lunches to loges in Covent Garden, nodded through her blessing for "Ballet" Rambert, strategically to transform itself from a classical dance based company to a more “contemporary” modern dance, plain "Rambert" oriented programme under Glen Tetley and Christopher Bruce and attract ever more knowledgeable and appreciative dance afficionados into the bargain.

Scratch a Duarto, or a Hechter and it will reveal a strong Tetley, Bruce, Kylian, Ek colour beneath.

Owing to the increasing number of imported stars, talented and ambitious homegrown dancers experienced less and less career promotion opportunities within the Big Ballet companies. Ennui and frustration began to set in at the grass roots. Children of the RBS, grew up, graduated and got sucked into the machinery of the old Warhorse companies where opportunities for creative development were limited and closing.

All around them, their colleagues and co-graduates were getting into LCDC, Rambert, the myriad other offshoot dance companies in Europe and occasionally the US and heavens preserve us, even musicals!
These new dance directions stretched their phenomenally well-trained bodies and technical abilities and rumour had it, even offered some autonomy over the the way in which they shaped their careers.

This in turn engendered the phenomenon of remarkable UK talents beginning to emerge with something to say and the attitude and resources to stick two fingers up to the Establishment.
Michael Clark cut the arse out of his costumes, put some of the Opera House ballet stars in them, blew a big raspberry at the Culture Poobahs and so, as they say in street parlance, it kicked-off.

Initially this was to the benefit of the contemporary dance scene, which in terms of dancers and choreographic output went from strength to strength with original and daring developments appearing weekly. These were the best years of the Rambert Company, the output from the more gifted disciples of Bob Cohan, the London Contemporary dance School graduates under Jane Dudley, some of the less vain and pretentious moments of the DV8 ouput, and a burgeoning number of British Contemporary Dance Theatre professional dancer/choreographers and of course, The Dance Umbrella.

Gradually, bright and increasingly well-informed dancers worked out that there was a great more work for them if they were to either concentrate on musical theatre dance or gravitate to one of the contemporary dance based programmes. These had begun to proliferate, as the first wave of UK contemporary /modern dancers were coming to the end of their useful dancing lives and beginning to get into teaching and lobbying the educational establishment to bestow Ologies with which to acknowledge their programmes.

It was during this period, that one of the most promising, yet paradoxically, most damaging events that happened to UK modern dance development became gratis of the success of aforementioned Umbrella.
Val Bourne, that most canny of dance promotion trends analysts, gave London and eventually a much wider dance audience flashes of the brilliant potential inherent in dance from all ends of the ‘serious” dance spectrum.

She and the visiting dance makers her festival promoted, inspired a whole gamut of British choreographers to get involved, get funded and get busy. In turn, and not necessarily all to the good of the whole, this motivated our still as yet immature UK dance-makers to invent far more product than the still relatively undeveloped national dance audience could handle.

This opened Pandora's box engendering an increasingly self-justifying "Arts Industry" dedicated to the funding, administration, marketing and creation of ever less forgivable pretexts to make more and more noise about frankly increasingly sub-standard Dance, Moving Image and other "choreographic" output.

All of this, up to the present day, justified the creation and ongoing maintenance of a veritable conveyor-belt of choreo/moving-image output and the proliferation of less focused university study. Thus began the inexorable rise of the graduate programmes of Laban, Middlesex University, Bretton Hall, Dartington, Roehampton etc,.

These college based "dance" courses shove targetted numbers of "dance" graduates into an unkind world, blinking and shivering with an Ology, MA, Bsc and in occasional cases even PhDs clutched in their mitts.

While in no way decrying an acknowledged ongoing requirement for teachers of dancing to encourage our increasingly obese children to move their bodies around school gyms twice a week, there is now a pressing need for a radical shake-up of the "professional" dance education programmes in the UK.

While in no way underestimating the value and importance in developing youthful aspirant ambition and skills, as far as dancers are concerned, somehow there needs to be a method by which effective identification of "the right stuff" as far as the pre-requisite physique, skills and mindset to go on to be the next generation of dancers and dance makers is concerned. We must also bend to the task of providing a much more radical approach to the right kind of teaching and pedagogic skills to coach them.

These need to be far more clearly delineated and developed along a totally different line from the rest of the dance education programmes which should increasingly be regarded and as offshoot of a wider and more academically focused physical education programmes. We are creating the next generation of PE teachers with useful information on nutrition and sports science. Should we encourage everyone to call themselves professional dancers?

At the same time, archaic and moribund organisations like The Royal Academy of Dancing, the ISTD and all of the other anachronistic "syllabus" led dance organisations should be put firmly under Ofsted reviews and required to come up with anatomically, commercially and contemporarily sound justification as to why their tired and outmoded approaches to developing dancers and more importantly dance teachers should continue to be regarded as adequate or remotely relevant in the 21st century world of dance-science.

On the basis that “a little learning is a dangerous thing” the current mish mash allows for and encourages significant numbers of arrivistes and pretenders to choreographic innovation. Courtesy of the wonders of natural selection most of these fall by the wayside, but often not before they have applied for, been granted and used up vast amounts of the ever more scarce Arts Funding resources which could be put to far more effective use.

Too many of the modern UK dance makers have actually mastered the black-arts of hanging onto the greasy pole of Arts funding and have gone on to become veritable pillars of the dance establishment.
On the basis of the one-eyed in the kingdom of the seriously visually impaired, many of these or their followers, now get to set the agenda for much of what has come to pass for dance "innovation" in the United Kingdom.

Much of the above sheds light on why as far as Europe and much if the USA is concerned, there is evidently very little in the way of new dance activity, choreographic innovation or ground to break which might inspire any of the best dancers from the rest of the world to even consider coming to work here.

More difficult for the home-grown "serious" dance students.
If they are not addicted to celebrity cults, the increasingly lightweight musical theatre (cruise-dancer training centre) colleges, or the appalling facilities, insane cost and sub-standard teaching of the "professional" open classes in our so-called Dance Centres, they are continually forced to scurry abroad to work and train as soon as they can.

Our dancers and the level of expertise they show are the envy of the world. Imagine what the UK might achieve if it had training programmes worthy of their potential.

ACKNOWLEDGING AUDIENCES

Curating the audience:

In all its variety of forms and expressions, dance on film, screendance, Moving image, Videodanza, Cinedans, et al, is celebrated and exhibited worldwide at over 45 specialist Dance Film Festivals every year from Anchorage to Athens.

Dance and Screen have been so inextricably linked since the beginnings of cinema that audiences and even many dance makers almost take them for granted.
Perhaps this familiarity contributes to why the dance film ‘genre', in relation to other cinematic endeavour, continues to dwell in a paradoxical twilight world of over-practice and under-development. This conflict certainly contributes to a significant underpowering of its potential as a singular creative medium. Certainly these developmental conflicts impoverish in the growth medium required for a nascent critical language or a coherent means by which to set in place uncontentious qualitative criteria.

Historically, dance on film has developed in a series of fruitful parallel paths. These range from late 19th century silent animations, through acclaimed and much lauded populist movie musicals, simultaneous with the making of less renowned but nonetheless important experimental "moving-image"-on-film work. All of this leavened by periodic and occasionally successful forays in documenting many aspects of the above.

Many alternative directions have been progenitors for the work increasingly found in art galleries, interractive choreographic design, video backdrops for live performance projects and a host of other creative manifestations. They form the bedrock of what is arguably regarded as the avant-garde of contemporary-dance based dancefilm, “post-modern” moving–image video and film work, and "Not", "Post" or even, "Un"-Choreography.

This includes but is not limited to physio-kinetics, animation techniques, plasma-based movement-triggered clairvoyant technologies and audience controlled outcome projects, inter alia.
All of the areas of creative endeavour outlined above, overlap according to the tools of choice for the dancefilm and moving-image maker, irrespective of the languages and iconography with which they choose to work.

Whilst acknowledging the inherent value of the edgier, intellectually and emotionally demanding innovations as unimpeachable standard bearers for the avant-garde, and even trend-setters for the vanguard, it often appears that the prodigious and often incontinent outpourings of "Moving Image" work allied to an ongoing clamour for attention by the "new" has engendered a consequential skewing of support down a cul-de-sac of creative innovation for its own sake.

Too often innovation merely abjures artists from taking responsibility for accessibility, measurable demonstrations of skills or even acknowledging that public funding processes should require accountability and statutorily scrutinised representation across a complete creative gestalt. These are the necessary checks and balances which avoid the cultural dangers of colonisation by vociferous, self-referential and occasionally militantly mediocre minorities.

Dance film makers of every creative inclination have learned much from the clash between Hollywood commercial imperatives which drove the inventive, if overblown, creations of Busby Berkley, Hermes Pan, Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Bob Fosse and Powell and Pressburger, etc

Setting aside the vestiges of camp and banality however, these old-school film choreographic outings have much to offer in the essential qualities of breadth of cinematic vision and quality in choreographic expertise - to a great extent, some of the key DNA strands of “Dancefilm”.

Making “new” art and forging ahead with an avant-garde requires breaking the rules. Breaking them however, requires prior experience and an understanding of why and how they evolved and a firm grasp of their existence and function.

Irrespective of medium or message, presentational art forms by definition, are those created for presentation; whether they exist for the purposes of entertainment, enlightenment, education, the elevation of the condition humaine or just stashed under the stairs with The Borrowers as conceptual art; even, perish the thought, the fascistic and bourgeois banalities known collectively as “decorative" arts .

In such a context, audiences for the dance film form deserve to expect basic “rules” such as notions of Aristotlean unity. They might be allowed to anticipate a deliberate and skilled avoidance of poorly articulated or ill-considered visual metaphor.
Moreover, within an art form based on specific sets of technologies and technical expertise, a sine qua non for all practitioners within the snythetically nominated artform known as "dance-film", should be a demonstrable grasp of the fundamentals of camera choreography and cinematic craft-skills.

Creative parameters and an agreed set of nostrums for the exercise in achieving quality thresholds, provide a contextual landscape within which to set a wider set of frames of reference and enable deeper penetration to the heart of every art form. This is a necessary process akin to assisting children to develop the skills to separate colour spectra in order to avoid daubing everything standard, kindergarten grey-brown.
All of the forgoing the better to facilitate the entry-skills required to make meaning of no matter what profundity and accessibility, through the myriad set of possible abstract forms, ideas, or narrative and conceptual devices available to every artist.

Encouragingly there is a glimmer of a sense of a wider, and less and less exclusive “dancefilm” making community.
One in which young dancemakers from all dance disciplines are increasingly interested and are becoming sufficiently humble to learn more about the processes involved in film making, whilst bringing ever wider and diverse elements of choreographic design to the processes, prior to unloading otherwise often unformed ouevres upon an unsuspecting world.

Affordable cine-clone and digital video technology, currently allows potential dancefilm makers at every level, the opportunity endlessly to experiment in how to achieve a complete and satisfactory synthesis of the skills outlined above, with minimal expertise and at almost nil cost but time.

Thanks to instant online, free Flash-conversion technology, and ever ready supplies of highly trained and inevitably “available” dancers, short dancefilms can be storyboarded, choreographed, cast, shot, edited and distributed online in fractions of the time, cost and resources previously required.

There now need to be more facilities of a less rarified, exclusive and scholastic structure put in place to build confidence, knowledge and platforms for mentors and teachers with a broader set of cinematic, directorial and choreographic skills and aesthetics.

Those who possess real-world experience, style, expertise and the generosity coherently and freely to share broad cinematic and choreographic knowledge-bases, without the requirement to adhere to particular stylistic fetishes. Importantly we need to free the making of dancefilm and the making of meaning in Moving Image from the fetters of requirement to be part of completing creatively inconsequential, and intellectually lightweight academic theses as part of justifying and maintaining highly-subsidised pedagogic tenures.

There needs to exist a common ground and language to foster ideas of how to develop clearly articulated cinematic and choreographic ideas and design and a more clearly defined collective disinclination to allow the immature, incompetent and jejeune to continue to grow up on the paid-up time of audiences.

Future technology and audience development:

The advent of boutique digital cinemas in most of the local regional arts centres, means that ever increasing exhibition and audience development opportunities now exist.

At the risk of a blinding glimpse of the obvious, in order for a true evolution of Dance-Film, the primary need is to facilitate resources to exhibit an ever wider spectrum of dance on film, in ever more accessible forms, far more often, to far more people.

Allied to the power of accessible and inexpensive marketing channels, including increasingly, the online world, inevitably this will open up a wider and more informed critical debate and expose audiences to the possibilities of dance film across a broad horizon.

In time, a virtuous circle of greater awareness, focused marketing, steady income and support from developing ever broader audience bases and the ensuing motivation and resources for ongoing productivity from all areas of the “dance” and “moving-image” world will logically follow.

Dance on film will never supercede live dance. Film, while exciting and stimulating for many reasons, cannot replicate the unique, tangible frisson that can occur between well-made live performances and their audiences.

Dancefilm, however, possesses all of the potential to speak to audiences in an utterly different and satisfying way, which Andrei Tarkovski uniquely describes as the “poetics of cinema”.

Our task as dance film practitioners of every creative hue and inclination, over the coming years, is to work together more generously to find a common language in which to speak with and to our several, different but nonetheless equally important constituent practitioners, audiences and critics and strive to cross fertilise our activities at every opportunity.

We must be vociferous in urging all those interested and involved in dance on film, whether practitioner or audience to support these endeavours and be rigorously interrogative of the motives and imperatives of those who demonstrate a disinclination so to do.

Sandy Strallen
The London International Dancefilm Festival

WHAT THEY DON'T TELL YOU ON ARTS ADMIN COURSES

LETTER TO PHD STUDENT OF MEDIA AND MOVING IMAGE AT BIRKBECK

Dear Haris,

the problem with audience questionnaires is that all questionnaires are entirely subjective.


In short, if I ask the audience:

Did you travel far to see the show today?

They will say "no", if 100 miles is no distance to them and they are real afficianados of the form - I had 4 film makers sleeping on my couches, floors and spare bedroom who had come from San Francisco, Amsterdam and Vienna to see their films presented for the first time anywhere on the big-screen and they had rounded up at least ten supporters each who had come to see the screenings and support them.

Others will say "yes" if they regard Notting Hill Gate to Hammersmith as a long way and had ten minutes of difficulty trying to find somewhere to park outside the cinema!


I actually set out a table of criteria for the audiences, similar to the ones which I explained in terms of the selection criteria for the films in the document I sent back previously.

As yet there exists very little in the way of a developed set of critical principles by which to agree what constitutes dance film, let alone what makes a "good", "well-made" or creatively satisfying dance/moving image project or film.

Our audience was probably a mix pretty nearly 50/50 dancefilm makers- dance afficianados and general public who came out of interest.

We averaged 60 people per show, which I believe is higher than average for Dancefilm festivals and certainly much bigger than the audiences I have experienced at similar international dancefilm festivals such as Cinedans, SouthEast Dance Festival in Brighton or at IMZ in The Hague.

Of this average of 60 people a show, we got around 30% who bothered to fill in the questionnaires (20 per show) and very few of these offered informed critical observations on the films, other than "very good" or "I did not like the one which..." which is not exactly the kind of quality feedback which might spark much of a critical discourse.

The problem is that no-one is either brave enough of feels sufficiently qualified publically to adjudicate on an art form which is so predominantly experimental and has such a broad set of ways of expression.

Since the international Academic lobby is also very influential in the "Moving-Image" making processes and the exhibition areas of dancefilm - these guys have a strong vested interest in dressing up often shallow and relatively incompetent output of their students as "professional" examples of the form, - thus the picture becomes ever less easy to clarify and for curators, ever more difficult to separate the well made from the merely well-intentioned without inviting calumny and approbation from the politically corrected and financially motivated Moving Image pundits.

It might further interest you to know that the dance critics from the national papers, stay away from dancefilm despite very large efforts to interest them in the form, including sending out taster DVD's and personal invites to adjudicate entries .

This says great deal about the quality and level of interest of dance criticism in the UK , much of which seems to suffer chronically from a lack of breadth in critical observation.
Critics often appear at best slightly star-struck fans, in the middle the usual herd always found following in the wake of this weeks Hot Property and at worst, the paid lobbyists for the main live performance spaces such as The Place, Sadlers Wells, The Royal Opera House and the vastly overfunded and currently creatively underpowered South Bank Centre. All of the above tend to focus on a small select band of favoured choreographers and companies who can afford the PR machinery to shoehorn their work into these spaces.

So as far as my questionaires go, I could report that I had a "healthy" and unusually "high response rate" of which the majority was "favourable", "liked" the films on offer, "thought that the schedule and programme was catholic and discerning" etc, etc, etc and therefore provides us every justification in applying for further funds and continuing the important work of the LIDFF. ......

They also told me where and how the festival publicity had caught their eye, whether they would use the online Festival resources ongoing, how much they knew about the art-form, what was the type of interest group to which they belonged, was the ticket price value for money, were the festival dates convenient, was the location good for them, and sundry other useful but relatively inconsequential pieces of information.

In reality i should report that the questionnaires were as useful as anyone might want to make them or might be politically expedient in terms of future arts fund lobbying.

Most feedback forms are used merely by the Fundees to prove to the Funders that they actually spent the money given them and someone turned up to see them spend it . Thus conveniently closing the self-justification loop of Jobs for the Arts funding adminstrators and the projects they support.

Questionnaires therefore should be regarded as not much more value than this.

If, as part of your research, you come up with a questionnaire that is both meaningful, valuable, tells you something you did not know previously about the exhibited work and offers critical insights that cannot be ignored and fundamentally changes the way in which dancefilm festivals might present themselves or approach their markets, please let me know, I will use it!

My belief is that until the audience for dancefilm grows and begins to mature and the critical discourse begins to elevate, we should not look for questionnaires to provide anything of particular creative value in the world of Dancefilm.

I hope this helps

Really? You really mean ANYTHING?........

W(H)ITHER THE DIRECTOR?

I have just completed an exhaustive internet search on the riveting if slightly creepy spectacle of Graham Norton hunting Nancies who would do anything for Andrew Lloyd Webber.

It appears that despite the huge publicity generated around the upcoming new- minty Oliver co-production by the Lloyd-Webber/Cameron Macintosh/ Saturday night TV Audience Monopoly, there does not seem, at time of writing, to be the merest mention of a director involved with or attached to the production.

Even during the worst of the bad old days of meglomanic Producers, there was always at least in-nomine, some poor benighted soul loosely described as A Director attached to most musicals.

This was the poor bugger tasked with shoehorning often talentless, tone-deaf, twin-left-footed, usually generously endowed mistress or catamite of the producer into the lead role of the show. Who doubtless was there to be fired when said adorable Doxie felt that (usually) she and (occasionally) he was not getting quite the level of attention their status as Blow-Job Bestower of The Week, deserved.

In return for this, the "director" might be permitted a small level of interest in what remained of the creative decision-making processes involved in what used to be known as the mise-en-scene

These days, the TV Musical casting machine provides not so much as a whiff of directorial input on a theatrical project, until the entire creative mess has been reduced to the necessary fait accompli by the commercial vested interests lined up in its fragrant wake.

In all analysis, Cameron has provided a breathless London with two previous Oliver! productions, the directors of which, though highly regarded in their own Soho Lunchtimes, have not gone onto be household names. Thus adding further weight to the now depressingly prevalent attitude, that if the public don't see them and the paps don't consider them worth risking a broken nose for, then they are entirely irrelevant.

Food for thought for anyone foolish enough to be currently considering the role of a director of musicals, as a career option.........

Stop press:Stop press:Stop press:Stop press:Stop press!

It has just been announced that Matthew Bourne will co-direct and choreograph the above.

Rupert Goold has now been brought onboard as the director.

However, I am still entirely nonplussed as to how a director can direct a show he or she has not cast?
Perhaps they might be good enough to enlighten us as to whether it matters or not?

Bruce Weber - Chet Baker - Let's Get Lost and Yogadance

Just few thoughts from an andropausal and occasionally windy brain on diverse subjects all of which shall be attached by albeit gossamer and nebulous threads to my one abiding passion - dancefilm.

To enlarge, dancefilm covers the entire world of dance and as much of the world of film as is (in my own opinion) worth bothering about, which aside from my daughters, my lover and staying alive, fills most of the rest of my awake time in some form or other.

Initiated a new training programme at the spa today involving a mixture of movement, mind focusing , yoga and general common sense. My first group of clients a satisfying and enthusiastic contingent of six - indulged me at my most out there, hippyish and occasionally brow-furrowingly opaque.

Still they all hung with me for an hour of what seemed to be mostly collective fun, occasional hilarity and a really gratifying collective effort in the ongoing individual struggles on our many and various paths to personal enlightenment.

Initial collective tests discovered that if you ask someone to really think about how they walk, they temporarily lose the ability so to do..hmmm.

We started with basic yin/yang traditions and principles, moved onto the breath and how to conduct it around the body to greater effect and why, connected everyone's understanding of chi to their individual bodily vehicles and adding this whole melange to the basic principles of moving the body through space at speed, in rhythm and with the minimum wastage of effort, started them all dancing quite effectively within 45 minutes!

Class one seemed to achieve the primary goal of "tricking" everyone into discovering a great deal more coordination, body awareness and personal control than they intially thought they possessed. Let's see if the effects wear on during the week and if anyone comes back for more..............

On to see "Let's Get Lost" - Chet Baker biopic at The Riverside cinema by Bruce Weber and his unique imprimatur - Weber films his subjects in a way that demonstrates he is totally in love with them - his camera does not just observe, it gazes, it assimilates, it sucks in the subjects of its focus with the adoring fixity of the newly in love - a puppy, a tree, a mark in the sand, two people silent side by side in a park, doped and asleep, Chet Baker's once beautiful, now ravaged features - all are caressed, and vivified by the light and penetrating touch of Weber's individual, unflaggingly appropriate if quirky choices of light, chiaroscuro, lenses and oblique points of view, alongside the unflinching steadiness of nerve he elicits from those he photographs.

I imagine he must possess an almost limitless quantity of personal charm to persuade people to expose themselves, so vulnerable and emotionally naked in front of his camera.

No matter that the subject is a narcissistic manipulative waster, who destroyed, or at least, mortally wounded most of the lives of the real people he conned into adoring, supporting, financing and guiding him through his own self-destructive vale of tears. Chet Baker, a man who devoted his time to hanging with the other hep-cat heavy faces, hundreds of whose names he could reel straight-off from out of the bottom of a deep methadone haze, all the while having trouble remembering the names of some of his wives or children, or where he last left them..... with merely a singular talent to blow the trumpet and a great ear for syncopation.

All of these pecadillos, we forgive somehow, thanks to the miraculous way in which Weber invades the subject's space, inviting the voyeur ever deeper into the innermost recesses of the Chet Baker heart of darkness and helping us fall in love with this flailing, drowning, shambling, muttering human wreck of a jazz genius, despite our better instincts.

A shining example of how the artist much check his or her own vanity if they want to lay bare the warts and all of their subject with any degree of honesty or coherence. If a final word is required, "Let's get Lost" is worth seeing for Baker's unique singing alone, particularly his total command and absolute stilling of a room of overexcited starlets and teetering shouting drunks at a Cannes Film Festival party, with a live and uniquely poignant rendition of "Almost Blue", leaving even Diana Krall's hitherto unimpeachable version dead in the water by comparison.

Vanity in performance is only exposed when you experience a performance in which there's nothing left to lose. Real performance starts only at this point, everything else is a pose.

Hard to watch, but a must see for any fan of documentary, jazz, insightful image making or indeed, Chet Baker himself - a profoundly flawed but fascinating man, portrayed in a nearly flawless fashion.

Proof positive, were it ever needed, that white men really can sing the blues.