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?