Festival to stream dance films from around the world

[email protected] can be streaming without cost on the Wexner Middle of Arts web site from Feb. 12 to March 11, 2021. Photograph Credit score: Courtesy of Pip Crowley

Viewers can expertise stay dance from the consolation of their houses this yr, with dancers and filmmakers from around the globe uniting just about for Ohio State’s annual [email protected] competition.

Celebrating its ninth yr at Ohio State, [email protected] will see a change in presentation because the movie competition forgoes its common one-night, in-person occasion in favor of streaming without cost on the Wexner Middle for the Arts web site Feb. 12 to March 11. The competition will function 12 brief dance movies from around the globe, together with a movie by Mitchell Rose, affiliate professor of dance movie making and the producer of [email protected]

“Dance doesn’t have to simply exist on the stage anymore,” Rose mentioned. “It is a very media-savvy society. Dance has all the time embraced know-how and has now turn into intertwined with media within the type of what’s referred to as ‘dance movie.’”

[email protected], which stands for Dance at 30 Frames Per Second, received its title from video, which is normally shot at 30 frames per second. Though conventional movie is usually shot at 24 frames per second, many of the artists who work in dance movie have a tendency to make use of fashionable video as an alternative, Rose mentioned. 

Dance movie reimagines the probabilities of dance by taking brief clips or pictures of various actions and enhancing them collectively in a method that creates the identical feeling as watching stay dance, slightly than simply filming a dance for documentation, Rose mentioned. This course of is often used to spotlight folks dancing however will be achieved with objects in the identical method.

“I all the time inform my college students that what makes a dance movie a dance movie is that it makes you’re feeling such as you’re watching dance, even when there isn’t essentially a human physique doing it,” Rose mentioned.

Rose mentioned he presents [email protected] as an unbiased examine for a few of his college students. This yr, a staff of six pupil curators had been tasked with screening all 320 dance movie submissions and arising with a brief checklist of 20 movies. Rose selected the ultimate 12. 

Sara Wagenmaker, a third-year in dance and one in all this yr’s curators, mentioned she labored with a staff of undergraduate and graduate college students to observe and select movies that showcased the wedding of dance and movie, not simply filmed dance. 

“We had been actually searching for this angle of dance movie as not simply dance and never simply movie,” Wagenmaker mentioned. “We had been additionally searching for movies that took a brand new perspective on one thing or actually had one thing to say.” 

Along with being completely on-line this yr, Wagenmaker mentioned they noticed an enormous improve in submissions for [email protected] in comparison with final yr as a result of everyone seems to be caught at dwelling.

“There are fewer methods to carry out safely, so there are extra folks turning to the digital camera to point out off their choreographic creativity,” Wagenmaker mentioned.

In a time when stay performances aren’t taking place, Wagenmaker mentioned movie festivals are one of many few methods for dancers to get their voices on the market and [email protected] offers a platform and voice to a whole lot of expert, rising filmmakers.

“Due to the yr that it’s been, there’s a whole lot of movies that resonate with social justice,” Rose mentioned.

The lineup contains dance movies impressed by the yr 2020, Rose mentioned. There are movies about quarantine, loss throughout the COVID-19 period, the Black Lives Matter motion and the Free Belarus protests.

“2020 had a sure really feel to it. It’s a profound time in our historical past, and I believe that these movies, you already know, simply appeared to resonate with the second,” Rose mentioned.

Wagenmaker mentioned it’s been an extended yr for everybody in lots of respects, however that it’s encouraging to see one thing like [email protected] come out of it.

“It actually exhibits the Division of Dance’s robust dedication to know-how and exploring the boundaries of creativity,” Wagenmaker mentioned. “That’s the magic of artwork.”

The competition is accessible on the Wexner Middle for the Arts website, and a trailer for the occasion is accessible here.