Each year, the Dance on Camera Festival explores the range of contemporary dance films, and this year’s selection of 14 programs includes everything from documentaries that evocatively examine the on- and off-stage life of celebrated dancers to an examination of how choreographers of Hollywood musicals influenced pop-music videos. There is even a feature-length mockumentary, The Bentfootes, described as “a loving skewering of 200 years of American dance.” Just think of the possibilities!
It seems each installment (this is the 36th) includes a film about Pina Bausch, who is apparently endlessly fascinating to filmmakers. Anne Linsel’s insightful Pina Bausch (Jan. 2-3) gets the choreographer (whom everyone interviewed for the film describes as “tough”) to speak eloquently and from the heart about her creative process and the doubts and difficulties she encounters along the way. Veteran company members and collaborators are also interviewed, and the film includes wonderful footage of several of her most intriguing works.
New York City Ballet stalwart Jock Soto is profiled with great insight and sensitivity in Water Flowing Together (Jan. 11 & 18)—the title translates the name of his mother’s Navajo clan. Soto’s Navajo-Puerto Rican lineage is explored (his parents come across as vibrant, wonderful subjects in themselves) as the film traces Soto’s unique story: leaving the Navajo reservation at 14 to become a New York City Ballet principal dancer and exemplary partner for 25 years. The film is not always strong on factual details: footage of Soto and Wendy Whelan in Balanchine’s Agon is woven throughout yet the title of the ballet is never given, and the 16-year-old Soto’s amazing technical prowess in a student performance is also amply showcased—yet not identified as to date or specific ballet. The film touchingly depicts the doubts and career decisions that inevitably creep in as years pass and injuries take their toll, and builds up movingly to his June 2005 farewell performance.
No dancing footage seems to exist of Felia Doubrovska (1896-1981), the unique dancer who was the original Siren in Balanchine’s Prodigal Son and helped set the standard for long, lean ballerinas of a later era. Yet she emerges vibrantly in Virginia Brooks’ Felia Doubrovska Remembered (Jan. 3 & 5), a labor of love that includes priceless footage of her teaching at the School of American Ballet and extensive interviews in which her charm and old-world elegance come across. The film shares a program with a 1959 educational television film about the legendary Olga Spessivtseva, Doubrovska’s contemporary, that includes extensive and remarkable footage of a 1932 London rehearsal of Giselle’s first act.
A program of Pierre Coulibeuf’s intriguing, unpredictable films includes “Pavilion Noir” (Jan. 5 & 11), a collaboration with Angelin Preljocaj in which office situations and seemingly mundane conversations suddenly shift into extreme physical encounters. Other highlights include a restored print of Spartacus (Jan. 2-3), a 1975 Soviet film of Yuri Grigorovich’s bombastic, high-testosterone ballet featuring three of its original Bolshoi stars, and Here After (Jan. 3), the latest cinematic opus by adventurous Belgian choreographer/filmmaker Wim Vandekeybus. But it’s not all boys and girls in tights. To round things out take a look at the world of the B-Boys in Marcy Garriott’s Inside the Circle (Jan. 6 & 11), a look at Texas’ hip-hop movement, and a completely different look at what it means to dance.
Jan. 2-6, 11, 18, 19, Walter Reade Theater, Lincoln Center Plaza (entrance on W. 65 St. betw. Broadway & Amsterdam Ave.) 212-875-5600; filmlinc.com for times, $7-$11.
It seems each installment (this is the 36th) includes a film about Pina Bausch, who is apparently endlessly fascinating to filmmakers. Anne Linsel’s insightful Pina Bausch (Jan. 2-3) gets the choreographer (whom everyone interviewed for the film describes as “tough”) to speak eloquently and from the heart about her creative process and the doubts and difficulties she encounters along the way. Veteran company members and collaborators are also interviewed, and the film includes wonderful footage of several of her most intriguing works.
New York City Ballet stalwart Jock Soto is profiled with great insight and sensitivity in Water Flowing Together (Jan. 11 & 18)—the title translates the name of his mother’s Navajo clan. Soto’s Navajo-Puerto Rican lineage is explored (his parents come across as vibrant, wonderful subjects in themselves) as the film traces Soto’s unique story: leaving the Navajo reservation at 14 to become a New York City Ballet principal dancer and exemplary partner for 25 years. The film is not always strong on factual details: footage of Soto and Wendy Whelan in Balanchine’s Agon is woven throughout yet the title of the ballet is never given, and the 16-year-old Soto’s amazing technical prowess in a student performance is also amply showcased—yet not identified as to date or specific ballet. The film touchingly depicts the doubts and career decisions that inevitably creep in as years pass and injuries take their toll, and builds up movingly to his June 2005 farewell performance.
No dancing footage seems to exist of Felia Doubrovska (1896-1981), the unique dancer who was the original Siren in Balanchine’s Prodigal Son and helped set the standard for long, lean ballerinas of a later era. Yet she emerges vibrantly in Virginia Brooks’ Felia Doubrovska Remembered (Jan. 3 & 5), a labor of love that includes priceless footage of her teaching at the School of American Ballet and extensive interviews in which her charm and old-world elegance come across. The film shares a program with a 1959 educational television film about the legendary Olga Spessivtseva, Doubrovska’s contemporary, that includes extensive and remarkable footage of a 1932 London rehearsal of Giselle’s first act.
A program of Pierre Coulibeuf’s intriguing, unpredictable films includes “Pavilion Noir” (Jan. 5 & 11), a collaboration with Angelin Preljocaj in which office situations and seemingly mundane conversations suddenly shift into extreme physical encounters. Other highlights include a restored print of Spartacus (Jan. 2-3), a 1975 Soviet film of Yuri Grigorovich’s bombastic, high-testosterone ballet featuring three of its original Bolshoi stars, and Here After (Jan. 3), the latest cinematic opus by adventurous Belgian choreographer/filmmaker Wim Vandekeybus. But it’s not all boys and girls in tights. To round things out take a look at the world of the B-Boys in Marcy Garriott’s Inside the Circle (Jan. 6 & 11), a look at Texas’ hip-hop movement, and a completely different look at what it means to dance.
Jan. 2-6, 11, 18, 19, Walter Reade Theater, Lincoln Center Plaza (entrance on W. 65 St. betw. Broadway & Amsterdam Ave.) 212-875-5600; filmlinc.com for times, $7-$11.
