The symbiotic relationship between dance and film—both governed by aesthetics of movement—is near familial, like an older sister taking a younger sister under wing. From the moment that the “moving picture” was introduced in the late 19th century it embraced dance as a ready subject appropriate to cinematic practice and featured in the early motion studies of Edison and the Lumière brothers. Famed early dancers included Ruth St. Denis—who introduced Asian inflections into dance—and Loie Fuller’s widely-imitated “Serpentine Dance.”
During the Silent Era of film in the 1920s, audiences were emotionally “moved” by the expressive possibilities of dance, long before the advent of talking pictures. The 1930s ushered in the Hollywood musicals, which—into the 1950s—gained huge popularity through stars like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers and the revolutionary choreography of Busby Berkeley who treated the camera as a partner, creating complex geometric patterns and "cinema dance" designed solely for the screen.
Once the golden era of studio musicals capsized under their own weight, efforts to revive the medium appeared in filmic adaptations of Broadway musicals choreographed by such greats as Bob Fosse through vehicles like Cabaret and Chicago.
Arriving to choreocinema in our current era, the dance film has evolved as a unique art form addressing various aspects of the symbiosis between film and dance. Watching the opening night suite of films at the LED program “Moves and Movies”, I was struck how film documents the ephemeral nature of dance that, otherwise, would be lost to the body memory of dancers and the remembered experience of audiences. Documentation of dance explores time as specific moments of performance as well as the maturation of specific bodies, often famous, such as Anna Pavlova’s 1905 performance of the Dying Swan. Through film audiences can stretch time back to seminal performances. Pavlova, Astaire and Rogers, Minnelli, survive the ravages of time and present bodies in peak form. This is no less true with local personalities such as Lauren Edson, Cydney Covert and Evan Stevans who the camera has watched as their artistry evolves and their bodies adapt.
Another revelation in the roster of films in LED’s opening night program was that of spatiality, of taking dance off the theatrical stage and placing it firmly into the world. Who hasn’t wanted to start tapdancing down a sidewalk or in the marble interiors of a state capitol? Whether abandoned warehouses or parking lots, roller skating rinks, the staircases between floors of a roadside motel, gymnasiums, campsites, or bus stations fallen into disrepair, dance claims its territory and confirms its primary goal to defy gravity wherever gravity exists. Dance negotiates a balance between defying gravity as presumed and aiming to find its own center of gravity, either in the individual dancer or in the ensemble. Film potentially captures that negotiation through the point of view of the dancer, utilizing film editing and angles to create a dance that can only exist on screen, not on stage, and allowing the audience to be taken into the choreography, partner to it, involved within it.
The generous assortment of films in the opening night program of “Moves and Movies” are more than I can explore in detail; but, suffice it to say, that it was an illuminating introduction into a symbiosis that will be explored throughout the weekend. "Moves and Movies" continues through May 17 with tailored programs for each evening. Information can be found here.
