Moving Pictures 2005 – Reel Dance on the Road

An annual occurrence every October in Toronto, last year’s 2005 Moving Pictures Festival of Dance on Film and Video comes to Peterborough April 21, 2006 at Cinema 379. Reel Dance On The Road is a selection of films from the 2005 Festival, with the addition of three Peterborough films specially added for these screenings. All together Reel Dance On The Road promises two programs of local, Canadian and international films featuring highly creative movement on both sides of the camera.

PROGRAM #1 @ 4 & 9 PM

…and again, until we get it Peterborough, 2005, 13 minutes
Choreography by Kate Story.
Camera, editing by Michael Morritt.
Performance by Ryan Kerr and Melissa Webster.
Music by Charlie Glasspool.
A video document of the dance of the same name performed at Toronto’s fringe Festival of International Dance Artists in 2005. Foremost about the shifting balance of intimacy, the work also causes the audience to question its perceptions around ability and dance. “… a fascinating duet for a disabled woman and an able-bodied man where the power between the two keeps shifting.” ~ Paula Citron, “The Best of the Rest,” Globe and Mail, August 23 2005

 Dos Ambientes / Buenos Aires Flat Argentina – 2004 – 15 minutes
Directed and choreographed by Rodrigo Pardo.
Performed by Gabriela Lavagnino, Cristina Cortes, Josefina Lamarre, Noelia Leonzio, Diego Poblete, and Rodrigo Pardo.
“If places are loaded with the things that there happened… how many stories fit in the 30 square meters of a small flat?” This dance-video was filmed in the choreographer’s own flat. It tells how the dance piece Cuadrado Negro Sobre Fondo Negro was made (created in the living room of the same apartment and put into scene after that) and simultaneously presents the real situations that motivated its creation. Filmed with a single camera and with a very low budget, Dos Ambientes is a testimony of the artists’ universe, including Argentine Tango, suprematist painting and even a fight scene of the Batman & Robin style. In the way it was made, Dos Ambientes is also telling us about Argentine reality and the need for an artistic point of view regardless of production possibilities.

Dress Code Canada/UK, 2004, 3 minutes
Directed and choreographed by Marlee Cargill.
Performed by Heather Hammond, Raquel Gil-Jiminez and Malgorzata Nowacka.
In a unique narrative, three women struggle with contrived and inherited identities vis à vis an office staple: the filing cabinet. Shot in 35mm, this dance film fuses performance art and choreography for the camera. Squarepusher provides the textured soundtrack.

No Man’s Land Canada 2005 – 7 minutes
Concept, direction and camera by Alexandre Oktan.
Choreography and performance by Peter Chin
The journey of a man who finds himself torn between two cultures, two cultural voices. He struggles between the two until he discovers a neutral space, a space where both halves can co-exist, a No Man’s Land.

Paint Canada – 2005 – 5 minutes
Directed by John Lauener.
Choreographed and performed by Barbara Pallomina.
Toronto based photographer John Lauener and dance artist Barbara Pallomina have teamed up to create a dance film that gives the viewer a unique perspective of choreographic movement. Relying heavily on overhead shots and black paint on a white canvas, the dancer’s movement spreads the paint, using both feet and hands, leaving traces of her movement through space. The end result is a lasting impression of the choreographic movement in the form of a minimalist painting. The visual aspect of the work was inspired by the Spanish painter Antoni Tapies; the spontaneous nature of the painting was inspired by the Gutai, the action painters and the Automatistes.

Stuck Canada/UK – 2004 – 4 minutes
Directed and choreographed by Jenn Goodwin.
Starring Nicola Pantin and Matthew Dailey.
Music by Ed Hanley.
The morning after the night before. A hang-over, a wrong number, a right turn…. a wrong turn. Girl meets boy – again. The physical story of two people who throw caution to the winds and act on impulse and passion and truly live in the moment.

Suicide Prevention Manual #1 Peterborough, 2006, 2 minutes
Concept, performance and editing by Jessica Rowland.
Direction and camera by Denise Duric.

Stunt Man Canada 2005 – 12 1/2 minutes
Directed by Justin Lovell.
A groovin’ short film where Troy rushes to get to a stuntman audition on time. He climbs and flips his way through Toronto’s streets and alleys but what he doesn’t realize is that “the girl next door’s” cat has snuck into his backpack. Fast on his heels is his cute neighbor and his vengeful girlfriend dying to take a bite out of him under suspicion of two-timing…Stuntman was shot super duper 8 (a modified widescreen super 8 format) with beautiful Kodachrome 40 showing off the richest of colours around Queen Street’s graffiti alleys.

Tech no bond age Canada – 2006 – 12 minutes
Video Art and Editing by Lester Alfonso.
Choreography by Deepti Gupta.
Performed by Arzoo Dance Theatre.
The choreography of Deepti Gupta collides with seven television sets blaring visuals created by video artist Lester Alfonso at an event dubbed “Techno-Bondage” that took place at the Arlington Hotel in the small Northern Ontario town of Maynooth in the summer of 2001. Alfonso has since taken the video documentation of the event and fused it together with the visuals exactly as they had originally (and randomly) synchronized. The result is a 90 min. “concert” film that defies categories. This 12 min. segment is an excerpt from that film.

Tralala Canada/UK – 2004 – 3 minutes
Directed by Magali Charrier.
Co-choreographed by Magali Charrier and Viv Moore.
Performed by Barbara Lindenberg, Barbara Pallomina and Allison Rees-Cummings.
A quirky and lyrical animated tale that explores the lost imaginary realm of three young women’s childhood.

PROGRAM # 2 @ 7:30 pm

Blush Belgium- 2005 – 52:45
Written, directed and choreographed by Wim Vandekeybus with Ultima Vez.
From the choreographer of Belgium’s leading contemporary dance company, Ultima Vez, comes a dazzling voyage that swings between the heavenly landscapes of Corsica to the slummiest depths of Brussels, carried by the music of David Eugene Edwards (16 Horsepower, Woven Hand). An exploration of the savage subconscious, of mythical forests, of conflicting instincts, of those places where the body has reasons unknown to the mind. Of Orpheus and Eurydice…

 Wim Vandekeybus’ first choreography What the Body Does Not Remember (1987) was an instant hit and changed the landscape of modern dance. Since then, he has created almost twenty dances that have toured around the world. Since 1990, film has not only become an integral part of his stage work, it has started leading a life of its own, receiving many awards at art film and short film festivals. Vandekeybus is currently developing his first feature film, Little Bear.

The Hunt Canada – 2005 – 5 minutes
Directed by Marlene Millar and Philip Szporer.
Choreographed by Sharon Moore and performed by Peter Trostzmer.
Original music by Derek Aasland.

The Hunt follows the internal, emotional ride of a man, the hunter, determined to master his environment. An exploration of the anatomy of that hunt and the transformation that occurs inside the hunter – calmness, pressure, extreme tension, consequence of the hunt, calling up/manufacturing the condition of the enemy in order to justify killing, delirium and gleefulness that denotes insanity and enjoyment of such experience.

I Dream of Augustine Australia – 2005 – 9:20 minutes
Concept, direction & cinematography by Cordelia Beresford.
Performed & choreographed by Narelle Benjamin.
A woman dreams of being in the infamous Salpetriere Hospital in Paris, where the young hysterical patient known as Augustine was hypnotized and put on public display in the 1870’s. Watched by an unseen doctor she follows his orders and loses sight of herself.