Field Trip

Field Trip

I have just returned from a very full five weeks connecting with international dance and screendance colleagues.

First stop was Angers, France for the World Dance Alliance Global Summit (July 6–11). A massive event including a couple of hundred conference papers and performances. I attended some great presentations from Gretchen Schiller, Sarah Whatley, Julia Ritter, Benedict Anderson, Sarah Rubidge and (the amazing organiser of it all) Cheryl Stock. Wonderful to also see our national treasure Elizabeth Cameron Dalman perform in the International Showcase program, and to see Sue Healey’s beautiful dance documentary “Virtuosi”.

On July 19th I caught the last screening of the International Screendance Festival, in its 19th year at the American Dance Festival in Durham, North Carolina. I have had five of my own works screened as part of this festival in the past so it was great to finally see the venue in the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University. Even though I didn’t have a work in the program this year I was able to be the cheer squad for my dear friend and colleague Ami Skånberg Dahlstedt’s documentary “The Dance of the Sun”— a film about the origins of dance and mythology in Japan as seen through the eyes and body of this Swedish contemporary dancer. The Swedish theme was continued with the USA documentary “Håstdans På Hovdala”—a unique collaboration by The Equus Projects (four dancers and four horses) with a group of Swedish performers with autism.

I caught two performances as part of the American Dance Festival proper: the Paul Taylor Dance Company and “On Their Bodies”—a program of four solos from mature male choreographers Shen Wei, Stephen Petronio, Ronald K. Brown and Doug Varone. Ironically, the next week I met Daniel Charon who was a dancer in Doug Varone’s company before taking up his position as Artistic Director at the Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company in Salt Lake City, Utah. Thanks to a connection made through screendance artist and scholar Ellen Bromberg I was invited to teach two workshops in “Improvisation and Camera” at the Ririe-Woodbury Move-It Summer Intensive. I also got to hang out with Ellen Bromberg, sharing work and ideas about screendance.

My final week was as guest artist at Douglas Rosenberg’s Summerwork—an artists’ retreat on his farm just outside Madison, Wisconsin. Doug is a leader in the field of screendance and it was wonderful to finally meet him face to face after some fifteen years of electronic communication. I first interviewed Doug for my Masters research having found his dance video work and connecting with his aesthetic. He has been a great supporter of my work ever since, as he has been for the field itself, with his curation of the ADF International Screendance Festival (that has screened my work and published them as part of the ADF Video Screendance Anthology) and the establishment of the International Journal of Screendance (I have a paper coming out in the next volume). I was able to facilitate the creation of a short screendance with the five other women at Summerwork…a wonderful outcome to round out a nourishing week of yoga, dance and camera improvisation, contemplative writing, picking and cooking from the garden, watching fireflies for the first time, un-bogging a 1950 Chevrolet truck, and sharing ideas and practice.

Watch the Summerwork 2014 screendance “They Disappear”