FilmFest by Rogue Dancer: Loneliness

(February 2024)

Have we gotten used to Loneliness? Are we more connected?  Or is there a great need to disconnect?

February 23 - March 10, 2024

«»dance for the camera», «video dance», «cine dance», «screendance», – may seem somewhat interchangeable, they are, in actuality, quite specific. Each term speaks to a particular combination of performance and materiality, and each sites the dual properties of their hybridized identities in an order that signifies the relative importance of the parts.” - Douglas Rosenberg, Screendance

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«»dance for the camera», «video dance», «cine dance», «screendance», – may seem somewhat interchangeable, they are, in actuality, quite specific. Each term speaks to a particular combination of performance and materiality, and each sites the dual properties of their hybridized identities in an order that signifies the relative importance of the parts.” - Douglas Rosenberg, Screendance ☯☯☯

“We think the only way to change the worlds is through ART & we appreciate our audiences more than you know. Thank you for experiencing the DANCE with us, please enjoy this month’s event!

Click on the picture below to access this month’s SHOWCASE. ”

— Jennifer Scully-Thurston, Rogue Dancer Creator & Curator

Your Playbill

Fringe

film by Jasmine Ellis (c) 2022 GERMANY

Amie and Victor going into the woods. A short experimental film about now.

Jasmine Ellis - Director, Choreographer

Amie Jammeh - Performers

Victor Rottier - Performers

Jasmine Ellis Projects gUG & Bad Posture Productions - Producer

Clemens Kruger - Director of Photography

Ray Demski - 1st AC

Christof Kreutzer - Sound

Tobias Beul - Editor

Martina Missel - Dramaturg

Sophie Thuma - Artistic Production Management

Phased Isolation

film by Penny Chivas (c) 2020 UK

Self shot, edited and danced by necessity, "Phased Isolation" was created amid the growing uncertainty and isolation created during Lockdown. Inspired by the need to be both visible and yet slip away at the same time and be somewhere else. The work represents a moment in which Scotland realised that Coronavirus was a longer term problem with further reaching repercussions than originally imagined.

Penny Chivas - Director & Dancer

Time 時

film by Sheng Wei Xu (c) 2022 CHINA

Time is a cycle of rupture, decay, shedding and disappearance, as if flowing in a form visible to the naked eye. When it disappears, only the track of the body's existence is left. It seems that there are traces to follow, but it is also increasingly mottled. When standing in a dilapidated space, he was imprinted with the passage of time. The body here is only a portrait of nature. Without the slightest deliberate manipulation and decoration, it slipped and fell repeatedly, as if it were a drop of dust, gently scattered. So repeated, with the passage of every minute and second, and quietly silent.

Sheng Wei Xu - Director, Writer & Producer

Zhi Ling Zhang - Writer

Wu You Li - Dancer

In Between Silence

film by Hilary Libman (c) 2020 USA

IN BETWEEN SILENCE is a collaboration between JDT dancer/choreographer Hilary Libman and her dear, life-long friend, psychologist Dr. Aniesa Hanson, PhD. Through a series of discussions they investigated the psychology and complexity of loneliness, specifically how it pertains to identity. With audio recordings in hand from Dr. Hanson, Hilary spent a series of weeks exploring movement inspired by their discussions in a variety of isolated and breathtaking landscapes throughout Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, and Idaho.

“I wish I could show you when you are lonely or in darkness the astonishing light of your own being.” -Hafiz of Persia

Hilary Libman - Director, Producer & Dancer

Aniesa Hanson - Narration

Exigency

film by Chen Jiexiao (c) 2017 SINGAPORE

How absurd it is, that we as humans can hardwire ourselves, our emotions, against a socially approved rationality? Yet nostalgia continues to tug at the heart strings, because what once was, was.

In this collage of improvisational work, Jiexiao set out with each of the participating dancers seeking to tap into individual memories of having loved someone/something they didn't expect they would, and vice versa. Armed only with a GoPro and a mini-tripod, the footage looks raw, but only because nostalgia and memories are precisely so - tender and yet wavering over time, perhaps leaving ripples that fade without traces in our lives.

Chen Jiexiao - Director & Producer

Dancers - Valerie Koon, Lim Pei Ern, Felicia Lim & Natasha Neo

Permanence Is Only A Word

Film by Luka Fisher (c) 2020 USA

Permanence Is Only A Word is a film by Kayla Tange and Luka Fisher based on a text written by Kayla. The film explores gaps in understanding that arise from Kayla growing up in an adopted family and being separated from her origins in this abstract dance film.

Luka Fisher - Director

Kayla Tange - Writer

Quiet

Film Lukas Zerbst (c) 2021 GERMANY

In Quiet, we accompany a dancer on a journey through nocturnal Bremen. Is he seeking silence, or indeed fleeing from it? In any case, he goes after the noise - not the obvious one, but the one you only hear when it is quiet. While he does, he escapes his city walk, again and again, by turning around, running, or jumping, and so he arrives in in several completely different settings: in a forest, on a demolition site, in a field. The soundscape that welcomes him each turn calms him down at times, yet at others, it instils restlessness, even mania. The film draws attention to what the often overheard, the inaudible, does to the body when it becomes loud, when it begins to drown out the everyday soundscape.

Lukas Zerbst - Director

Alexandra Morales - Producer

Andor Rusu - Dancer

Ik breng de wijnen

film by Lara Celenza (c) 2021 GERMANY

A celebration of dance as an art form that can be performed anywhere, "Ik breng de wijnen" marks the official release of "Betra ástand" EP by 国際通り International Road.

Lara Celenza - Director, Writer & Producer

Luisa Winterfeld - Dancer

Tom O'Keefe - DoP

Pulso:/Impulse

film by Niurca Marquez (c) 2021 USA

Pulso:/Impulse is an exploration of the moment, the pulse and impulse of the space and the body. A collaboration of five female voices collapsed into one intention: to respond to what they see and feel. Each focused on a distinct part of the weave that makes up the work. Each building on what she is given and responding from her own positioning.

Niurca Marquez - Director

Carla ForteEditor

Eryka Dellenbach - Director of Photography

Daniela Bertoldi - Original Music

Cinders. Cendres

film by Oskar Luko (c) 2023 SPAIN

A man ascends through a dry and inhospitable landscape, searching for the appropriate place to perform his intimate and personal rite of expiation, as a vital need to reconnect with his environment and his present.

Oskar Luko - Director & Dancer

Lluis Miras - Photography

Arnau Musach - Music

A Portrait

film by Vilma Tihilä (c) 2022 FINLAND

A Portrait dance film looks at an ensemble of identities within one person. The gathering identities encounter simultaneously, and different mind states move the character rapidly through shifting locations, seasons, colors, and emotions.

A Portrait is the first dance film in a trilogy by Sorvari & Tihilä, where they aim to bring lightness, hope and joy to the experience of fragmented identities.

Vilma Tihilä - Director, Writer & Producer

Kauri Sorvari - Writer, Producer, Dancer & Choreographer

Heli Notkonen - Sound Designer

Teemu Kyytinen - Color grading

3 Scherzi 4 Strata

film by Nuno Veiga (c) 2021 PORTUGAL

Triptic made during the Deanna Sirlin STRATA exhibition at the Fundação Eugénio de Almeida in Évora, Portugal.

The lines, colors, and framing of the twenty windows of the Center for Art and Culture occupied by the installation of the Deanna Sirlin were the pretexts of this dialogue while exploring the materiality of the exhibition. Three brief scherzi, where the creators inhabit and resignify the exhibition, are made visible through video dance.

Nuno Veiga - Director, Music & Choreography

Fundação Eugénio de Almeida - Producer

Ana Silva - Dancer & Choreography

Kate Smith - Music

Filipe Sousa - Music

Calm the F down

film by Hanna-Mari Ojala (c) 2020 FINLAND

Hanna Ojala - Director, Writer, Producer & Dancer

Birgitte

film by Taneli Törmä (c) 2023 DENMARK

Birgitte is a dance movie about the courage of making your own life choices - whether good or bad - and living them with sensitivity and openness.

Taneli Törmä - Director

Birgitte Skands - Dancer

SCRUPUS mini

film by Timo Paris (c) 2023 SWITZERLAND

SCRUPUS is an interdisciplinary research. In it I conduct artistic and technical methodological research and investigate the possibilities of interaction between dance, film and architecture. In their encounter I search for the conditions and possibilities of mutual effects on each other with the aim of creating illusory effects of weightlessness and disorientation. In the experiment, new possibilities for temporality, scale, body-space relationship, and sequencing of movement emerge.

Dance | The dance research in SCRUPUS consists of the further development of a movement systematics with a focus on isolated movements and rotations around anchor points, based on the supporting and sustaining function of the body. The focus is on exploring choreographic possibilities and ways of working to elaborate a movement language that creates illusory effects of weightlessness and disorientation.

Architecture | Inspired by a dance culture that comes from the street, I consciously seek a dialogue with the urban environment. With a focus on the direct 1:1 proportionality to the human body, architectural situations are sought whose characteristics serve as a starting point for the development of a movement system. For this purpose, a universally applicable working method is developed, whereby dance, film and the local conditions can always harmonize with each other.

Film | The medium is an integral part of the research process and deliberately added to the authorship. Film has shaped our perception of dance since its inception - with all the possibilities for its (re-)presentation. Nowadays, the viewing of dance increasingly takes place in digital form, which has been reinforced by the situation of the pandemic. Access is becoming more low threshold, the process of curation is transforming and dance is reaching a wider audience. Incorporated into this evolution, the medium of film finds its relevance in this research, on the one hand, as a documentary tool that makes a site-specific work accessible through time and space. On the other hand, it becomes an integral component for generating the desired illusion of weightlessness, which dissolves the boundaries of the body and allows it to merge with the space.

Timo Paris - Director

Jelïn Nichele - Camera

Emiliano aka El Jazzy Chavo Mendez - Sound

I Am Still Waiting

film by Stephanie Liapis (c) 2022 USA

I Am Still Waiting, comes from the restless and still of isolation and a self-imposed attempt to rewild oneself back into life. The text prose by Elena Hecht and performance by Leslie Kraus express an untethering from memory and a dissolution into pastoral abyss. The work was filmed in residency on location in Longford, Ireland.

Stephanie Liapis - Director, Producer & Choreography

Elena Hecht - Writer

Leslie Kraus - Dancer & Choreography

Mitológico

film by Gabriel Torres Morandi (c) 2023 Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela

This dance video presents choreography inspired by mythical beings. At the same time, seeing it makes me nostalgic for what is born and says goodbye to its origins.

Gabriel Torres Morandi - Director, Writer & Producer

Daniela Gonzáles - Dancer

Sain-ma Rada - Dancer

Mind Frame

film by John Calder (c) 2021 CANADA

At the end of an evening out, a man returns to a parking lot to collect his car. As he makes his way through the parking lot, he notices things about his surroundings that begin affect his frame of mind and, in turn, his perception of what is happening.

John Calder - Director

Kurt Werner - Dancer

Gossip

film by Jasmine Mejia (c) 2023 USA

The tea is spilled and the dirt is dished in a rhythmic buzz of motion.

Jasmine Mejia - Filmmaker

Abby Mains - Performer

Michael Wall - Music

PATREON Only

Dance!Dance!Dance!

film by Tianyi Lu (c) 2020 USA

A mute cleaner tries to be a dancer but fails in the end.

Tianyi Lu - Director, Writer & Producer

William Zhong - Dancer