FilmFest by Rogue Dancer: Whims-ie
(January 2024)
This artist would venture to say if any film has dance in it, it becomes a little bit more whimsical. So how do we infuse a little bit more Whims-ie into a dance film?
January 19 - February, 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
Tomba Brion
film by Mark Freeman ITALY
Italian choreographer/dancer Siro Guglielmi traces space and time in Carlo Scarpa's modernist masterpiece the tomb of Brion in San Vito d'Altivole, Italy.
Mark Freeman - Director & Producer
Siro Guglielmi - Dancer
Tommy Ilai - Cinematographer
Memory
film by Iskra Prodanova (c) 2023 BULGARIA
The film explores the connection between individual and collective memory and the layers that are part of us.
How much of our deeds, gestures, thoughts, and reactions are really ours, and which of them are deeply rooted in us by the context and our family story. We are all connected and we share a memory of a collective organism even thou sometimes we feel lost in our identity.
The film was made with non-professionals as a result of a workshop related to the topic of identity and memory.
Iskra Prodanova - Director
Yanko Kutin - Camera and editing
Mytrip Angel Simitchiev - Sound
Dancers - Alexander Gabrovski, Zhasmina Manolova, Maria-Magdalena Arnaudova, Mira Gaydarova, Nikolay Dikov, Hristina Ivanova & Yasen Kalinin
Conjoined
film by Charly Santagado, Eriel Santagado (c) 2023 USA
Conjoined is a narrative duet inspired by the chronic exploitation of conjoined twins, especially in relation to the world of entertainment. Two dancers wear one large skirt, exploring maximal physicality within this limitation.
Charly Santagado - Director & Dancer
Eriel Santagado - Director & Dancer
mignolo dance - Producer
Haven & Hazard - Producer& Dancer
Brzemię/ Bória
film by Iwona Pasińska (c) 2018 POLAND
The first and last scene of the short film "Bória" is filled by the painting of Zofia Stryjeńska entitled "Seasons. November - December (Pageant I - with a deer), growing out of the inspiration with the Polish and Hutsul folk culture. The dynamics of the bursting canvas, which is the quintessence of the decorative style in the painting of the Polish interwar period, prompts you to launch the action, wake up the flat composition, and introduce live movement. The director of the film, Iwona Pasińska, treated a painter’s approach, namely the procession of the characters glittering with all colours, as an impulse to compose the choreography and build subsequent scenes that make up the metaphor of life in the community, moving on the line of life, experiencing good and evil, happiness and pain, unchanging rhythm of the nature and change of fate. Two worlds – the one of the individual and the one of the community – are separated by an invisible border. Because the community under a fabulously colourful and ludic mask of customs, traditions and ritual hides a different face. It throws outside the margin, "bites" and rejects.
The visual layer of the 9-minute film is co-created with ornamental motifs drawn from Stryjeńska's painting. Fragmentary narration is built of the words of traditional songs in the arrangement and performance of the Maliszów Band, which overlap with the language of contemporary dance. Interspecific combination of the dance film and painting makes the second-ever film production of the Polish Dance Theatre an interdisciplinary experiment from the borderland of arts.
Iwona Pasińska - Director & Writer
Polish Dance Theatre - Producer
Dancers - Evelyn Blue, Kacper Bożek, Julia Hałka, Paulina Jaksim, Jerzy Kaźmierczak, Victoria Kennett, Katarzyna Kulmińska, Dominik Kupka, Volodymyr Makovskyi, Michał Przybyła, Adrian Radwański, Katarzyna Rzetelska, Sandra Szatan, Dominik Więcek & Emily Wong
Marek Grabowski - Cinematographer
Edyta Pietrowska - Editing
Andrzej Grabowski - Scenography & Costumes
Zofia Grzybowska - Costumes
Kuluza Studio - Costumes
Adriana Cygankiewicz - Costumes
Music - Zuzanna Malisz, Jan Malisz & Kacper Malisz
Shapes of Aether
film by Elias Benedikt Choi-Buttinger (c) 2023 AUSTRIA
"Shapes of Aether" is a dance film that explores the concept of aether through movement language. Aether, also known as the fifth element, is a concept that has been interpreted to be a divine and transformative force that surrounds us. The film presents an ethereal, unseen force that permeates our surroundings and can be captured through the fluid movements of the human form.
The primeval landscape, a testament to the power of the four elements, earth, air, fire, and water. Through the dancer’s body, the different elements communicate, embodying a connection between the human body and nature. The film also delves into the idea that consciousness can form physical shapes and how this connection to aether can lead to a deeper understanding of oneself, with the power to facilitate a personal transformation. The dancer becomes a conduit for the elements, allowing their energy to flow through and be expressed in the art of cinematography.
The film features the movements of the body, words, sounds, and human understanding combined to create an immersive experience, inviting the audience to connect with the primal forces of nature and reflect the pulse of the earth beneath their feet.
Elias Benedikt Choi-Buttinger - Director & Producer
Weng Teng Choi-Buttinger - Dancer, Producer & Writer
S A L O P I C A
Film by Serenella Sol & Callum McCormack (c) 2023 CANADA
Amidst the vibrant colours and rhythmic beats of Venezuela, a young woman uncovers her passion for dance. But as she struggles to conform to society's rigid beauty standards, she embarks on a disorienting and tumultuous journey of self-discovery, leaving her country, culture and innocence in a violent and abrupt awakening.
Serenella Sol - Director, Writer, Producer, Choreography, Dancer, Costumes & Set
Callum McCormack - Director, Producer, Editor & Set
Arturo Rondón - Music/Sound Design
Dancers - Beth Durnie, Barbara England & Natasha Korney
Carmen Galarraga - Costume Design
Assistant Directors - Alyssa Maturino, Jared Herring & Mark Hopkins
Ben
Film by Teresa Sala, Ilaria Vergani Bassi, Gabriel Beddoes & Mattia Parisotto (c) 2019 ITALY
Ben opens his eyes in the humid morning of a midseason. To welcome him, still lit, the lights of the city, its traffic lights, the murky river. White as an empty sheet, Ben does not know the codes of language, much less those of the body.
His awakening trudges through the puddles of water and the flight of seagulls, in a new world that surprises him. Overwhelmed with moving images - human gestures and mechanical motions in the urban chaos - pulled like a pawn by a sharp tram, Ben tries to assimilate and imitate what he sees.
And in this almost synchronicity, in this carrying and wandering, he stumbles into a creature similar to him: a counterweight with which to talk, a friendly body that soothes his gaze. So Ben is now free to dance life in the fog.
Teresa Sala - Director & Writer
Ilaria Vergani Bassi - Director & Writer
Gabriel Beddoes - Director & Writer
Mattia Parisotto - Director & Writer
COORPI - Producer
Aldo Rendina - Dancer
Doriana Crema - Dancer
Lucia Carolina De Rienzo - Executive Producer
A biography
film by Alexander Schellow (c) 2017 GERMANY
How can a person suffering from Alzheimer's still tell their own life?
In the common room of an Alzheimer's clinic, music from the radio mixes with the low volume clatter of plates, the steps, the door movements or the quiet click of a light switch. The acoustic landscape triggers the dancing of an old lady in a wheelchair. She "remembers".
A_biography recollects through drawn animation, point by point, the emergence of a memory exactly where it seems lost - remembering: the possibility of being at a "point of view". This process takes place in a gliding state of constant transformation on the surface of a now closed body of memory.
A_biography is not a fictional biography. A_biography realizes a biography as fiction.
Alexander Schellow - Director & Producer
Jean-Laurent Csinidis - Producer
Entropy
film by Jan Hajšen (c) 2023 SLOVENIA/ CROATIA
Contemporary flamenco dance film
Entropy is closely connected to randomness, that is, absence of information - in living beings this primary information is the DNA that controls the entropy and prevents chaos. The movie is an illustration of chaos in an apocaliptic world and a structure that holds the space together.
Jan Hajšen - Director
Drustvo Predmestje - Producer
Mitja Obed - Dancer
Zander's Dream
film by Leslie Lashinsky (c) 2022 USA
A Collage of Music, Movement and Colorful Characters
Leslie Lashinsky - Director
Stan Ayeroff - Composer & Guitar
Zander Ayeroff - Video Editing, Special Effects & Costumes
Sid Page - Violin
Dan Higgins - Woodwinds
Dave Stone - Bass
Brad Dutz - Percussion
Dancers - Tiffany Elghanian, Tara Hadley, Azuki Kato, Anna Konstantinovsky, Sarah Lewis, Heather Ongpauco, Zuleny Ordonez &
Stasya Statcenkoancer
Billy Winger - Composer
Kingdom
film by Magpie Dance UK
Created with artists from Akram Khan company, Kingdom explores the movement of animals from across the globe in multiple habitats.
Magpie Dance - Director
Battle for Swan Lake
film by Joan Carol Gratz
Cats, a dog, and a fish head perform the classic ballet, Swan Lake.
Joan Carol Gratz - Director & Producer
Color Your Mind
film by Axel Werner (c) 2021 GERMANY
Free yourself, explore creative imagination, let your ideas be infectious, and help others to unleash their powers. Fantasy traveling always brings back freedom as a souvenir.
In 1871, an oppressed worker escapes her foreman into the realm of fantasy. Her creativity inspires her companions. Together they overcome their tormentor and free his spirit as well.
Axel Werner - Director, Writer, Producer, Dancer & Composer
Peter Mang - Producer
Dancers - David Valencia, Amelie Lambrichts, Alexander Hille, Anna Greenberg & Joaquin Angelucci
gEARS, a factory fairy tale
film by Carlo Magri (c) 2023 ITALY
A factory, if safe, can be transformed into an "enchanting" place.
The noise of machinery becomes, for the little protagonist, real music and the movement of gears suggests light dance steps to her.
gEARS is a fairy tale that transforms workspace into the most beautiful place.
Paola Samoggia - Musica & Writer
Carlo Magrì - Director
Imagem Srl - Producer
Rita Forlani - Writer
Hektor Budlla - Coreografo
Igor Caiazza - Percussian
Martina Dall'Asta - Dancer
Elena Casolari - make-up
Stefano Giglioli - cameras and drones -Master&Co
Bartolo Sicari - still photographer
Maurizio Lelli - second camera -Master&Co
Enrico Capalbo - mix audio presso Fonoprint
Alessandra Bonzi - international relations
Isabella Amidei - production secretary
Assolo D'oro
film by Matthew Boyd (c) 2023 USA
San Francisco Ballet Soloist Ellen Rose-Hummel takes to the sands of northern California to perform original choreography for Piero Piccioni's "Amore Mio Aiutami"
Matthew Boyd - Director & Producer
Ellen Rose Hummel - Producer & Dancer
PATREON Only
THE SUM OF OUR DREAMS
film by Jérémie Battaglia (c) 2022 CANADA
In the heart of a mystical forest, human beings are sleeping. Their minds are off dreaming of faraway lands, where their spirits can float light and giddy. A world both real and imaginary, "The Sum of our Dreams," presents an intimate experience that is graced with unique, heart-stopping skill.
Jérémie Battaglia - Director & Writer
Johanne Madore - Director & Writer
Elodie Pollet - Producer