The second entry of my three-part series of Kaleidoscope events took place on Thursday, April 26 in the Advanced Technology and Science Hall Auditorium. It was the Third Coast Dance Film Festival, which celebrates the intersection of contemporary dance and the moving image with a screening series of short dance films.
This dance film festival was an hour-long program that featured both national and international choreographers, dancers, and filmmakers who excel in the dance film as a distinct art form. The Third Coast Dance Festival was able to be shown at Slippery Rock University through the donation of SRU alumna Rosie Trump.
Colleen Reily is the Director of the Kaleidoscope Arts Festival.
Overall, 10 dance film videos were shown over the hour-long program. Some were longer than others, but each brought its own uniqueness to the overall feel of the Third Coast Dance Film Festival.
One of my favorite pieces that were shown was entitled “Nobody’s Darling” and was made in the United States in 2010. The dance film was directed and choreographed by Marta Renzi, and featured dancers Amos Wolff and Tina Vasquez. It is easy to tell from the clip, but the dance film is a duet danced by a pair of independent spirits, whose intimacy is both tough and tender. The graphic treatment of the image and their posture definitely heightened the underlying sexual tension between the two dancers.
Lola was the first piece shown on the April 26 to the audience, and was directed and choreographed by Anna Potapova. Lola’s description is that she cannot speak, but she knows how to feel and how to dance. She is the only one around who expresses herself by dancing. The people around her live ordinary lives, but Lola used ballet in order to speak. The music for this piece was by Xploding Plastix.
One of the most interesting clips shown at the Third Coast Dance Film Festival was Stranger Dances, which was also created in 2010 in the United States. The dance film was a simple way of showing the wide variety of dances people would do in front of the camera. It explores the unpredictable dance moves that people would choose to express themselves through movement, which most of the time was very humorous. The dance film was directed, produced, and edited by Sabrina Cavins.
Dead and Cast Away (United States, 2010) and Plan B (United States, 2011) were two other clips that I really enjoyed throughout the hour-long performances. Dead and Cast Away featured three dancers that embody different personalities inside each of us. It was directed and choreographed by Emily Lockard.
Plan B as choreographed and directed by Jasmine Ellis, and gives the viewer a glimpse about waiting. Three young men are impatiently waiting for their laundry to be finished, and have to come up with ways to occupy themselves in the meantime.
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