Originally devised as a four-part course for Close-Up Cinema, London, Portland Green and co-presenters: journalist and author, Michael Carlson; curator, filmmaker and writer, Helena Blaker and filmmaker David Roland Warwick present four inter-connecting lectures, using film clips and presentations to explore the relationship between dance and film; from its beginnings in the cinema of the early 1900s through the classic film dance partnerships of the 1930s and 40s to its expression in experimental moving image of the present day.
Image credit: Spintex, Gina Czarnecki & Ulf Langheinrich, 2008

9 - 30 April 2018
Close-Up Film Course: Dance/Film: Speaking Back to the Canon
Portland Green leads a four part evening course alongside a selection of guest co-presenters: journalist and author, Michael Carlson; curator, filmmaker and writer, Helena Blaker; producer Abigail Addison and filmmaker David Warwick. Through four inter-connecting sessions, the course uses film clips and presentations to explore the relationship between dance and film; from its beginnings in the cinema of the early 1900s through the classic film dance partnerships of the 1930s and 40s to its expression in experimental moving image of the present day.

While the course discusses the work of Löie Fuller, the Lumière Brothers, Oskar Schlemmer, Busby Berkeley, Powell and Pressburger, Maya Deren, Talley Beatty, Norman McLaren, Robert Wise, Jerome Robbins, Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Gene Kelly, Merce Cunningham, Stan Van Der Beek, Lloyd Newson, Clara van Gool, Sylvie Guillem, Mats Ek, William Forsythe, Gina Czarnecki, Ulf Langheinrich, Darren Aronofsky, OpenEnded Group, the Quay Brothers, Thierry De Mey, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, Philippe Decouflé, and Quayola to name but a few; it seeks to highlight lesser-known, overlooked contributors to the intersecting histories of dance, film and contemporary practice.

Monday 9 April, 7-9pm
Week 1: Dance and Cinema – Other Histories

Led by Portland Green and Helena Blaker, this session introduces the course, outlining some of the themes explored in the four sessions. It then takes a historical look at dance and the cinema, asking whose history has been fostered, is the most widely known, discussed and screened in these films?

Monday 16 April, 7-9pm
Week 2: Dance, Cinema and Gender

Led by Portland Green and Michael Carlson, this session is about the gender roles in film and dance, including how they are emphasised and distorted in feature film. The session shows how feature films have regressed since the 1940s, perpetuating the narrow gender roles assumed in much of traditional dance and how feature films shoehorn the dance roles into a template in which women artists must suffer and sacrifice for their art.

Monday 23 April, 7-9pm
Week 3: Dance and the Cinema of the Body

Led by Portland Green and David Roland Warwick, this session challenges the branch of contemporary French cinema variously referred to as the Cinema of the Body and New French Extremity, with the physicalized body in selected dance films of the last 30 years. In doing so the session explores the idea that dance has the potential to introduce a new kind of cinematic body.

Monday 30 April, 7-9pm
Week 4: Experimental Approaches

Led by Portland Green and Abigail Addison, the final session looks at a range of approaches to dance in moving image genres such as experimental film, animation, dance for camera and artists’ moving image exploring where dance has been a subject of enquiry, a subject of the image or a means of collaboration.

Read more here: http://www.closeupfilmcentre.com/film_programmes/2018/close-up-film-course-dance-film-speaking-back-to-the-canon/