If you thought ‘dance for camera’ was the inevitable response of artistes to a two-year no-show induced by the pandemic, you would have been proved completely wrong at March Dance’s 2022 edition. The annual event by Basement 21, being held at Goethe Institut in Chennai, began by showcasing early experiments, going as far back as the late 19th century, when choreographers produced works specifically for the camera.
The first film screened was pioneering modernist Loïe Fuller’s Serpentine Dance, in which Loïe creates swirling elegant shapes and fluid snaking lines by waving her voluminous skirt, sometimes almost vanishing into yards of silk. The dance became part of motion pictures of that era, including the Lumière brothers’ 1897 film that recreated a Loïe choreography.
It was not easy to comprehend and appreciate experimental American dance filmmaker Maya Deren’s The Very Eye of Night. Released in 1958, it was Maya’s final film, whose ‘cosmic plot’ did not go down well with viewers and critics, unlike her other works. Dancers, shown in photographic negative, perform under a night sky lit up by bright stars. Appearing like cardboard cutouts, their movements seem to defy gravity as they rotate and slide in groups or individually. “In film I can make the world dance,” she wrote. And she does that in The Very Eye of Night, where she plays with body kinetics, light, lens and graphics. As the closing credits appear on the screen, the name that stands out is of choreographer Anthony Tudor, who drives home the point that dance film need not have a narrative. But what it must have is a set of movements designed just for the camera.
Loïe Fuller’s Serpentine Dance, | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
The films screened at March Dance showed how there cannot be a straitjacket formula to choreography. It should essentially make the viewers interpret the choreographer’s imagination. And films offer much more liberty than stage, since the camera goes beyond the constraints of time, space and expressions.
Composer and performer Meredith Monk’s Turtle Dreams was a perfect example of how composers can stretch their imagination to gigantic proportions like the monstrous-sized turtle in the film that moves over different terrains, from the woods to city streets. The film by Ping Chong, a screen version of Meredith’s album, was as much an experiment in human voice, the range it can scale, sounding normal and eerie at the same time. Four dancers, two male and two female, execute mechanical and minimalist moves, as if stuck in a boxing ring, and also make repetitive sounds. The 1983 film was a showcase of rhythm all around — in human steps, in voice, and in the slow movement of the turtle. Turtle Dreams also seemed to convey how below our so-called tough exteriors (like the turtle’s solid shell), we are all a bundle of emotions.
The film the small gathering waited to watch that evening was obviously celebrated choreographer Merce Cunnigham’s Beach Birds for Camera. Based on a dance production created for the stage, Merce amazingly makes the camera part of the dance, and there’s never a moment when the dancers look into the lens. During his seven-decade journey of innovations, he constantly worked on productions that seamlessly blended visual arts, music and dance.
Meredith Monk’s Turtle Dreams | Photo Credit: Goethe Institut
The dancers in this piece are in white body stockings, their arms covered in black, and appear like seagulls. Like the birds that are still one moment and take flight the next, the dancers stand calm on their toes even as they sway their hands, cock heads, flutter wrists and shuffle their feet. They swiftly huddle together and move apart, quite like a flock of birds that lands on the ground, hurries about, and then soars into the air. The dancers’ movements in the film are defined by both synchronised and random patterns.
Merce’s choreographies, many of which he developed with composer John Cage, are both intense physically and thought-provoking. Cage’s music for Beach Birds gives the effect of rippling waters and vast plains. After a point, the sound and movements could appear monotonic and you begin to wonder at the purpose of the piece, but Merce had a unique way of connecting with the audience. He did not believe in hand-holding them, instead he allowed them the freedom to make his works their own by focusing on aspects that appealed to them.
That is the idea of modern dance: here the viewer becomes a partner in the artiste’s creative process. The randomness and indeterminacy may make it hard to decipher and understand a work at the first instance, but the aim is to let it grow on you.
Maya Deren The Very Eye of Night. | Photo Credit: Goethe Institut
