Philadelphia Dance Projects

The Annual Shorts Program will feature clever, poetic, and animated dance videos from around the world. The program will preview Everywhere, an online video project by Philadelphia-based choreographer Kate Watson-Wallace and award-winning shorts from the Dance On Camera Festival 2010 at Lincoln Center in New York.

Now in its 9^th year, Motion Pictures explores how film and video serve as a natural collaborative medium for dance, highlighting the power of image and motion in both. The festival features experimental and innovative shorts, documentaries, “moc”umentaries and animations.

Everywhere
Kate Watson-Wallace

The shorts program will also preview Everywhere by local choreographer Kate Watson-Wallace. Everywhere is an online dance experience with two main components: a virtual dance contest which takes place on the internet via the video sharing website Vimeo; and a new dance work that will be created in collaboration with the online audience. For Motion Pictures, Watson-Wallace will be on hand to discuss the project’s concept, demonstrate the website and preview preliminary video entries. The project will have a home base, the Everywhere website, in which audiences can learn about the dance contest, vote for their favorite dances, see winning dances, and contribute to choreographing a dance, which they can watch develop through video postings on the site. Visit www.everywhereproject.org for updates.

Shorts from the Dance On Camera Festival 2010

Little Ease [outside the box] – Nominated for Jury Prize for Best Short

Ami Ipapo and Matt Tarr, USA, 2008; 7m
A new take on a classic piece of choreography conceived in 1985 by extreme action pioneer Elizabeth Streb. Through the use of the camera, we remove obstacles to the conversation between performer, environment and witness, taking this inspiring and athletic movement out of its typical context. Preview the film online here, http://www.vimeo.com/2070106

The Last Martini – Nominated for Jury Prize for Best Short

Vickie Mendoza, USA, 2009; 7m
Inspired by the noir films of the 1940s and 1950s and the posters that publicized them, The Last Martini plays out the rain-soaked reverie of a man whose psyche becomes tangled in a broken dance of passion and heartbreak.

Sunscreen Serenade – Nominated for Jury Prize for Best Short

Kriota Willberg, USA, 2009; 6m
Sunscreen Serenade pays homage to great dance film techniques of the 1930’s, translating the Hollywood soundstage to a “microfilm” video environment. This innovative homage to Busby Berkeley celebrates the merits of skin protection. Commissioned by EMPAC DANCE MOViES 2008.

Entanglement Theory
Richard James Allen, Karen Pearlman and Gary Hayes, Australia, 2009: 10M
A busy dancing man takes a nap in two realities. His live self dreams and his avatar self dreams. Neither reality is quite so simple when they wake.

CINÉTICA – Jury Winner Prize for Best Short

Ana Cembrero, Spain, 2008; 25m
A woman inhabits, searches, dances, fights, and plays without separating what is lived from what is dreamed.

Motion Pictures is presented in partnership with “Dance with Camera,” an exhibition now on view at the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania (www.icaphila.org), Film @ International House, and the Dance Film Association’s Touring Partners Program. Kate Watson-Wallace’s Everywhere is made possible by a grant from the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage through Dance Advance.