SCREENCHOREOGRAPHY Challenging the artistic and conceptual parameters of choreography and dance. Marion Poeth Student number: 3448924 Thesis MA Theatre Studies Utrecht University Tutor: Dr. Chiel Kattenbelt Second reader: Prof. Dr. Maaike Bleeker August 2011 Choreography and cinema share an intense interest in moving bodies and their relation to space and time. Both could be considered moving arts, interrogating the nature and quality of movement and producing new varieties of movement through their work with the body, theatre design, mise en scène, objects, camera, edit, and postproduction effects. Erin Brannigan1 1 Brannigan, Erin. Dancefilm: Choreography and the moving image. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), viii. 1 Acknowledgements I would like to thank everyone who helped and supported me throughout this research. I would like to thank those who helped checking and correcting my English. Special thanks goes to Chiel Kattenbelt for guiding me through this process with great enthusiasm and for giving me much needed theoretical feedback. 2 Table of Contents 1. Introduction 4 2. What is screendance? 7 2.1. History of the dancefilm 7 2.2. What are Screendance and screenchoreography? 11 3. Case study – Aesthetic framework 16 3.1. Aesthetic panorama as framework 16 3.2. Body 17 3.3. Camera 21 3.4. Space 29 3.5. Time 33 3.6. Sound 36 4. Expanding artistic boundaries of choreography and dance 40 4.1. Possibilities for choreography 40 4.2. Cinematic principals in theatrical dance choreography 50 4.3. Conclusion 54 5. Challenging the conceptual parameters of dance 57 5.1. Expanding the conceptual boundaries of choreography and dance 57 5.2. Editing as a choreographic process 61 5.3. The screen choreographer 63 5.4. Conclusion 64 6. Conclusion 66 6.1. Results 66 6.2. Extended research 69 7. Bibliography 71 8. Filmography 74 9. List of performances 76 10. Appendix 77 10.1. David Hinton lecture 77 10.2. DVD 81 3 1. Introduction Film and video have spawned entirely new forms of dance, created when director and choreographer go beyond the constraints of the body and find new ways to capture human motion. Whether a documentation tool, a study aid, or a creative medium, the recorded moving image has forever changed the way we perceive and experience dance. 2 Maya Deren There are many examples of dance on screen that are well known to a large audience. The fast edited dance scenes in Step Up 3d (2010), the live broadcasted performances of dancers on TV shows such as So You Think You Can Dance (2009) and the many new dance styles shown in numerous music video’s are a few of those examples. This thesis will not focus on these commercially produced screendance forms. Rather it wishes to emphasize another form of screendance, one in which “the dance and the cinematography are combined in such a way that a form of choreography is created that is only possible on screen. This form or category of screendance is often referred to as screenchoreography by festivals such as the Dutch Cinedans festival and by screendance critics and writers such as Claudia Rosiny. Screenchoreography is a form of intermedia art, a hybrid art form that comes forth out of film and dance. Screenchoreography is more than ‘dance on film’ or ‘dance for film’, statements that suggest that the dance is in service of the film. Although in many screendance productions this is the case, screenchoreography can be seen as ‘dance as film’.3 This means that neither medium is in service of the other, but that the two are combined in such a way, that they create a new type of cinematic choreography, a new art form. Screendance and screenchoreography have however also led to much debate and critique, inciting that the two are not complementary. Critique has been directed at the ‘flatness’ of dance on screen as compared to the ‘liveness’ and risks of stage dance.4 Consequently these critics do not acknowledge screendance or screenchoreography as an art form on its own. The fact that many do not acknowledge screendance as a hybrid form is also due to the lack of a critical discourse on screendance, as well as an elaborate theoretical framework and methodology. Additionally, this lack is due to the fact that many of those critics come from either field of dance or film and thus also place screendance in either dance or film discourse. This is because they see it as an invention coming from the dance field or as a genre within the film medium.5 2 Mitoma, Judy. Envisioning Dance on Film and Video. (New York and London: Routledge, 2002), xxxi. 3 Kappenberg, Claudia. “Does screendance need to look like dance?” in: International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media, Volume 5 Numbers 2&3. (© Intellect Ltd, 2009), 90. 4 Dodds, Sherril. Dance on Screen: Genres and Media from Hollywood to Experimental Art. (2001) (Eastbourne: Antony Rowe Ltd, tweede druk, 2004), 16. 5 Rosenberg, D. “Proposing a theory of screendance”. In: Proceedings ADF (American Dance Festival) Screendance State of the Art 1, (2006, 6–9 July, Durham, NC: Duke University), 12. 4 Perspective However, this thesis will claim that screendance can be considered a hybrid, or an art form on its own. Because it produces a type of movement generated by two ‘forms of writing’, cinematography and choreography.6 From this perspective, further claims will be made about the choreographic possibilities that screenchoreography opens up, due to collaboration between the choreographer and the director, and between dance and film. Moreover, screenchoreography work can challenge our traditional perception patterns, as well as the established definitions of choreography and dance. It is this claim that brings forth my hypothesis: The combination of cinematography and choreography in screenchoreography productions expand the established artistic and conceptual boundaries of choreography and dance. This research is positioned within the paradigm of screendance theory and analysis. However, discourse on screendance is initiated in both the film and dance field, therefore film and dance theory cannot be excluded. Furthermore, the formulation of the hypothesis makes clear that the goal of this thesis is to point out how cinematography challenges choreography and dance, rather than how choreography challenges cinematography or cinema. Consequently, the greater part of the information gained by this research is more useful for the field of screendance and dance than it is for the film field. However, the focus in this thesis lies on the hybrid nature of screenchoreography. It is the combination between film and dance that opens up possibilities for choreography and dance. Therefore, the perspective from which this thesis has been written is ‘movement’, rather than choreography or cinematography, dance or film. Taking movement instead of dance or film as the main perspective has also made possible a more equal analysis of screenchoreography, favouring neither dance nor film. Without losing sight of the fact that in screenchoreography the screen is the medium trough which we perceive the choreography and the ‘dancing’. The cinematography and the fact that the ‘dance’ is mediated on a screen and not on a stage, makes it possible for choreographers to challenge the established parameters of dance. Structure The structure of the thesis is set out in four parts. The first part consists out of the introduction and the second chapter, which gives a brief history of dance on screen. It highlights the differences in the types of collaboration between dance and film, seen from the perspective of movement. Next, it presents an analysis of the recent discourse and debate on screendance, focussing on how screendance can be seen as a hybrid art form because of its interdisciplinary. followed by a motivation and clarification of the term screenchoreography. The third chapter is a descriptive study, in which the principal objective is to point out how the interplay between cinematography and choreography creates movement in screenchoreography 6 Kappenberg (2009), 90. 5 work. The screenchoreography works will be discussed using an aesthetic framework proposed by Claudia Rosiny in her book Videotanz: Panorama einer intermedialen Kunstform (1999). 7 She proposes five aesthetic perspectives or concepts, from which we can look at dancefilms: body, camera, space, time and sound. Each perspective will be discussed individually, with recent examples of screenchoreography work. Chapter four reflects on the findings from chapter three. It tries to answer the following question. What do these findings tell us about the choreography on the screen? How do the cinematography and choreography challenge each other and how is the movement created? In what additional ways could movement be created trough this combination. What does a cinematic view on choreography entail? What does this say about the work itself and how does a cinematic view on dance challenge the way we perceive it? Afterwards, it looks at the influence of cinematography on choreographic practices in theatrical dance. It will discuss several dance performances in which traces of cinematography can be found in the structure of the movement and choreography. The last chapter proposes how these choreographic practices on the screen can consequently expand our conceptual notions of choreography and dance. Cinematography opens possibilities for choreographic practices because it frees it from the parameters of theatrical dance. Furthermore, the fact that the dance is mediated through the screen challenges the way we are used to look at dance. This is were the opportunity for screenchoreography lies, to challenge our established perception patterns of dance and trigger us to individually uncover new layers of meaning to dance on screen. Next, this chapter will suggest how choreographic principles can be applied outside of screendance, as a method for editing cinematic films. Next it looks at the role of the choreographer in the filmmaking process of screenchoreography and other films.