CURATORIAL ESSAY
By Erin Brannigan, Siobhan Murphy and Feras Shaheen
Introduction - curatorial team
This program of dancefilms represents, on the one hand, a certain and specific period of work in Sydney 2000-2008, and on the other, an expansive present and future for the art form.
In Sydney in the 1990s and 2000s, as elsewhere in Australia and the rest of the world, a new genre of short films called dancescreen was being commissioned by broadcasters, supported by arts funding bodies, self-funded by choreographers and directors, and filled bespoke events and festivals that formed an international touring platform for the work. It was important in raising the visibility of dance and dance artists but was also understood as a new intermedial art form that encompassed documentaries and referenced video art as it had emerged since mid-twentieth-century, as well as other screen forms such as music video. Academic books and articles were written, a journal set-up, media reviewed festivals such as ReelDance, and other national programs such as the exhibition 24 Frames Per Second at Carriageworks in 2015 kept the art form visible.
ReelDance ran from 2000-2012 and played an important role in defining the field both nationally and internationally. It was an international festival and installation program (in alternating years) that partnered with organisations across Australia and New Zealand and toured to 12 cities at its peak. International partners included Videodanza in Barcelona, Napolidanza in Naples, Cinedans in Amsterdam, Monaco Dance Forum, Tempo in Christchurch, and dança em foco in Brazil. Funded by the Australia Council for the Arts, Create NSW, NSWFTO and Screen Australia, it supported new work through commissions and workshops, and hosted mentors such as Miriam King, Pascal Magnin, Wim Vandekeybus, Margie Medlin, Miranda Pennell, Thierry de Mey, Katrina McPherson, Simon Fildes and David Hinton. It’s collection is archived at UNSW Library. (Erin Brannigan)
The shift to installation work followed live dance into the gallery and museum, but things went a little quiet internationally until a revival in the early 2020s driven to a large extent by the hyper-visibility of dance online. Recent programs include the primarily online Dance Cinema programming, Flow in Adelaide 2022, and RealReel at the Substation in Melbourne in 2022.
Dance (Lens) at Dancehouse in Melbourne has been programming events since 2020 and throughout the pandemic and has become a hub for local makers with its workshops and industry events as well as a connection to the international scene through partnerships. Dance (Lens) began when Dancehouse’s director, Joshua Wright, sought ways to help dance artists stay in relation with audiences during the first year of pandemic lockdowns.
Dance (Lens) began as a way to present dance content during Melbourne's COVID lockdowns when the only feasible way was through screens. Although there was an abundance of content and creativity over those dark months, the rigour of screendance forms felt the most robust and conscious of how its audience experienced the work. It made sense for Dancehouse to focus on screendance works so we attempted a small weekly program in October-December 2020 of live digital screenings and on-demand content. Dancehouse invited artists and curators to present works and discuss them following their screening. As we began speculating what might be possible programmatically for Dancehouse in 2021, and with renewed interest and passion for screendance locally, it was logical (and encouraged) to attempt hybrid programming which could have both digital and live attendance options as the uncertainty of the pandemic continued. We knew this would be particularly risky during the winter months. A Dance (Lens) festival was exciting, could be "COVID resilient", and was a way to showcase the works of dance artists who had continued to create during the pandemic when dance studios were closed and dancing together was dangerous (Joshua Wright).
Putting archival films from the ReelDance collection into dialogue with two sessions from the 2023 Dance (Lens) program shuttles us between the local and the international and reveals stylistic shifts from an attention to cinematic languages and traditions to more inclusive, accessible screen modalities. The popular is more prominent in the more recent work than the self-consciously avant-garde approaches in the earlier films, and what constitutes 'dance' or 'choreography' seems less to do with techniques of the body or filmmaking and more to do with body languages and communities of practice in the more recent work.
Screendance can often be an initial indication of the direction in which live dance can be heading in a local scene due to its feasibility; a general sense of what's relevant, what's needed and where we are as a broad community. The dialogue between the archival films and the more recent programs from 2023 Dance (Lens) also illustrates the transforming state of this broader community and its extended conversation of what dance can look like locally and internationally, while questioning the limitations (and possibilities) of dance on screen.
ReelDance - Erin Brannigan
The invitation from Liveworks 2023 co-curator Rosie Dennis to revisit ReelDance in the context of the 40th anniversary of Performance Space emerged from a web of relationships and histories. Rosie's rationale was a desire to honour the history of Sydney-based dance screen work in the context of the local dance community, the role of ReelDance therein, and its relationship with Performance Space. For this reason, I chose the curatorial frame of Sydney-based artists whose work was screened in ReelDance 2000-2008 during my time as director. The films include a range of dance forms with influences from Butoh, Bodyweather, Hip Hop, physical theatre, Indigenous dance forms, yoga, and many other styles and training systems that have shaped Sydney dance practice. The filmmakers, choreographers and dancers in the films represent a cross-section of those involved in the Sydney independent dance scene in and around Performance Space during this time.
Over its 12 years, ReelDance encouraged and supported a rich field of practice at the dance-screen interface. ReelDance began as a project for One Extra Company under Executive Producer Janet Robertson and then Amanda Card, with Chair Annette Shun Wah playing a pivotal role in its first iterations. The project was welcomed into Performance Space during Fiona Winning's tenure as Director and the organisation supported its development into an Emerging Key Organisation under the guidance of Justine Shih Pearson (ReelDance Producer 2007-2009). Tracie Mitchell (2009-2011) and Alessio Cavallaro (2011-2012) had periods in the director role before it closed in 2012. It was my hope then as now that a like-organisation would attend to the richness of work at the dance-screen interface. The wealth of practice that ReelDance supported in the dance-screen field has not been equalled since despite the explosion of screen-based contexts since its demise. This has impacted on opportunities available to present screen-based dance work, and the concurrent lack of activity and funding for such work
Dance screen has appeared in programs at Performance Space and Dancehouse since the 1990s; Steps 1 1994, Next Steps 1995, Intersteps 1996 and Antistatic 1997 at Performance Space, and Dance Lumiere 1997, 1998, 1999, Bodyworks on Screen 2000 at Dancehouse, (the latter 2 in partnership with Cinemedia). These programs involved curators Mathew Bergan, Tracie Mitchell, Leisa Shelton, Michelle Mahrer and myself (I curated my first dance screen program for Performance Space in 1997 and Dancehouse in 1998). This partnership between Dancehouse and Performance Space in 2023, recalling their historical roles in supporting early work in the field, might inspire a new pipeline of support that has been missed over the past decade.
I have a deep love for P-Space with a history going back to the mid-1990s during Angharad Wynne Jones’s directorship and have fulfilled many different professional roles there over the years; curatorial team of Antistatic 2001, writer for Performance Space Quarterly (where I published by first review), assistant to Fiona Winning for a period, and a part of various public programs and forums. It is hard to imagine the ReelDance films presented here existing without the cultural context of Performance Space and the excellent coverage of RealTime that provided a discursive container for the works.
Dance (Lens) - Siobhan Murphy, Feras Shaheen
Siobhan: My introduction to dance on screen came with viewing Erin’s curation for the inaugural Reeldance in 2000. A film with Douglas Wright, dancing solo in a cavernous studio, opened my eyes to the ways in which the screen can bring the viewer towards the dancer in ways that are different to a live context. It provided a kind of blueprint for a quiet performative intimacy that in some ways I’ve been pursuing ever since, particularly lately in my work with solo dance and portraits. With this personal lineage of practice in mind, it feels apt to be in a conversation with Erin about how the field has evolved in the last two decades, and how selections from the Reeldance archive can be placed in productive juxtaposition with selected works from Dance(Lens) 2023.
I came on board with Dance (Lens) as a co-curator for the first official selection and international program in 2021, alongside Melissa Ramos and André Shannon. For the 2023 iteration, I remained a co-curator, this time with Feras Shaheen and Gita Wigro. For the 2021 and 2023 iterations, Dance (Lens) has comprised an Official Selection program of between 16 and 20 works, drawn from an open call for new Australian screendance works, and a program devised by each of the curators on a theme close to our hearts, drawing from historical and/or international works. Each curator has also created a reflective piece to contextualise their own programs, such as a video essay, interview or podcast. The aim is to maintain Dance (Lens) as a biennial winter festival that grows in scope and reach, supplementing it in the in-between year with Dance (Lens) Mini, a smaller program of talks and workshops that develops knowledge, skills and networks for practitioners of screendance.
When viewing submissions for official selection in Dance (Lens) over the last few years, the aspect that has been most exciting for me is the inclusive potential of the genre. As a maker, there are two main reasons why screendance has been a pathway for me to retain continuity of practice alongside the vicissitudes of life. There’s the way one can slowly tinker away at a choreographic idea, an edit, a soundscore, because there’s a ‘thing’ one can come back to, the digital object which endures beyond its first moment. Then there’s the way one can send that object out into the world for consideration by others, in screendance festivals all over the world. As a curator, I have been struck by the way in which the form can offer something approaching a level playing field, though I’m aware no such thing fully exists. If a screendance idea is well-conceived and carried out, something shot precariously on a phone with a couple of sharp edits can hold its own alongside something that’s been through a lengthy production phase with attendant budget. Moreover, the short-form tendency within the field means that divergent dance styles and communities can be drawn together via curatorial threads that might be harder to weave together in longer-form live contexts.
Feras: Genres, categories and classification are barriers that I have been facing and questioning since I have entered the arts world. I have only heard the term ‘Screendance’ 3 years ago when I came across an international screendance festival while scrolling the wild world web. Coming across new terms within the disciplines I work within is pretty common due to my irregular journey as a professional dancer and choreographer. I had a more traditional path studying design and film at the University of Western Sydney between 2010-2014. During this time, I was starting my sporadic dance journey which organically eventuated to creating my own dance films… with very minimum dance experience. I initially did this so I could have a subject to test my film skills on. Viewing dance through the lens has helped me appreciate it to another level and helped me understand its potential. Little did I know the world of screendance existed… then my curiosity began and the question surfaced - What can we classify as screendance?! Who knows… luckily I was able to dig deeper into that question after I was asked to be one of the curators for Dance (Lens) 2023. These unconventional ways of learning, experiencing and seeing the world mixed with what I now call my interdisciplinary practice has resulted in curating the program ‘Out of Line’ for Dance (Lens) 2023.
For ‘Out of Line’ I selected films with the intention to blur the borders of what is considered ‘dance’. Dance as storytelling, dance as an exhibition, dance as empowerment. ‘Out of Line’ seeks to highlight dance as a fundamental tenet of humanity, a tool of unification. The selected films use a blend of non-linear and linear forms of editing to create an experience independent of the way we interact with live performance. The post-production purposely shifts perceptions of the subject’s movement and actively questions the importance of a clear narrative, especially when paired with a shorter duration. These films also dig deep into the relationship between sound and image. ‘Out of Line’ centres on the non-traditional, paying close attention to those who operate in the periphery.
Erin would like to thank Dr. Caroline Wake for her research support on this article through her ongoing work in the Performance Space Archive, and Justine Shih Pearson, Amanda Card and Alessio Cavallaro for editorial support. She would also like to thank Glenn Thompson for the ReelDance jingle and Clare Britton for the ReelDance table design.