PICKS 3
September 28th @ 7:30PM | The Tomorrow Theater | Run Time: 94 minutesIf Picks 3 were a dinner party, it would carry on late into the night, slipping into the realm in between this and that. We end our 2024 Festival with 9 films that evoke geological and bodily time, grief’s many longings and stalemates, the horrors of piecing ourselves back together, the refreshment of piecing ourselves back together, and we follow our dance elders as they offer themselves to the luminous mundanity of a life given to the dance of it all. These films come to us from the USA, China, Spain, Japan, and Sweden. Picks 3 runs ~1hr. 50min.
Where Once There Was Water
United States
Directors: Mike Tyus @miketyus , Luca Renzi @luca_francesco_renzi
Choreographers: Mike Tyus , Luca Renzi
Dancers: Chelsea Fenner @chelseafenner_ , Bethany Green @begreenie , Brian Heil @heilbrian , Rony Lenis @glamour_kittenn , Katie Spagnoletti @spaganator , Carly Topazio @ctopazio , Jeremy Zapanta @airjer_zapanta
Composer: Amyra Leon @amyraleon
Producer: The Rosin Box Project @the_rosinbox_project
Steadicam: Brandon Lazo @doso_lazo
First AC: Taylor Lazo @tayrene23
Where Once There Was Water is a film from The Rosin Box Project with Choreography and Direction by Mike Tyus and Luca Renzi. Created for stage, and film adaptation, it premiered live in San Diego in August of 2023.
Poet
China
Concept, Movement Director, Producer, Dancer: Yang Sun @yang_sun47
Concept, Filming Director, Camera, Editing: Mofei Wei @mofei_weiii
Lighting, Camera @quhaha_
Composer: Kian @kianless
“Poet” is a dance film inspired by Chinese poet Yu Xiuhua, a rural woman with cerebral palsy, who recently became famous in China. Many started to know her works from her audacious Poem “Crossing Half of China to Sleep with You”. Living in a conservative rural village in southern China where prejudice against women, disability, and divorce are high, she managed to break free from an unwanted marriage and live her life as a writer despite the satirical voices around.
“Yu Xiuhua’s poem came into my life when I was trapped in the question of “why do I dance?”. Her poems share a raw intimacy with all the simple strength in nature, the grain, river, and mountain… Her words are like grains of wheat, rooted deeply into the earth, dancing upwards, full of unwavering determination to live vigorously and on her own terms. Despite her disability, pain, and struggles, she holds a nearly insane dedication and pursuit for exuberant vitality. This unbattered persistence touched my soul, and that is the moment I realized that I dance out of my most sincere love and reverence to life, all lives.” -Yang Sun
“I wonder where her clarity and courage come from, but there are many metaphors of wheat and nature in her writings. I found that people are often touched by nature in the most difficult moments, such as the incredible survival of animals or plants in harsh environments. When juniper is made into a specimen, it can still come back to life when it encounters water. The swelling of plants can penetrate through cracks in rocks. Significant or small, there exists this natural and primitive force to survive. So are her poems, they are fueled with primitive forces to live and survive.”
– Mofei Wei
This is a dance film dedicated to the vigor, courage, struggle, fight, freedom, love for nature Yu Xiuhua has inspired in all of us.
carefully
United States
Director & Choreographer: Austin Goodwin
Dancers: Sara Mearns and Paul Zivkovich
Director of Photography: Drew Dawson
Editor: Or Schraiber
Colorist: Stuart Wheeler
Sound Designer & Composer: Taylor Bense
Additional Composer, Violin & Viola: Pete Lanctot
Costume Design: Harriet Jung and Reid Barelme
Gaffer: Jonathan Alvarado
Steadicam: Kyle Derry
1st AC: Ryan Nocella
Producer: Ross LeClair and Joyce Theater Productions
Co-Producer: Paul Zivkovich
BTS Photographer: Paul Simon
Special Thanks: Metropolitan Building and Marta Miller
Carefully explores the space between memory and reality. In a series of vignettes, throughout a day’s time, we intimately see what was, what is, and what could be- or what never existed at all.
Cendres (Cinders)
Spain
Director, Choreographer, & Dancer: Oskar Luko @oskarluko
Director of Photography & Editor: Lluis Miras @lluismiras
Music: Arnau Musach @arnaumusach
A man ascends through a dry and inhospitable landscape, searching for the appropriate place to perform his intimate and personal rite of expiation, as a vital need to reconnect with his environment and his present.
Now I Hold You Close
United States
Director: Audrey Rachelle @audreyrachelle123
Producer and Choreographer: AnA Collaborations @anacollaborations
Director of Photography: Blake Horn @blakehornfilm
Editor: Samantha Smith @samantharachelsmith
Dancers: Audrey Rachelle and Alex Oliva @alex0liva
Sound & Mix: Jonah Rosenberg @rhythmbeard
Cellist: Mariel Roberts @robertsmariel
Editor: Erik Choquette
PA: Theresa Stanley @ladytstanz, Ellie van Bever @ellievb
A woman suffering from night terrors uncovers layers of disassociation in a final effort to awaken wholeness.
Danser avec le temps (Dancing with Time)
Canada
Screenwriting and direction: Marie Lavorel, Tamar Tembeck and Paul Tom
Executive producer: Euphrosyne
Production assistance: Nicolas de Pins
Cinematography: Hugo Gendron
Additional footage: Paul Tom
Sound engineering: Lynne Trépanier
Additional sound engineering: Martine Morin, Marc-André Labonté
Editing: Paul Tom, Eve Leclair
Musical supervision: Paul Tom
Sound design: Pierre Yves Drapeau, Sacha Ratcliffe
Sound mixing: Pierre Yves Drapeau
Titles and graphic design: Julie Gauthier
Color grading: Cyril Perrot-Botella C.S.I.
Online editing: Philippe Le Siège
Dancing with Time features four Montreal dancer-choreographers facing the challenge of aging. Erin Flynn (40s), José Navas (50s), Louise Bédard (60s) and Paul-André Fortier (70s) reflect about how they deal with their changing bodies and the demands of the artistic world. As they answer the question “As an artist, what have you gained with age?”, we discover how they face the challenges of aging with kindness, humility and creativity.
Through their testimonies, we observe the strengths that age can bring to these movement artists. Without denying the grief and adaptations they have faced, they tell us about the gains they have made with the recognition and growing acceptance of the fragility of their bodies. What binds us to their stories are their gains in patience, compassion, and love, as well as the urgency to live and create that seem to assert themselves with the passage of time.
a foreigner
United States
Performed by Eiko Otake @eiko_otake
Cinematography by Patrizia Herminjard @Herminjard
Editing by Patrizia Herminjard with Eiko Otake
Once a person is a foreigner, she never ceases to be a foreigner. No place is hers, except her shadow. This film features award-winning, movement-based interdisciplinary artist Eiko Otake, who has been a pivotal figure in site-specific dance for more than five decades.
‘a foreigner’ was filmed during Eiko Otake’s ‘i invited myself vol. II’ exhibition at the Fine Arts Center at Colorado College in 2023.
一戏·一生 (My role·My life)
Wandering in the corners of space, discovering surprises in both black and white time and space; The multifaceted life collides with new sparks through the dialogue between modernity and opera. The art of traditional Chinese aesthetics – traditional Chinese opera and modern people have a certain degree of consistency, showcasing life and the joys and sorrows of the world,; Use points, lines, surfaces, space, and minimalist colors to showcase.
Last Boy Left
Sweden
Director: Shawn Fitzgerald Ahern
Producer: Dans I Nord
Cast & Choreography: Pascal Marty & Emilie Leriche
Director of Photography: Daniel Bogdanic
A reflection on mourning a loved one and the process of moving on, Last Boy Left is an experimental short film featuring dance. The film follows a man on a road trip who aims to tie up loose ends left behind by his deceased brother. Filmed in the Arctic Circle in northern Sweden, the film is set in landscapes that echo the emptiness left behind by those who depart too soon. The internal landscapes of the characters are metaphorically expressed using movement; abstractly embodying memory, emotion and exploring how we process the complex emotions following love lost.