Avant-Garde Film PracticesPER007-1 Applied Choreography: Dance and Innovation

Dr Louise Douse

Film Pioneers

• 1872-1878

• British photographer Eadweard Muybridge

• Took the first successful photographs of motion, producing multiple image sequences analyzing human and animal locomotion.

University of Bedfordshire 2

Film Pioneers

• 1891 Thomas Edison developed or invented the Kinetoscope, a single-viewer peep-show device in which film was moved past a light

• The first public demonstration of motion pictures using the Kinetoscope occurred at the Edison Laboratories

• The very short film’s subject in the test footage, titled Dickson Greeting, was William K.L. Dickson bowing, smiling and ceremoniously taking off his hat

University of Bedfordshire 3

Film Pioneers

• The earliest colour hand-tinted films ever publicly-released were Annabelle Butterfly Dance (1894), Annabelle Sun Dance (1894), and Annabelle Serpentine Dance (1899) featuring the dancing of vaudeville-music hall performer Annabelle Whitford

University of Bedfordshire 4

Early Dance Film

• Ruth St Denis 1879-1968

• American Modern Dance practitioner

• 1915 Formed Denishawn School with Ted Shawn

• Choreographed movement sequence in D.W. Griffith’s ‘Intolerance’ (1916)

University of Bedfordshire 5

Early Dance Film

• Doris Humphrey 1895-1958

• American Modern Dance practitioner

• Trained at Denishawn School

• Developed her own technique and choreographic approach

• Choreographed ‘Air for the G String’ (1935)

University of Bedfordshire 6

Early Dance Film

• Ted Shawn 1891-1972

• American Modern Dance practitioner

• 1915 Formed Denishawn School with Ruth St Denis

• Created the first all-male works

• Choreographed ‘Kinetic Molpai’ (1935)

University of Bedfordshire 7

Film Pioneers

• Film provided artists with the first opportunity to visually represent time

• All of these early examples are silent films – therefore visual communication is dominant

• Movement was of central importance as the key method for representing or communicating meaning

University of Bedfordshire 8

Avant-Garde Pioneers

• The Avant-Garde deals with the marginal arts practices that provided:

• The cultural cutting edge at any given historical moment

• The radical critique of the mainstream culture of the time

• A rejection of the relationship of consumerism to culture

• The Avant-Garde has located much of this experimentation in the technological revolution at the centre of the 20th Century

• The Avant-Garde art practices that have emerged from the interrelationship with technology in the 20th Century have a common emphasis on the role of time in art.

University of Bedfordshire 9

Avant-Garde Pioneers

• Key Avant-Garde cultural movements

• Abstraction

• Distortion of reality – non-referential

• Surrealism

• Emphasis on sub-conscious – state of dreaming

• Constructivism/ Futurism

• Emphasis on mechanisation – repetition/montage

• Conceptualism

• Emphasis on idea as opposed to function

University of Bedfordshire 10

Avant-Garde Pioneers

• Len Lye 1901-1980

• New Zealand born avant-garde film-maker

• Used a range of dyes and stencils, scratching the celloid.

• Directed ‘Rainbow Dance’ in 1936

University of Bedfordshire 11

Avant-Garde Pioneers

• Norman McLaren 1914-1987

• Scottish-born Canadian animator and filmmaker

• Pioneer of animation including drawn-on-film animation, pixilation

• Directed ‘Pas de Deux’ in 1968

University of Bedfordshire 12

Avant-Garde Pioneers

• Maya Deren 1917-1961

• American avant-garde film-maker and choreographer

• Through Deren, American dance became central to the history of American avant-garde film

• Directed and Choreographed ‘A Study in Choreography for Camera’ (1945)

University of Bedfordshire 13

Avant-Garde Pioneers

• Hilary Harris 1929-1999

• American documentary filmmaker

• Pioneers of time-lapse photography

• Directed ‘Nine variations on a dance theme’ in 1966/67

University of Bedfordshire 14

Avant-Garde Pioneers

• Yvonne Rainer b.1934

• American dancer, choreographer and film-maker

• Minimalist and post-modern work looking at pedestrian movement

• No Manifesto

• Directed ‘Hand’ in 1966

University of Bedfordshire 15

Next Lecture

University of Bedfordshire 16

Teaching week 4Calendar week 44Week beginning Monday 27th October

Lecture 4:Contemporary Screendance

Watch the video’s from Dance Camera West’s website. (Link available on BREO).