Sometimes watching a dance film simply isn't enough. With all those fantastic moves and classy choreography, it's tempting to want to find out more about how it's done - or simply to be able to look at some of the wonderful still photos from the movies. We take a look at some of the best books, from ballet to the big screen.
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You get an idea when you see it is “Dedicated to...” a list of heart-warming characters that includes, “The second chorus cutie from the right who just happens to know all the steps when the star twists her ankle at the last minute before curtain...”
It’s fanzine material all the way. Little known facts about movies of the day adorn the pages as you skim between some of the best stills. It’s the sort of find from a second-hand bookshop that just makes your day.
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Aimed at aficionados and produced to a very high standard, this volume provides a comprehensive context to each of the pair’s 10 films. Although not a heavy read, it analyses things such as comparative plot structure, double meanings, and the implications of dance.
For instance, in Swing Time, Gallafent discusses how the choreography to the melody of The Way You Look Tonight creates a private moment in a public space by using a casual stroll that turns into a dance, and how the dialogue subtly equates dancing beautifully with being in love.
This well-researched, scholarly text is supplemented by black and white reproductions that stand out extremely well on the satin finish paper. A quality volume.
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A lot of books walk around about dance film using entertaining examples, but Dance On Screen tackles the subject head on. It looks at the rich diversity of screen dance genres showing how theory is applied in practice. The five chapter headings give an idea of the range: Contextual Framework of Dance on Screen, Images of Dance in the Screen Media, Video Dance Televisualizing the Dancing Body, Postmodern Dance Strategies on Television, and Hybrid States and Fluid Bodies. Well-organised subdivisions cover such juicy topics as television advertising and dancing bodies, dance music videos, manipulating the dancing body on screen, and seizing the spectator’s eye.
Case studies are subjected to merciless dissection, showing exactly how a specific effect is created or audience reaction manipulated. For instance, in the Hollywood section, Dodds exposes the way in which the filmic apparatus in Flashdance presents the dancer in a way that appeals to diametrically opposed audiences and identifies discourses inscribed in this mainstream image of dance that are hidden within the slick editing.
Key art house films, such as Deren’s Study in Choreography for the Camera, are also used to show the basic framework within which dance and film can co-operate. Dance on Screen takes time to digest. Otherwise it could be described as a crash course on the dynamics that can be used in merging the two media.
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Most cinephiles are not as equally conversant with the varieties of dance. They would be horrified if a dancer assumed cinema was only about blockbusters. But to fully comprehend the possibilities and scope of screen dance, the reverse must also be tackled. Highwater provides a vivid historical perspective that contrasts dance in Western civilisation with its role in other cultures. From key figures in dance development such as Merce Cunningham, Isadora Duncan, George Balanchine and Martha Graham, Highwater takes us through the social contexts of dance, dance in ancient or primitive cultures, and dance as an idea rather than just the outward form. Always aiming at essence.
We learn that the range of experience we call ‘dance’ is just scratching the surface. “There is also the equally important aesthetic component in the nature of things which is genuine knowledge in its own right.” What, for instance, is ‘expressiveness’? How central is it, or can it be discarded?
Specific consideration of film is not extensive. But principles are identified in a way that makes crossing over into different art-forms straightforward. Highwater holds up filmmakers like Maya Deren and Shirley Clarke (who were also dancers) – but also Kenneth Anger (who wasn’t) – and suggests how they use dance as a matrix in their work. He suggests that the ‘new art mentality’ of their period, which took a drastically revised view of experience and reality (not to mention morality and aesthetics), became very visible in painting as well as theatre and poetry. The artist becomes not an auteur but a medium. The conclusions about the purposes of art are written from the viewpoint of the dancer but reflect the essays on film theory penned by Maya Deren.
This is a challenging book if the reader is new to the complex ideas into which Highwater dives. But the process of dispelling the mists is made so much more pleasurable by the great diversity of photographs presenting dance in so many forms. The luxurious finish and attractive layout encourages the reader to keep dipping in until the mists disperse. It is a book so beautiful to look at, you might be tempted to take your time savouring. A work of art in itself.
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There is some overlap of subject matter between Envisioning Dance and Sherril Dodds’ book Dance On Screen. But the line of attack could not be more different. If Dodds is a tightly-honed lecture, Envisioning Dance is nothing if not a lateral approach. Take it off the shop shelf and you want to take it home even before you look at the price tag. Large format, lots of reassuring white space, pages of contents that read like all the questions you ever wanted to ask, and – here’s the clincher – a DVD of key dance sequences inside the back cover.
Unless I haven’t spotted it yet hidden in the voluminous information included in this book, the editors have cleverly avoided giving a list of the clips on the DVD. They are referenced in the text by a symbol. Most of them are chosen to illustrate technical points. Certainly not a mini ‘That’s Entertainment’ of blockbuster clips. But it does force you to use it as intended – an interactive tool.
The book is designed to be dipped into. The 50 original essays do not need to be read in sequence. They are clustered around different themes and based on the personal experience of various professionals working in the field – directors, choreographers, cinematographers, editors, producers and archivists.
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The thinking of dancer and filmmaker Maya Deren is not the easiest to get your head around. So I found it a welcome relief that Bill Nichols has collected a series of the most lucid, well-written essays you can imagine. Reading them has solved most of the dilemmas I had concerning her films. The inclusion of the full text of Deren’s own, long out-of-print text, An Anagram of Ideas on Art, Form and Film, sets the barrier even higher.
Deren’s films have inspired many subsequent filmmakers with their innovate techniques. As have her efforts for independent cinema. But her writings on the philosophy of art applied to cinema challenge some of the most profound thinkers of the day. Her ideas are difficult, but she is pointedly not out to mystify or bamboozle. Persevere, and her razor-sharp intellect cuts through not only the difficulties suggested by her own work, but shreds the theories of the competition.
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I will be eternally grateful to the stranger (whose name I forget) at an Isadora Duncan workshop that suggested this book to me. The subject is training the actor’s imagination and body to fulfil its potential. But the same techniques are applied in dance. Or can even be applied in life generally.
Have you ever asked yourself, what is the point to all this? Why do I take dance, film, or whatever area of the arts I am working in or writing about, so seriously? Chekov takes us to a place where, instead of making the art form meaningful, you take what is meaningful and find it in the art form. Written in 1953, it is as valuable and relevant, both to dance and movies, now as it was then.
Accolades for Chekov’s techniques are quoted on the inside flyleaf from Anthony Quinn, Clint Eastwood, Jack Nicholson, Marilyn Monroe and Sir Anthony Hopkins. Gregory Peck called it, “by far the best book that I have ever read on the subject of acting. Actors, directors, writers and critics will be grateful for it.” I could add the present writer, who has used the merest smidgen of Chekhov’s psychological techniques to bring about quite miraculous results to bear on the problems facing himself and his friends in some areas of work.
Chekhov uses transformational imagery. The way he empowers an actor is the way that he can empower a dancer. The same energy that creates new ways of using a camera. But, unlike Stanislavsky and the other theorists that are central to the development of new cinema and new dance, Chekov is easy to follow. It’s like having a master psychologist sitting on your shoulder, showing you how to approach things differently and opening up more possibilities than you could have ever dreamt of. And each step is totally practical.
Chekhov tells you not about film or about the dance, but he tells you about the creative energy you need to understand and get to grips with both. It’s this crossover that makes it an invaluable book for looking at dance film.
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