Posts in Category: Dance
Never Say Never Say Never by Patrick James Errington
From British director Adele Myers, a film based on a poem by Patrick James Errington. Here’s the description from Vimeo:
Savouring their last moments, a couple struggle with letting go. They must, but breaking up is hard to do.
This short film is based on an original poem written by Patrick Errington. The poem was commended in the National Poetry Competition 2016, Poetry Society (UK). This film was commissioned by FilmPoem and original adaptation was produced entirely in Fujairah UAE.
The actors are Layla Al Khouri and Sanoop Din. For a full list of credits, see Poetry Film Live.
Elephant by Elisabet Velasquez
Brooklyn-based Puerto Rican poet Elisabet Velasquez took the top prize in Button Poetry’s 2017 Video Contest with Elephant, which she calls
a short choreo-film entirely produced by women of color against street harassment. The video is the collective effort of a group of interdisciplinary artists from New York City who came together to highlight the importance of looking at street harassment from a lens of reclamation of power.
We believe that all people who identify as women as well as gender nonconforming individuals who are impacted by street harassment have a right to their bodies and in this video we take our bodies back.
If you or any one you know has been impacted by street harassment in any way we invite you to share.
Peruvian filmmaker Connie Chavez directed the film and Keomi Tarver is the dancer and choreographer, with body art by Alicia C. Cobb.
shhh! by Leah Thorn
A dance-infused poetry film by Leah Thorn and filmmaker Clare Unsworth about the systematic silencing of women — and the need to rebel against it. Leah told me in an email,
The poem was written out of a passion to challenge the invisibility of the many ways women are silenced and I tried it out in performance with many different audiences of women – in schools, universities, feminist groups, at poetry events and in prison. Clare and I then collaborated with three drama students at the University of Kent, Canterbury, England who interpreted the poem through movement.
This locally-produced, no-budget film has been screened internationally at feminist film festivals.
The dancer/choreographers are Kristin Bacheva, Vanessa Owusu and Elle Payne. The sound is by Daniel Battersby, with music by Jahzzar and Ars Sonor.
Dancing Lesson by Rachel Kann
I’ve been championing the dance category of videopoetry for years, so I was pleased to see this worthy representative of it take the top honors at last weekend’s Rabbit Heart Poetry Film Festival. Written and performed by “modern-day mystic” Rachel Kann, with choreography by her and Jhon Gonzalez, and directed by Brad (Bradford L.) Cooper, it won Best Overall Production and Best Sound/Music (the work of Cooper and Atom Smith). See YouTube for the complete credits and Hevria for the text.
Ode to my Bitchface by Olivia Gatwood
If you’re unfamiliar with the concept of “resting bitch face” (apparently it’s mainly an American expression), the Wikipedia article will get you up to speed. Once you’ve read it, you’ll understand why this response by poet Olivia Gatwood and the dancer/choreographers Rebecca Björling and Rebecca Rosier of the We:R Performance Collective is so, so good. The video was shot and edited by Tim Davis. Björling and Rosier note on Vimeo that
Our latest work ‘Bitchface’ is a dance film we made in reaction to the amazing fierceness of Olivia Gatwood’s poem ‘Ode to my Bitchface’. Beautifully delivered by Olivia in a live performance, we felt like we had to dance the chills out of our bodies as soon as we saw her original video.
And here is the original video in question, posted to YouTube on April 2. It has already been viewed more than half a million times:
