Posts in Category: Dance

I Am Here by Porsche Veu

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Porsche Veu writes, directs and performs in I Am Here, an inspiring dance and music video on personal empowerment.

Porsche Veu aka The Poetic Activist is an unapologetic author, spoken word poet, speaker, educator, and artist of many talents from Oakland. (source)

Porsche uses her art to fight social injustice, empower women, youth, & the Black community, and advocate for mental & emotional health. (source)

The film was winner of the multimedia category in the Button Poetry Video Contest in 2022. The poem can be read on the page here.

Only by Rebecca Foust

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A poetry film by interdisciplinary artist Maxine Flasher-Düzgüneş based on the title poem of Rebecca Foust‘s seventh book, Only (Four Way Books, 2022). Kevin Martinez was the videographer. It was shot at Limantour Beach, California in April 2023.

The publisher’s description does make the book sound intriguing:

Urgent from the outset, Rebecca Foust’s ONLY insists that the only thing worth writing about is everything. Prompted to confront what she does not know, the speaker lists, “Null. All. What’s after death or before.” This book scales the cliff-face of adulthood, that paradoxical ascent in which the longer we live the less we know of life, in which we find that each of us is only ourselves and yet delicately interconnected with everyone, everything, else. These candid lyrics ponder our broken political systems, family (dys)function and parenting challenges, divergent and intersecting identities, the complexities of sexuality and gender, natural refuge and climate catastrophe, and in general what it means to be human in a world that sometimes feels as if it is approaching apocalypse. At the ledge of this abyss, however, Foust reminds us of the staggering beauty of life, the legacies of survival in the echoes of care that outlast us: “I came / to the canyon rim and saw // how best to carry you: I let the stone go.”

I’ll Write About It Later by Jessie Jing

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I’ll Write About It Later is an author-made piece by Jessie Jing, a Malaysian dance artist, choreographer and writer based in London.

I stumbled upon this interesting and affecting video in one of those happy, random moments of web discovery. Surprisingly, I noticed in drafting this post that it’s the first time a Malaysian artist has featured here at Moving Poems.

The video is personal and intimate, incorporating Jing’s own voice floating above expressive, animated doodles and text. The visual style is strongly influenced by concrete poetry.

The subject of the video seems also to relate to Jing’s mental health advocacy. This includes her debut poetry collection Manuscripts of the Mind, described as “…a series of poetry and prose dedicated to, and inspired by, the fantastical world of the bipolar mind and how one encounters and experiences metamorphosis to their state of being.” The collection is published under the name Jessie J’ng.

Because Goddess is Never Enough by Rosie Garland

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Because Goddess is Never Enough draws its inspiration from the life of Austrian-born dancer, choreographer, actor and painter, Tilly Losch (1903-1975). The film is a collaboration between film-maker Jane Glennie and writer/performer Rosie Garland, both award-winning artists in the UK. The subject is the representation of women artists in history, especially the ways their stories have been footnoted in relation to famous men. One of the film’s lines about Tilly’s place in history: “blink and you’ll miss her”.

From the web page for the film:

Tilly Losch was an Austrian dancer who worked with prominent, and cutting-edge, choreographers and artists in the UK and the US, from the West End to Hollywood. She was also a choreographer in her own right, who later turned to painting.

Through moving images and poetry Glennie and Garland investigate the elusive and fragmentary nature of Tilly’s life, evoking the spirit of the 1920s–40s when she was at the peak of her fame.

The film is about self-worth, the authentic self, and the credibility of creative women – Losch was someone who was at times exploited yet determined to maintain a path of her own making despite the obstacles that were very much present in her era… highlighting how far women have come in 90 years, and yet how far they still have to go to get recognition and true independence.

Jane Glennie’s film-making most often involves rapid animation of still images, creating a highly dynamic sense of cinematic motion. At ten minutes duration, this is her most ambitious film to date, involving thousands of her own photographs, meticulously layered with contrasting rhythms that underscore voice and text.

Rosie Garland’s expressive narration of her own poem is highly effective. Her voice alternates with that of Alison Glennie, equally as effective in the first-person sections that evoke Tilly speaking for herself. The overall soundtrack is mainly just the two voices accompanied by textural sound effects. This minimal approach proves an excellent stylistic choice.

All the different elements of the film combine organically and assuredly, suggesting a great collaboration between the artists involved. Because Goddess is Never Enough is a unique evocation of one woman’s creative life and by extension the lives of so many creative women throughout time.

춤의 독방 / Chumui dokbang (Solitary Dance Cell) by Lee Hyemi

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An adaptation of a poem from Lee Hyemi‘s first collection Ultraviolet by filmmaker Hongrae Lee Kim.

Dave: Lovely dark, claustrophobic ambience. The poet’s voice in the soundtrack is joined by another for a stunning effect, a dialogue that sounds like a monologue.

Marie: I found a second viewing rewarding. That odd and wordless interlude around 01:54 is intriguing, suspending time. I especially like the voices and the placement of them in the aural field, their resonances sometimes bouncing side to side almost in unison. This binaural effect gives emphasis to the text in a way that feels more physical than cognitive, as the sound resonances ping across the brain.

Here are the complete credits from Vimeo:

Performed by HeeJun Lee
Narrated by Hyemi Lee / Luna Bae
Video Catchers : Filmical / PJ soon
Translated by
Helen Hwayeon, Julia Clark and Son HyeJeong,
Sal Kang, Youngseo Lee, Ainee Jeong,
Hoyoung, Shreya Mapadath, Jaewon Che,
Dabin Jeong, Deborah Kim, Victoria Caudle, Anna Toombs
Director of Choreography : HeeJun Lee

A film by Hongrae Lee Kim

That’s quite a translation committee! But the Vimeo description ends with this note: “It’s a small gift for Chogwa.” And chogwa is “a quarterly e-zine featuring one Korean poem & multiple English translations.” Here’s issue 7, 12 translations of “Chumui dokbang” by Lee Hyemi. (Note the discussion about how to translate the title. Other possibilities include “Dancing in an Empty Room” and “Dance of Confinement.”)

The overall editor of chogwa, by the way, Soje, translated Lee Hyemi’s second collection, Unexpected Vanilla, which was shortlisted for the 2021 National Translation Prize in Poetry. Here’s a review and here’s a selection. Both Soje and Lee seem like poets to watch.

Θυμήσου, Σώμα… (Remember, Body…) by C. P. Cavafy

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Body, remember not only how much you were loved
not only the beds you lay on.
but also those desires glowing openly
in eyes that looked at you,
trembling for you in voices—
only some chance obstacle frustrated them.
Now that it’s all finally in the past,
it seems almost as if you gave yourself
to those desires too—how they glowed,
remember, in eyes that looked at you,
remember, body, how they trembled for you in those voices.
translation by George Barbanis

Dancer/choreographer Konstantina Ntinapogia directs this collaborative “embodiment” of a poem by the great 20th-century Greek poet Cavafy. Since the English translation is not included in subtitles, only in the Vimeo description, viewers without Greek may, if they choose, rely on the choreography alone for meaning. And we’ve always been interested in dance as a medium for poetry here. Like poetry film itself, dance can be seen as a form of translation. Similarly, this could be seen as a music video, since the commission included an original composition based on the poem by artist(s) of the director’s choice. The band Ntinapogia chose to work with is called Lost Bodies. She notes:

As part of the 30 Days of Poetry project coordinated by choreographer Olga Spyraki, I was invited to dance and choreograph in collaboration with a musician of my choice. Our instructions were for the music to be original and made on a poem that we would bring together with the composer. This particular poem is by the famous Greek poet Konstantine P. Cavafy entitled “Thimisou, Soma…” that means “Remember, Body…” and my screen-dance is 1:37 minutes [long]. […]

How could this poem be embodied? How does body memory wake up? What is the color of passion? were some of my most basic questions. In this particular video-dance I worked not only as a dancer and choreographer but also as a director / cinematographer since I also dealt with the perspectives of the space, the use of the camera and I also did the editing. I am incredibly pleased with the process of research and composition.

Music: Lost Bodies
Song: “Thimisou, Soma…”
Dancer/Performer: Konstantina Ntinapogia
Camera: Marilena Dionysopoulou
Montaj: Konstantina Ntinapogia, Ioannis Makropoulos

Marie Craven and I were both struck by Ntinapogia’s adept editing. Marie observed that

The overview needed in choreography, the shapes and structures involved, are parallel to film-making, and especially film editing. And of course rhythm is a central aspect of film editing (perhaps the central aspect), as with dance.

Catarsis / Catharsis by Lilián Pallares

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A 2019 video from the ongoing creative partnership of Colombian poet Lilián Pallares and New Zealand filmmaker and poet Charles Olsen, who wrote:

This was made originally as a book trailer, to capture the essence of Lilián’s latest collection Bestial published in Zaragoza, Spain, by Papeles de Trasmoz, Olifante Editions, 2019. Her collection explores her Afro-Colombian roots and the death of her father. While writing the poems she was taking African dance classes in Madrid and we wanted to capture something of the African influence in this poetry film.

We live in a neighborhood of Madrid with a large migrant population, with people from Senegal, Guinea-Conakry, Morocco, Bangladesh, China, etc., and us (Colombia and New Zealand), and we decided to film this at night in streets with the dancer Marisa Cámara (Guinea-Conakry) and the poet and performer Artemisa Semedo (Galicia/Cape Verde). The music is ‘Zuru’ by the Colombian duo Mitú.

I include Catarsis in my Poesía sin fronteras program exploring translation, otherness, identity and death in cinepoetry from across the Americas, which by the way is available for public screening anywhere in the world — whenever such a thing becomes possible again. In the meantime, you can watch all the films here.

Pregnant with the Dead by Susan Rich

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Director Tova Beck-Friedman calls this “A cine-poem about the space between suffering and life lived. It’s also about survival and the unforgotten pain.” Dancer Juliet Neidish’s interpretation of the poem, choreographed by Beck-Friedman, is juxtaposed with archival footage for maximum emotional effect.

Susan Rich is the poet, and I was stunned to read an open letter on her blog detailing how the film was commissioned by the Visible Poetry Project and then censored at the very last moment, apparently for being insufficiently pious about the Holocaust! An astonishing and outrageous decision. All the more reason to share it here, then, of course (though I’d intended to anyway, before I’d read Rich’s post). I’ve been happy to see it getting well-deserved attention on social media, as well. As Rich notes in her open letter,

If there were ever a time to support each other, that time is now. The best art pushes and challenges us to the point of discomfort.

T.I.A. (THIS is Africa) by Ronan Cheneau

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Seattle’s Cadence Video Poetry Festival has kicked off for 2020. The event has been rapidly moved online this year, evolving with world circumstances. Each of the programs are being made available for viewing at any time during a series of 24-hour slots, from 15-19 April 2020. So far I have seen just the first program, Sight Lines, and was rewarded with some outstanding films.

To give readers a sense of the high quality of the programming, I am sharing T.I.A. (THIS is Africa). It is a collaboration between director Matthieu Maunier-Rossi and poet Ronan Cheneau. Congolese dancer and choreographer, Aïpeur Foundou, is a compelling, dancing presence throughout this moving film.

Tickets to the remaining four sessions of the festival are on a ‘pay as you can’ basis (from $0 upwards). See the Cadence website for more information.

Announcements of winners of the different competition categories are spread out over the five days, one or two revealed in the video intros at the start of each day’s program.

Blood Constellations by Malika Ndlovu

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Blood Constellations is a beautifully made example of a poetry dance film, a genre showcased many times over the years at Moving Poems.

Boldly directed by Jim Demuth, based in London and China, the film is part of a broader, multi-disciplinary arts collaboration called Singing My Mother’s Song, which explores family and lineage. The overall director of the project is Bristol-based Rebecca Tantony.

The poet is Durban-born Malika Ndlovu, whose rich and passionate voice rings out in word and song on the soundtrack. It is compellingly danced by Nyaniso Dzedze, also in South Africa.

I was lucky enough to see the film in Athens earlier in December, where it screened at the International Video Poetry Festival.