~ Dance ~
All American by David Hernandez
If the films released so far on their website are any indication, Motionpoems‘ 2014 season is their most stylistically diverse collection of poetry films to date. This film, released just before Independence Day in the U.S., builds on the poem’s challenge to any easy assumptions about American identity. (It’s also slightly NSFW, with glimpses of female nudity.) Here’s the description from the website:
Filmed near Lake Geneva Switzerland (and at the Large Hadron Collider at Cern), British filmmaker Richard Johnson and dancer Jasmine Morand present this francoperspective on California poet David Hernandez’s all-inclusive poem, “All American.”
Click through and scroll down for the text.
For more on Richard Johnson, see his pages on Cinely and IMDb. For more on the poet, visit DavidHernandez.com.
امر گيت / A Song Everlasting by Attiya Dawood
All the flowers in my country have been picked
And gunpowder planted instead.
Fragrance breathes its last
In a torture camp.
The very lane where hand in hand with you
I have danced to the music of peace,
There a death-dealer is spread-eagled.
Ammar Aziz directed this poetry film featuring Pakistani poet, writer, and women’s rights activist Attiya Dawood, accompanied by dancer Suhaee Abro. Be sure to press the icon marked “CC” at the bottom of the video to view subtitles in English, Sindhi or Urdu, or click through to the Umang website to read the text in all three languages.
The Applicant by Sylvia Plath
This is Confessions of a Lacking Pursuit,
Directed, choreographed & edited by Maggie Bailey. Filmed by Paul Nguyen. Performed by Heather Bybee. Sylvia Plath’s recitation of her poem “The Applicant.” Music by Shane Carruth.
Maggie Bailey is majoring in Theatre/Theatre Arts Management and Dance, concentrating in Performance and Choreography, at College of Charleston, according to LinkedIn. Confessions of a Lacking Pursuit was her senior project.
In my kitchen in New York by Allen Ginsberg
Last week’s Sunday bonus post went over well, so here’s another, also a bit spiritual, for all you church-of-the-brunch types. In this one, the late Allen Ginsberg does Tai Chi in his kitchen over an audio track of Allen Ginsberg reading a poem about doing Tai Chi in his kitchen. Found via the lyrikline blog, which notes:
This clip is one of the earliest “Poetry Spots” Bob Holman made between 1986 and 1994 for the New York public television station, WYZC. Holman produced around 50 “Poetry Spots” in total.
For more of Holman’s poetry videos, see his YouTube channel.
Iluzjonista / Illusionist by Slawomir Elsner
A poem by the Polish artist Slawomir Elsner turned into a film by choreographer, dancer and filmmaker Jagoda Bobrowska, who notes that it was a
Film made for a competition “Nakrec wiersz” (shoot a poem)
Idea, directing, montage, music: Jagoda Bobrowska
Dance: Elena Sgarbi and Svelin Velchev
Shadows by Langston Hughes
I suppose this is technically a music video rather than a videopoem, but it strikes me as much closer to the latter genre to the former — save for the fact that the poem takes the form of a very beautiful art song.
Composed by Lior Rosner
Soprano: Janai Brugger
Directed and After Effects by Tal Rosner
DoP: Adam Woodhall
Dancers: Cameron McMillan, Fiona MerzAbout the project:
One of America’s greatest poets, Langston Hughes was a social activist and early innovator of jazz poetry. Hughes distilled the experience of his generation of African Americans into poems that sang in his clear and unapologetic voice. In “In Time of Silver Rain: Seven Poems by Langston Hughes,” composer Lior Rosner uses his music to liberate Hughes’ words from the boundaries of historical context. Rosner’s modern settings challenge us to consider the contemporary relevance of Hughes’ frank and often searing meditations on the universal themes of oppression, loss, frustration and love. While the emotions captured in these songs are indeed timeless, beneath the undeniable modernity of Rosner’s music, there are subtle harmonic nods to the jazz that provided the sonic backdrop for the Harlem Renaissance.
If I Told Him: A Completed Portrait of Picasso by Gertrude Stein
*
[Edited 10/19/17: The original upload has gone missing, so it’s been replaced with two excerpts.]
This is Shutters Shut, choreographed by the legendary duo Paul Lightfoot and Sol León, A.K.A. Lightfoot León, and premiered by the Nederlands Dans Theater II in 2003. Paul Lightfoot told Ballet magazine, “In a way Shutters is a study, it’s an exercise.”
This performance is by Gauthier Dance, the dance ensemble of Theaterhaus Stuttgart. The dancers are Armando Braswell and Rosario Guerra. The film was edited by Valerie Haaf-Seidel, with camera work by Fritz Moser and Werner Schmidtke. (There’s another performance on YouTube, by Nederlands Dans Theater II itself, but that’s only an excerpt and seems to have been uploaded by someone other than the copyright holder.)
The Little Mute Boy by Federico Garcia Lorca
This is Ink Spilled in Cursive from Company E, “a contemporary repertory dance company and film-making group deeply committed to the finest repertory and artistry, with a focus on the power of art to bring awareness, enjoyment and inspiration to artists and audiences around the world.” The choreographer/performer is Jason Garcia Ignacio, with an original, live score composed by Brenden Schultz. Ink Spilled in Cursive will be performed as part of a show called Next: Spain on November 16-17 in Washington, DC. (I’m guessing that the text of the poem will be projected on or above the stage. It certainly seems integral to the performance.)
Kata by Lavinia Greenlaw
Another in the Winning Words series of poetry videos filmed by Andy Hutch. “Here professional parkour athlete Jolade Olusanya reads Lavinia Greenlaw’s ‘Kata’ in Stockwell.” I don’t have a category for parkour, but this seems close enough to some of the poetry dance videos to include in that category.
The text of the poem, which appeared in the 2011 collection The Casual Perfect from Faber & Faber, is here. For more on Greenlaw, see her website.
Nijinsky – Echopraxia by Kate Ruse
http://vimeo.com/40766091
The “dance” category here at Moving Poems, though small, includes some of the most interesting and watchable poetry videos on the site, and this is a very worthy addition to their number. The filming, editing and soundtrack are all the work of Kish Patel, “a 20 year old graphic, web and sound designer from London, UK.”
This is one of several video interpretations of Kate Ruse’s poems about the dancer Nijinsky to have been made into a video, according to her website. Annie Robinson is both dancer and choreographer. See the description at Vimeo for the text of the poem.
When I Move by Khary Jackson
I’ve posted a lot of dance + poetry videos and a lot of spoken word videos, but I believe this is the first in which the poet dances as he recites his poem. This was produced by the St. Paul, Minnesota-based organization Poetry Observed, which according to the description on YouTube “is committed to producing high quality videos of performance poetry, filmed off the stage. Our first series features Minnesota spoken word poets and was produced in collaboration with Button Poetry.”
Moth by Katie Frank
http://vimeo.com/39317127
Film by Jessica Bass; poem and performance by Katie Frank.
