For the second year in a row, the International Festival of Films on Art (FIFA) is offering a Night of Dance on March 16 at the Outremont theatre. A few days later, multidisciplinary artist Vickie Grondin will unveil her latest dance on screen project at the Plaza Theatre, and Regardshybrids will launch a new platform this spring bringing together Canadian works of cinedance from the 1960s to the present day. One thing is certain: dance has its place on our screens.
Wai Shing Lee, Mélanie Demers, Anna Semenova, Emmanuel Jouthe, Zab Maboungou, Diana León… There will be many of them this year to present a film dedicated to dance for the 2e edition of FIFA 2023 Dance Night. “We had no choice! jokes Philippe U. del Drago, artistic director of FIFA. We received so many quality dance films that we thought “Come on, we’re doing a 2e editing” ! After a “very successful” first attempt, Mr. del Drago is delighted to offer this “marathon” evening again. On the program, 28 short films, the vast majority of which were created here in Quebec, for a total duration of six hours. “It’s really the idea of a journey in dance, and in the body. It’s an adventure. We can come, leave, come back, have a drink, it’s quite an experience, a great celebration! And then there will also be surprises! adds Mr. del Drago.
Although this event took place recently, it has been a long time since dance invaded our screens. Indeed, as early as the 1880s, the invention of chronophotography offered new possibilities, even before the arrival of cinema. “Eadweard Muybridge, for example, studied the movements of a horse by presenting them shot by shot, while Georges Demenÿ was interested in the construction and deconstruction of gesture from human subjects. It was scientific and educational research, not artistic, but with our current perspective, it could look like choreography,” explains Priscilla Guy, artist, co-founder of Regardshybrides and recent holder of a doctorate in cinematography from the University of Lille, France. She would also like to point out that many pioneering women are at the origin of cinédanse. “We can talk about Alice Guy from the end of the 19the century, from the audacious Germaine Dulac in the 1920s or even the emblematic Maya Deren in the 1940s, whose works show a desire to develop theoretical thought on cinedanse in addition to experimenting with it”, observes the researcher .
A graduate of the École de danse contemporaine de Montréal in 2014, Vickie Grondin quickly launched herself into the world of directing. “I wanted to bring together bodies and moving images,” she recalls. In 2016, she created, with Carl Beauchemin and Maude Lecours, Flamant, a collective of dance films. A hundred productions later, the trio decided to take separate artistic paths. However, Carl and Vickie want to close the Flamant adventure “with a more symbolic, personal, thoughtful and filmed production without contractual imperatives”. From 2019 to 2023, they therefore work together on what will become the short film What remains.
Decompartmentalize and diversify
When she co-founded Flamant, Vickie Grondin sought to combine her personal passions, but also to “democratize dance”. “Filming dance makes it possible to introduce it to new audiences, but also to show it in new forms. We can leave the studio, go offstage, in various environments…”, thinks the one who is now pursuing a master’s degree in visual arts at the University of Quebec in Montreal.
Same observation on the part of Priscilla Guy, who has been working in the world of cinédanse for more than ten years now. “It’s rare, even today, that people really know what it is, but when they see it, they feel familiar. They are used to screens and know the codes of cinema, so even with a cutting-edge choreographic work, access can be easier. There is still a lot of work to be done to democratize dance today, but cinédanse helps,” she adds. This vision is also shared by Mr. del Drago who thinks that cinema is a “good medium for making art more accessible”. “Last year, the Nuit de la danse attracted yes the dance community, but also film lovers, the elderly, families, curious people! he recalls.
Several formats of cinédanse have also developed over time. “There is a recent trend where the directors are present, alongside the choreographers from the start of the process. The body is then placed in space to be filmed. There is no longer a fourth wall, it’s interesting”, says the man who has been at the head of FIFA since 2018. Thus, he explains that at the start, the dance films offered at the Festival were mainly recordings of shows . However, this is less the case today. Priscilla Guy also likes to recall that, in the history of cinema, dance has taken “all sorts of forms”. “What is best known to the general public are the Hollywood hits of the 1930s with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, or even famous film adaptations of shows in the 1990s, such as Rosas in Rosas, by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker. But in parallel to that, from the beginning of the 7e art, more experimental work was also taking place, and several dance styles were explored,” she explains.
Vickie Grondin also speaks of her film as a hybridization between fiction and dance. “This porous border leads us to reach a wider audience. Beyond the genre, what interested us was the values of the film, to evoke that the human being is an intrinsic part of the living,” she explains. In effect, What remains was filmed in the Îles-de-la-Madeleine, and the origin of the project took root just after the hurricane Dorian. “We wanted to take part in the environmental discourse by putting the protagonist, Sovann Rochon-Prom Tep, in dialogue with certain coastal climate changes, such as rising water levels and the acceleration of erosion”, she continues.
“One does not replace the other”
According to the three speakers, the dance film and the stage are complementary. “When you see a dance film, you want to go to the show. One does not replace the other”, thinks Mr. Del Drago.
For meme Grondin, the realization opens another window on a work of dance. “Being able to direct the gaze, reflect on the editing of images, etc., helps to strengthen imaginations, to sublimate ideas,” she says. Moreover, she thinks that dancing on screen is a completely different experience than live art. “There is a possibility of intimacy when the work enters a house. In front of a show, we experience other things thanks to the bodies that are in their flesh, physically present. Proximity is different,” she adds.
In addition, according to the co-founder of Regardshybrides Priscilla Guy, filming the dance also makes it possible to keep a trace. “We tried to record the dance, to note it, but the image, the video often remain the most effective tools, she concludes. Cinema is made of moving images, and dance is movement, so it’s only natural that one and the other attract each other. »