“I was researching things I could shoot while over there and of course contacted the ballet to investigate whether it could sustain a compelling short, instead of just a fluff piece about the glory of the ballet. I’m not particularly into ballet, but my background in competitive swimming drew me to the concentration and dedication unique to a high-performance athlete.”

After convincing an understandably skeptical PR woman at the Bolshoi Ballet company that he wasn’t a crazed stalker (The Prodigy pre-dated the recent acid attack on the company director) and wanted to in fact create a character study of depth on a single dancer, they together discussed who may be suitable for the documentary’s focus:

“With the PR woman, I identified a couple of potential candidates, doing further research to determine which might be the best fit. Olga Smirnova fit the bill on all counts. She’s beautiful, but incredibly focused to the point that her crazy dressing room mates do not faze her. Trust me, this is something. Everyone seems to walk on egg shells there, and personal/social drama is pretty ridiculous. We saw it firsthand when one of them came bursting in screaming at us during our interview with Olga. Not speaking Russian, I was able to simply play dumb much of the time. With a careful journalist’s eye on not exactly getting in the way, I was able to follow a little closer and maybe get a little more access simply because nobody told me “nyet”. I discussed this common approach with my producer Fyodor, and he was completely on board to facilitate it, whether guiding me to something he overheard in Russian, or running interference while I pushed on.”

The team were granted shooting access for two morning sessions and two performances, but were unable to secure permission to film Smirnova away from the Bolshoi, where Sugrue had hoped he could fully round out the portrayal of her life as a dancer. This limited performance access came scarily close to being even more reduced when Sugrue accidentally formatted, and began shooting over, a Red card which hadn’t yet been offloaded whilst walking with Smirnova as she moved from stage to dressing room. Miraculously, proving his chops as a Russian cyber-sleuth, AC Dima Solovyov was able to bring the ‘lost’ footage back from the brink, to much relief. Avoiding further calamities Sugrue moved into post, working with a paper edit of the transcribed interviews with Smirnova and her coach:

“I then played around with the order and flow, knowing that much of the short film would be driven by b-roll and score. I tried to hold on shots much longer than I normally would have, knowing how much I enjoy studying the frame when given the opportunity. This is quite against my instinct for the commercial work, but much more inline with what I like narratively.

I hooked up with the composers via the internet. Patricio Jose Sanchez’s track is the main undercurrent, and Steve Nossiter’s is the part during the performance. I worked especially close with Steve to make sure the beats and edit were paced to enhance each other. It was a really fun shoot, and I’m really glad I stayed a couple of extra days to shoot something for myself.”

So.. Myself and Oscar Hudson co-shot and co-directed the piece. We knew we wanted to do something bigger, and involving our friend Shun who we noticed had developed his dancing into a very interesting direction recently. We developed the concept of the box which satisfied my inclination to symmetrical, identically framed shots and ran with that. We shot it over two weeks, by driving a VW Golf around France, Spain and Switzerland. It was a fantastic way to find locations. We had a few waypoints that we knew we wanted to get but a lot of the spots were found by looking out the window and pulling over!

Check out these behind the scenes stills from the shoot:

Which after Coke Zero selected it as the winner of Make it Possible did this:

and even spawned its own track:

Wow, those are some powerful moves Turman’s got there!

Yamazaki’s currently working on a film series for her graduation show which unfortunately isn’t until early 2013, but we can get a peak at what’s to come in this trailer:

“The basic idea of the project is built upon the consideration of creating a moving sculpture from the recorded motion data of a real person. For our work we asked a dancer to visualize a musical piece (Kreukeltape by Machinenfabriek) as closely as possible by movements of her body. She was recorded by three depth cameras (Kinect), in which the intersection of the images was later put together to a three-dimensional volume (3d point cloud), so we were able to use the collected data throughout the further process. The three-dimensional image allowed us a completely free handling of the digital camera, without limitations of the perspective. The camera also reacts to the sound and supports the physical imitation of the musical piece by the performer. She moves to a noise field, where a simple modification of the random seed can consistently create new versions of the video, each offering a different composition of the recorded performance. The multi-dimensionality of the sound sculpture is already contained in every movement of the dancer, as the camera footage allows any imaginable perspective.”

unnamed soundsculpture from onformative on Vimeo.

And here’s the making of:

unnamed soundsculpture – documentation from onformative on Vimeo.

GOODY! TWO SHOES from celia rowlson-hall on Vimeo.

FIGURE / *Asterisk from *Asterisk on Vimeo.

In case you thought the synced geometric moves were all the result of post trickery *Asterisk have also released a live projection version of FIGURE.

FIGURE (Projection Live) / *Asterisk from *Asterisk on Vimeo.

If you like Celia’s work, be sure to check out her Vimeo profile for more of her videos.

PROM NIGHT from celia rowlson-hall on Vimeo.

Created using Plexus and After Effects, Rozee “manually keyframed 19 mask paths in AE. There’s over 20,000 keyframes in the piece, but it needed to be that detailed to achieve the fluidity of movement….” That’s a load of work but worth every second. Apparently we’ll get to see ‘Schtick Man! strut his stuff again in a version of John Travolta’s Staying Alive dance. I can’t wait!

Billy Jean Plexus from Colin Rozee on Vimeo.

People, the expression of self and the interactions between each other are timeless qualities relevant to creativity, no matter what the future holds.

The varying dance styles were captured by director Nathan Drabsch over one day on a pair of RED Epics, which enabled the DMCI team to utilise effective time remapping when combining the dancers’ performances with their own abstract graphics and ism studios’ score.

FUTURE PROOF from The DMCI on Vimeo.

The work of creative studio Tell No One is bound to turn heads, their experiments with video cameras and post-production software make stunning motion graphics/experimental films that leave you wondering exactly how they created such hypnotic pieces.

Dynamic Blooms from Tell No One on Vimeo.

Forest from Tell No One on Vimeo.

Thomas Borowiak uses jump cuts and an empty swimming pool location to showcase the moves of dancer friend Linda Stark in his unofficial music video for Gold Panda track You.

Gold Panda – You from Thomas Borowiak on Vimeo.

If you think the moves look somewhat familiar, then perhaps like me you’ve found yourself trying to nail the same routine whilst playing the Kinect game Dance Central. Throw on your glad rags next time and you could be ready to star in next season’s promo.

Debuting at Art Basel Miami 2009, this film was shot in collaboration with the highly acclaimed dance company Gallim Dance and choreographed by Andrea Miller. Zach Gold uses the renowned quality of his photography and applies it to film, creating an engrossing series of environmental relationships, tension and peace.

Milk from zach gold on Vimeo.

This short film was made for the introduction of a new Converse / Nom de Guerre collaboration shoe. Inspired by the film Battleship Potemkin.

Zach Gold – Countdown to Violence from zach gold on Vimeo.

Amalric directs, writes and plays Joachim, a washed-up manager bringing together an American burlesque group to do a tour of his homeland France and in doing so prove himself to his showbusiness ex-partners. The narrative of the Joachim’s personal journey provides the scripted structure for the film, whilst the playful chaos of his burlesque troupe brings the lightness of mood for much of the film. For the final act the plot centres on the relationship between Joachim and and his most experienced attraction Mimi Le Meaux.

Amalric’s movie is well directed and beautifully shot, whether it’s the on-stage acts or location shots. The performances are naturalistic- these clearly aren’t trained actresses and are all the more watchable for it. He seems to have allowed the girls to improvise and whilst they’re on screen the film is alive with energy. Their camaraderie is infectious and they are the most grounded people in the film. The flipside is Joachim’s desperate attempts to recapture his alluded-to ‘glory days’. The film deliberately avoids giving too much information about how he came to his current position and, as unusual a complaint as this is in today’s exposition-heavy times, a bit of back-story wouldn’t have hurt. By the end of the film there’s the inescapable conclusion that if he had just let the girls (who are all genuine burlesque performers) do a tour and simply film the results, then as a documentary his film would have had more pathos and more laughs than the fictional piece.

That’s not to say the film isn’t enjoyable in its own right. The relationship between Joachim and his stars is wonderful as he gradually loses control over the tour and the performers become more maternal towards him. There are two worlds on display, the one Joachim is trying to create and the one he is trying to over-write. The audience want the same outcome as Joachim; him because he wants his reputation restored, and the audience because they want to see the girls on a stage big enough to contain their ample presence.

With the images of Radiohead’s Lotus Flower still reverberating around our heads, we are presented with another music video of experimental dance from one of the worlds biggest bands. Directed by Sam Taylor-Wood (Nowhere Boy), the video for R.E.M.s latest single ÜBerlin prowls the streets of London following Aaron Johnson (Kick-Ass, Nowhere Boy) as he hot-steps his way through some of the capitals back streets.

Elegant cinematography and contemporary dance collide in John Hicks’ beautiful short Evolution.

Both myself and MarBelle have always been fond of the experimental dance short and they don’t come much better than the kaleidoscopic vision of Natacha Paganelli’s Kolo.

The video installation “Kolo/Dance” spreads a spectacular enchantment which could remind some of a minimalist version of the choreographic inventions of the time of Russian Ballets.

Kolo from Natacha Paganelli on Vimeo.

Thought of You from Ryan Woodward on Vimeo.

Thought of You – Behind the Scenes Preview – ROUGH CUT from Cambell Christensen on Vimeo.

Street Dance from Robin Cantrell on Vimeo.

Street Dance 2 from Robin Cantrell on Vimeo.

Backwards dancing is even more fun to watch. Despite knowing exactly how the relatively simple trick’s pulled off, there’s still something fascinating about watching people move in an almost, but not quite, normal way whilst the world streams backwards around them.

Arin Crumley’s posted some pretty compelling test footage of a dancer doing just that:

This is a montage from some of the shots that came out of a test shoot Susan wanted to do. We used the HVX-200 and filmed in bushwick on Puertorican day.

Spike Jones (sic) and many others have used this effect. Essentially you have people walk backwards and then you play the footage back in reverse. They then seem to be walking forwards (sort of) and all of the world around them is going backwards.

As Arin name checked him I’ve got to include Spike Jonze’s classic Pharcyde promo Drop:

And of course Donovan’s forward, but still mighty cool Surviving Desire dance:

Oval – Ah! from Thrill Jockey Records on Vimeo.

BOCANADA from Gonzaga Manso on Vimeo.

Breakdancing group Illusionary Rockaz prove that Movement never lies to Of Porcelain’s Signal the Captain .

IRC dance movement from . on Vimeo.

Anxious to use artificial intelligence to improve the world, Rosetta Stone, a bio-geneticist, devises a recipe through which she can download her own DNA into a live brew she is growing in her computer. She succeeds in breeding three beings (Self Replicating Automatons – S.R.A.’s) that are part human, part software, whom she names Ruby, Marine and Olive. They look human, but are in fact intelligent machines. The only flaw in Rosetta’s creation is that the S.R.A.’s need injections ofmale chromo found only in spermatozoa to survive. As they cannot distinguish dreams from reality, Rosetta programs Ruby, via movie tapes, to seduce men in the real world and share donations with her sisters. Ruby’s evolving contact with the real world introduces her to art, spirituality, and ultimately, when she meets Sandy, a lonely Xerox shop worker, the capacity to fall in love. All of the characters struggle to find meaning in a world where love is the only thing that makes things real. In the process they also find harmony between the real and the virtual world.

However, I couldn’t possibly say a bad word about its quadruple star Tilda Swinton, easily one of the best actors we have working on our screens today. She is also it would appear, the inventor of the Teknolust dance which is surely how we’ll all be getting down in the future. Wont it?

Just in case you now feel tempted to rent the full film, I’m sure this trailer will put you off!

All the evidence I need is below (and almost NSFW depending on how stuffy your boss is).

Daisy Lowe for UK esquire HD from Greg Williams on Vimeo.

Jaydiohead Ignorant Swan Medley from SUBVOYANT on Vimeo.

Awarded the Un Certain Regard prize at last year’s Cannes and riding a wave of positive critical response from festival to festival, Yorgos Lanthimos’ dysfunctional Greek family feature Dogtooth is an uncomfortable and darkly comedic watch. We discuss the hard road of Greek filmmaking and the power of education in shaping personality and beliefs.

What’s more interesting to me is to be able to observe how possible it is to control people’s minds & really distort their perception about the world they live in with the information that you give them.

Showlinks
Yorgos Lanthimos
Dogtooth

The work of Erika Janunger spans the fields of architecture, interior design and music, however her latest piece Weightless adds filmmaking into the mix to create a hypnotic film that itself defies categorisation, and has spawned a bookcase that is currently produced by Carl Malmsten. Erika joins us to discuss how space, movement and music can be combine to create and explore the worlds we inhabit.

Weightless Materials
Film, Production & Test Stills

Showlinks
Erika Janunger
Carl Malmsten
Shape & Colour

Weightless (2007)
A short dance / architectural movie, about defying gravity.