One of my greatest ongoing facinations is Dance.
One of the reasons that I originally got into film-making and editing was because I wanted to tell the stories of the dancers that I was surrounded by when I was going to school at Belhaven University in Jackson Mississippi. I was always fascinated by the expressive capabilities that any genre of dance is uniquely equipped to manifest. In other words, in no other art form is there such a tangible embodiment of the art and the artist together. The dancers in any given piece become the sculpture; become the paint; become the instrument. Everything revolves around their pushing their bodies into impossible shapes, creating visceral responses that are unparalleled (in my humble opinion) in any of the sister arts.
Needless to say, I have always had a very healthy appreciation for the expressive power that all types of dance manifest. There is an underlying human need to dance that transcends culture and ethnicity and economic status. We all dance because we must. Perhaps it is because we, as human beings, are always (even when standing still) in motion. The very fibers of our anatomical structure vibrate and move like a hurricane in every moment.
I have had the great privilege to work with several dancers over my career. Perhaps too “dance” is entirely an insufficient word to describe what I feel these movers can do. A term that I’ve coined on several occasions is the term “kinetic expressionist” when describing my various collaborators. I have in many many ways taken a great deal of inspiration from these collaborators and my early friendships with dancers in general when I was young. I have tried to treat my own videography and capture as a dance. Also attempting with my editing to capture the same fluidity and motion from shot to selected shot.
I hope you enjoy watching these pieces as much as I did capturing them.
