Dance Screen 96 Festival.

Dance Screen 96 Festival

Dance appears on television too infrequently, at least in the United States. It is certainly not because programs are unavailable. The Dance Screen 96 Festival, the second to be held in Lyons, France, attracted twenty-six countries--from Andorra and Argentina to the United Kingdom and the U.S.--represented by 195 films. The festival was coproduced by the International Music Center (IMZ, Vienna) and the Opera National de Lyon. High under the dome of the beautiful opera house, the professional videotheque made available works by 169 directors and 204 choreographers. Meanwhile, down in the amphitheater, below the stage level, four-minute excerpts from each program were shown, both in large-screen projection and on multiple monitors. Full-length screenings of selected programs and workshop panels on "Dance for Television, Is This the Future?" and "Dancing on the Internet" completed the work schedule.

Behind the scenes an international jury--American producer Rhoda Grauer; Yorgos Loukos, artistic director, Ballet de ['Opera National de Lyon; Veronica Tennant, executive producer/creative producer, CBC-TV, Canada; Italian journalist Sergio Trombetta; and Nigel Wattis, head of arts for London Weekend Television Productions--brought a wide range of experience to the selection process. Determining the winners in the categories designated by IMZ, the organizer of Dance Screen, has become more and more difficult as both the quantity and quality of entries have grown. Jury president Loukos summed up the experience as one of "animated controversy" filtered through "a shared passion for dance and television."

There was controversy in the audience at the announcement of the winner of the main prize of 100,000 francs, the Dance Screen Award 1996. For the first time, the jury not only awarded the honor to a documentary--Struggle for Hope--but to one that did not stress dance. The jury cited it for going "beyond documentary, beyond dance, to become a moving work of art, asking questions about art itself . . . A great Kabuki actor (Tamasaburo Bando) [creating] a work to a Bach cello suite, performed by a Chinese-American (Yo-Yo Ma), shows how art can transcend geographical and cultural boundaries." This film, directed by Niv Fichman of Rhombus Media, Toronto, is filled with exquisite images and fascinating interactions between these two great artists as they explore the intricacies of their collaboration.

In the category of Stage Recordings/ Studio Adaptations, the jury chose Carmen, choreographed by Mats Ek and directed by Gunilla Wallin for Swedish television, and cited as "the broadcast of a ballet by one of Europe's leading choreographers that was original, moving, amusing, and beautifully danced." Commissioned by the Spanish government in 1992, this Carmen, based on the Merimee short story and the Bizet opera, has choreography that allows the abstraction of emotion to be expressed in a most physical and inventive manner.

The award for best Camera Rework of Choreography (originally seen on the stage) went to Enter Achilles, an extraordinary film of Lloyd Newson's choreography for DV8 Physical Theatre, directed with great sensitivity by Clara van Gool. The jury's citation read, "Uncertain and never sure of itself, the masculine identity needs more and more self-confirmation. At the same time, it needs to censor the parts of itself it does not accept. It is a stressful and frustrating situation that can provoke violent, aggressive, and exhibitionist reactions . . . Exploring these issues has been the challenge and the success of DV8. In Enter Achilles the personal and the group dynamics result in a choreography that is perfectly balanced between a slice of contemporary life and dance."

Mats Ek was honored again in the category of Screen Choreography for Smoke, a program that he both choreographed and directed for the camera--a brilliant debut for Ek as director, with similarly brilliant performances by Sylvie Guillem and Niklas Ek. Another unique distinction: Their pas de deux, entitled Solo for Two, was later performed onstage in Paris--a reversal of the usual route dance takes from stage to television.

The winner in the documentary category, Just Dancing Around? William Forsythe, was cited as "a valuable and rare document, considering that Forsythe, in the absolute prime of his career as one of the most explosive and innovative choreographers of our time, is a reluctant subject for interviews and documentaries. The program shows the intensity of his thought process--choreography is organization--and the physical challenge and daring with which he and his dancers provoke the expectation of contemporary ballet."

Finally, recognizing the importance of the commissioning of new work especially for the camera, the jury gave a special award to Mothers and Daughters--"a highly original concept in which emotional relationships are explored by movement in the camera." Margaret Williams directed it for the Channel Four Television series Tights Camera Action!