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Tuesday, September 14, 2021

One for the history books

Way back in 1979 I made a dance called Hold Me, which was about love, relationships, community. That was smack in the era of downtown post-modern dance so even a loose narrative, accompanied by pop music without irony was generally not on. In 1981, as part of a "retrospective" - ah, youth! - I returned to the central knock-down-drag-out duet from Hold Me which was danced to Otis Redding's I Been LovingYou Too Long.  Then in 1983 I was honored that John Sayles chose to feature the duet in his film Lianna. Cut to those calendar pages flipping - for almost 40 years!

Recently, as part of 2 retrospectives of Sayles' work in Paris and Bordeaux this fall, my producer sister Maggie was interviewed by the programming consultant Victor Courgeon. He asked if he could access original footage of the scene from Lianna before the dance had been cut into the narrative of the full movie. Apparently, with his dancer girlfriend Pauline Domejean, he had begun learning the duet from the movie. But they couldn't figure out how to extrapolate movement transitions when the camera cut to, for example, Lianna at the light board, weeping. 

Of course I hunted up a performance video from 1981, featuring untrained dancer David Porter with me reprising my role, and sent it to the French duo. In return they sent me this clip of them in their apartment. Naturally, I found this inter-generational, international transmission quite touching - one for the history books.

As to film festival acceptances, there have been many, partly owing to the proliferation of online festivals since the pandemic, and owing to how quickly my little films seem to have proliferated! I was heartbroken not to be able to attend a little festival tour in Greece, but coronavirus cases were way up. (One can only hope that years from now, such references to the pandemic will seem dated.) 

Nowadays, when I receive festival awards like Second Audience Choice, and Best Female Director, Honorable Mention rather than boosting my self esteem it makes me smile: more happy big fish in more small ponds (see whimsical laurels below.)  Nonetheless, I continue to be a firm believer in making my work accessible to some stranger who might be touched or surprised, and online screenings mean anyone can see at anytime, which is about as accessible as you can get.

Laurels aside, I was gratified to hear from a presenter in Spain that Dancing is an Old Friend is the "best corona film I've seen - and I've seen lots!" - and from another in Italy who said about Through Mabel's Eyes: "Your work is poetry, and a joy for eyes and soul." If correspondence rather than champagne toasts feels a little socially distanced, well it is. But I'm sure glad that about 15 years ago I chose to shift to making movies which now get shared all over the world at little cost: my heart goes out to performers who've lost touring opportunities, and who - because of the aforementioned, someday-to-be-past-tense pandemic - have had to re-invent themselves under the gun.




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