Based on the dance films I have seen in the past two years, I can say that the authors too often lack a sense of film as a medium: the dance is there, but the film is not. It is forgotten that time, space, characters and what surrounds and creates them function differently on film than on stage.

The second problematic area is the clumsy integration of choreography into the world of film, which causes the language of dance on film to seem unjustified and not communicative enough. In those instances, dance does not say much and the reason a body moves a specific way remains uncertain.

In the films that have been selected this year, the authors have created comprehensive worlds, despite the intricacy of the genre, and dance (in some cases movement as a whole) is a natural part of those worlds. These films are great examples of how space and a dancing body can form an eloquent whole, which in turn creates a spacious and voluminous world.

Arolin Raudva

choreographer-dancer

Festival programmer for Dance Films