Dances Made to Order

Stephanie Acosta is one of the artists creating a film for Edition 24 of Dances Made that will be inspired by the themes chose by our audience: vintage cartoons and synonym/antonym. Get your tickets for the exclusive digital premiere on May 29.

Why are you interested in making dance film?

I have always had passion for dance and filmmaking, that these two things found each other in my practice was inevitable.

Tell us a little about your creative process…

Each project is different, the research sometimes brings us to the page first, other times making and finding images steers the process. For this piece we began with a desire to collage movements and sites that my collaborator and I have gathered from working together for the past year, we wanted to collage the cutting room floor and bring the elements into a new piece of eye candy.

Name a film that changed your life:

Uncle Vanya on 42nd Street (1994) really shifted my relationship with film. At the time I still had a youthful compulsion to separate genres and interests into their happy piles. The simple rebellions of this film adaptation really freed me to think between the lines, and then I just kept going. Until one day I found the in-betweens were my favorite parts.

Name a dance performance that changed your life:

The first time I saw Pina Bausch’s Cafe Mueller changed and inspired me along with an entire generation of movement makers and I am glad to share that creative birthplace with so many.

 If we were going to spend the day with you hanging out with you, what would we do? 

On a Chicago spring day all I want to do is to be on the streets bumping, watching and hiding from the many faces of the city. Taking a long walk or ride up the lake front path with breaks to eat fruit and cheese from our bags, pausing to look at the changing skyline as we continue on our way. Lunch at the Handlebar Patio in Wicker Park where we would connect with some people from my creative community and make plans for late night shows and early night art walks. A nap in the park and dinner at our courtyard, which I share with some of the thriving Pilsen creative community, followed by beers on the roof top over looking the sky line for the last time before we ride out to cool the night with some live music.

 What is your favorite drink and where do you get it? 

I am a whiskey neat with a beer back at the SKYLARK (a bar in the Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago) kind of woman on most nights. These days that is a Jameson and a Prankster (a North Coast beer) on the side.

 If you could live in another time period, which would it be? 

I would honestly not want to live in any other time. As a woman we have never had comparable freedoms and we are still working towards more. I can wear a throw back outfit if that’s what I want to do but I would never romanticize any other time. There’s never been a more exciting time to be alive and a more necessary time to be aware.

What are some things you can’t live without?

After the basic human needs of food and shelter I can’t imagine an existence without room for creative expression and exploration.

Liana C. Percoco is one of the artists making a dance film for Edition 24 of Dances Made that will be inspired by the themes chosen by our audience: vintage cartoons and synonym/antonym. Get your tickets for the digital premiere exclusively on Dances Made on May 29.

Why are you interested in making dance film?

I became interested in making dance film because I felt my live, stage work wasn’t accessing an emotional and visceral response that I felt dance should do. I thought dance for the camera work was a way to connect with a larger audience through the film medium while exploring new ways to frame movement and invoke the emotional response the body has the innate ability to communicate.

Tell us a little about your creative process…

These days I’m really into improvisation as both a performance method and way to generate material. And especially with screendance work, you can rehearse all you want in the studio, but once you arrive on site to film, everything changes and you must be okay with making decisions and directing upon instinct.

Name a film that changed your life:

I’d have to say An American in Paris. I love musicals, Gershwin music, and I’ve always loved Gene Kelly’s dancing and choreography; I never get tired of watching it. His work was an inspiration to be able to do it all: sing, dance, act, direct and choreograph, and do it well. An American in Paris is also one of the first films that really thought about how to film dance and movement and does it so magnificently (in Technocolor!). You could even consider it a dance on camera as well. An American in Paris and also Singin’ in the Rain were unique in that they were major studio films that portrayed the struggle of the artist in both an entertaining yet honest way.

Name a dance performance that changed your life

The first time I saw Joe Goode Performance Group in 2003 I was blown away. I was struck especially by Liz Burritt in the piece What the Body Knows and how seemlessly it was an interdisciplinary performance that weaved story, song, video, and movement into something personal and emotive. I knew I wanted to create work that way after seeing the show, and have continued to be a big fan of the company’s work.

If we were going to spend the day with you hanging out with you, what would we do?

Assuming it was Summer in the Chi-town, I would take you around town on my scoot, Stella Blue Belle (with helmet!), visit and hang out in some of Chicago’s great, green parks of which hopefully one has some kind of live musical performance, check out the free exhibits at Museum of Contemporary Art, go for a stroll in my cute neighborhood Lincoln Square and tour The Old Town School of Folk Music and then get some gelato. My partner and I would cook you a huge, delicious gluten-free and vegan dinner if we weren’t having a picnic at aforementioned outdoor live musical event and play a game like Dominion or Settlers of Catan. Then we’d catch the late night set at the Green Mill.

What is your favorite drink and where do you get it?

While I love a good, girly cocktail, my drink of choice is these days is usually a South American wine like Malbec, or a Pinot Noir from Russian River Valley, or a Sicilian Nero D’Avola (which, I have to brag I had in Sicily before they started exporting it to the states!)

If you could live in another time period, which would it be?

The 40′s and 50′s- so I could be Gene Kelly’s dance partner!

What are some things you can’t live without?

I’d like to say i’m a minimalist and could live without anything but love, mountains, kitties, a laptop, a pair of Fluevogs, a cup of tea, and a bicycle.

Happy Cinco de Mayo! To celebrate we asked Efrain Schunior a Latino director and filmmaker we love to make a curated Spotify playlist for you.

“These tracks span time and exhibit that all-consuming passion that is unmistakably at the heart of Mexican culture.” –Efrain

Listen to: Passion and celebration – A Cinco de Mayo Playlist.

I’m excited to present the work of Stephanie Acosta, Liana C. Percoco and Wendy Clinard for Edition 24 of Dances Made to Order. Stephanie, my collaborator on Dance Films Kino, has a performance art background and brings an interesting range of artistic references, objects and collaborators into her work. Liana has an eye for up-and-coming dance film talent, having curated a salon for emerging dance filmmakers at DFK and I’m excited to see how this informs her creations. Wendy Clinard is one of Chicago’s foremost percussive dancers, which is a perspective that I don’t always see in dance on film. I’m excited to hear what she has to say. Select the themes that will inspire the Edition 24 films from May 1 through May 3 at midnight and get your tickets for the digital premiere!

Sarah Best is visual artist and dance film curator. She’s curated film at Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Chicago Cultural Center Links Hall and other venues. As an artist in residence at Hyde Park Art Center, Sarah opened the doors of her studio to create a salon style environment evoking the kinos or private art clubs of the 1920s in Soviet Russia. Dance Films Kino featured the work of 45 filmmakers at 30 free screenings and performances. http://www.sarahbest.net

A film that changed my life: My Dinner with Andre, because I saw it as a teenager in rural Pennsylvania and ever since then its characters Grotowski, Erik Satie, and Andre and Wally themselves have been recurring figures in my life. Plus Wally, my occasional correspondant, was so kind to encourage me as a teenager, and to help me get tickets to two plays of his in London as an adult.

 A dance film that changed my life or a dance performance that changed my life:  DV8’s Enter Achilles, which I saw in a theater class in London. It was the first example of dance film that I’d ever seen and it led me on pilgrimages to see physical theater in London, Ann Arbor and New York, and years later to dance on film. I’ve shown DV8‘s The Cost of Living at many screenings. It’s an all time favorite.

A book that changed my life: I am fascinated by books that are extremely visual, extreme in their visions and non-linear in nature. They make me feel like there are other possibilities in life and art than what’s dominant and expected. Some of my favorites of this type are J-K Huysmans Au Rebors (Against Nature) which Oscar Wilde cited as the Yellow Book (a.k.a. the the Bible of decadence) in Portrait of Dorian Gray. I love Joyce, I love Woolf. I love a lot of poetry. It may take me a lifetime to read Georges Perec’s Life: A User’s Manual but I enjoy every minute of it.

Current pop-culture obsession(s): Game of Thrones, Mad Men’s Peggy Olson, Atlantic’s The Sexes, Kickstarter, Kiva, outer space (SXSW obsession this year) and Instagramming everything.

Favorite flavor of ice-cream: Pistachio

Favorite method of procrastination: Playing video games because Jane McGonigal says they’ll make me a happier person with fewer deathbed regrets. http://blog.superbetter.com/show-me-the-science-resilience-games-post-traumatic-growth-and-more/

Favorite libation: Old fashions made with rye whiskey, preferably with whiskey made by Chicago’s Kovall Distillery and a twist of orange. Anything sipped at The Violet Hour in Chicago, usually a Dark & Stormy.

Pamela Vail and Jeremy Moss are hard at work creating their film based on the themes chosen by our audience: notice only the crooked lines and 1984 by George Orwell. Get your tickets for the digital premiere  of Edition 23 of Dances Made on May 1.

Why are you interested in making dance film?

I love the potential and possibilities in merging the 2 disciplines of dance and film. Although I’ve been somewhat of a dance “purist” most of my life, I’m now a true fan and creator of dance film. I love what film can do for dance and vice versa. Collaborating with filmmaker Jeremy Moss has been pivotal for me and it’s been exciting to delve into the dance film world. It offers a whole new set of possibilities to get out of habitual ruts as a dance maker/performer.

Tell us a little about your creative process…

I work best creating alone in the studio. Things tend to simmer in my imagination a while before they emerge physically. But then things emerge physically that surprise me–and I’m always striving to surprise myself. Always trying NOT to keep doing the same thing every time but also trying to embrace my “shtick” because I know I can’t escape myself. It’s a struggle. But the creative process wouldn’t be a creative process if it was easy. I relish the struggle of it.

Name a film that changed your life:

Staying in the realm of dance films, I’d have to say that Rosas Danst Rosas by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and Thierry De May changed my life. I was riveted the first time I saw it – the cinematography, the choreography, the location, and the way it all just fit together and took me for a ride. It was the first time I could really “read” and “feel” movement that wasn’t live on stage. It blew my mind, and I thought, “I want to do that.”

Name a dance performance that changed your life:

It’s a tie between 2: Tere O’Connor’s work (can’t remember the name of the piece), and Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s Rain. At the end of both of these pieces, I found myself weeping, and I couldn’t really say why – I didn’t even feel it coming. It sounds sentimental, but it wasn’t at all–they were profound in a kinesthetic, “gut” kind of way.

If we were going to spend the day with you hanging out with you, what would we do? 

Hang out with my cats, walk around town, cook, drink coffee, drink good beer.

What is your favorite drink and where do you get it?

Another tie: soy latte at Chestnut Hill Cafe, and any local IPA beers at John J. Jeffries restaurant (in Philadelphia).

If you could live in another time period, which would it be?

I think maybe the 1920s. Women were finding their independence and (full disclosure) I love the clothes.

What are some things you can’t live without?

Movement, animals, a good pillow, comfortable clogs, good coffee, good beer, ice cream, new music, alone time