Transcending Media

Dance film is a new art form. It is a genre that can absorb theatre, movement, art design and animation. Dance film is a marriage of two moving media that is still in its infancy not yet fully explored, but with incredible potential. From narrative to experimental, dance film is not only moving forward, but also expanding in all directions. This book is directed to those serious dance film creators and students who, like myself, prefer to develop personalized strategies as opposed to standardized text-based screenplays. This book presents the pre-production materials used to adapt the dance production of Asylum of Spoons (2004) from the stage into a dance film. It was the first dance film in Bravo Canada s history to be short-listed for the Jury s Grand Prize at the Banff World Television Awards. Screenplays for dance film require a new language that has yet to be defined. The challenge was to analyze the stage work, deconstruct it into sequences, then further dissect each sequence into a series of theatrical, emotional and physical moments that, form dramatic arcs. These became the basis for filming the work, for determining how the eye of the camera would interpret the dance.