The Dublin Dance Festival runs from May 13th – 28th and this year the Screen Cinema will host Dance on Film on May 15th and May 22nd.
Dublin Dance Festival 2011 will be treating audiences to a unique treasure trove of performances by multi-award-winning dancers and choreographers in venues across the city. Dance on Film will present two events during this year’s Festival. Festival Director Laurie Uprichard notes that this year’s festival sees a major focus on Asian choreographers so he’s “delighted that Dance on Film will offer an opportunity to see the work of two of the Japanese artists who are performing live during the festival.”
Sunday, May 15 @ 3pm
Eiko & Koma
Four Short Documentaries
Duration: 90 mins approx
Eiko & Koma are Japanese choreographers and dancers who have been working together for 40 years and have been based in New York for the past 35 years. These multi-award-winning artists are known for groundbreaking dance works, placing their bodies within visual landscapes and evoking epic expanses of time. They will present four short documentaries: My Parents (2004), Dancing in Water: The Making of River (2009), The Retrospective Project (2009), and Naked: A Gallery View (2010). These films survey their history, seminal works and their three-year Retrospective Project. Eiko will introduce each film; a question and answer session will follow the programme.
During the festival, Eiko & Koma will also perfom three short works, Raven, Night Tide and White Dance (Monday, May 16 and Tuesday, May 17 at the Samuel Beckett Theatre.)
Sunday, May 22 @ 3pm
Yasuko Yokoshi
Hangman Takuzo
Duration: 45 mins (Work in progress)
Japanese choreographer, Yasuko Yokoshi who resides in New York, is making a new film collaborating with her friends in Tokyo. Performance artist “Hangman Takuzo” hangs himself from a tree for a small audience (or usually no audience) in his own garden at home on the outskirts of Tokyo. He calls it Garden Theatre and has presented it every day for the past eight years. The movie features him, the legendary dance artist Mika Kurosawa (Hangman Takuzo’s girlfriend) and the unforgettable 72-year old Namiko Kawamura, who is known for her Zenshin-Hoko (Naked-Walking-Forward) performance. Together these artists attempt an impossible mission: without any experience or knowledge of film making, they are creating a fake dance-drama-documentary featuring themselves. A question and answer session with Yasuko Yokoshi will take place after the screening.
During the festival, Yasuko Yokoshi will perform Bell, her interpretation of Kyoganoko Musume-Dojoji, a classical Japanese dance reputed to be the most important and complex dance work of the Kabuki theatre repertoire. This will be performed on Friday, May 13 and Saturday, May 14 in the Great Hall, IMMA.
Tickets for the screenings and indeed all live shows can be bought online at www.dublindancefestival.ie, by phone at 672-8815 (Monday to Friday 11.00am–6pm), or in person at The Culture Box, 12 East Essex Street, Temple Bar, Dublin 2 (Monday to Saturday 11am–6pm, Sunday 12noon–3pm).
Dance, dance, dance, or we are lost.
Talking Movies 