The Achilles, Unproverbially

“Hey go to Redcat tonight. Dance for the Camera Festival. Great way for you to meet people and see the scene.” A few Metro stops later and I was at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, in the part my pal called its garage. (I’ll try to think of it as a magical spare room.) The second and third inaugural weekend programs of Dance Camera West's 2009 series were screening, and in spite of the overload of seeing a lot of art in rapid succession, the selections brought out the best aspects of dance displayed through film. Have you ever looked at the backs of a person’s heels? In part of a Finnish film in the second program, the frog’s eye view or so from behind soloist and director Alexandra Campbell’s heels is all we get to see, and it’s a masterpiece. Belling out at the base, arcing up along the tendon… wow. That, I think, is the best part of dance for the camera. Heels are all over the place on a live stage, but Campbell’s direction put their close-up in the metaphorical spotlight. Put to good use, that ability is breathtaking.

As for Los Angeles films, there were two. Rae Shao-Lan Blum and Pooh Kaye directed “Captain”, the last of ten (!) pieces in the six o’clock program. The eight o’clock set of nine then opened with “The Last Martini”, Vicki Mendoza’s USC production. The local art was, in my mind, some of the best at the screening—no small feat, given the international entries and acclaim of the festival and the American aversion to supporting fringe art. (Dance for the camera is still fringe, right?) Blum’s red-sashed romp in “Captain”, like Where the Wild Things Are with invisible monsters, was especially delightful, and Mendoza’s editing in “The Last Martini” was among the most provocative and complex in the evening.

I have met some people, and I have seen some scene, and both speak to why I’m already loving this place.


LADB