The award-winning independent film, video, and media production collective Mouvement Perpétuel is hosting a digital pop-up Wednesday to celebrate International Dance Day.
The pop-up is in collaboration with the global hub for dance and film, kNOwBOX Dance. It will showcase four dance films, all from Canadian productions.
Lucy Fandel has been dancing since 2016. She’s mostly into contemporary and site-specific dance. She says she felt inspired to pursue dance as a career because it gives her access to parts of life that can’t always be expressed with words.
“I think it connects me to myself, others, and my immediate surroundings, all at the same time. It makes it possible for me to feel really grounded but also capable of responding to what’s happening around me and being very alert,” Fandel said.
She says the digital pop-up is meaningful because it will allow dancers like her to have access to the work of people she might not be able to see in person and who have other artistic approaches.
“It’s really helpful to be able to give a range of what dance can look like so that people can become interested and learn how to talk about it,” Fandel said.
For her, International Dance Day is a moment to remember why dance is special.
“Sometimes I forget about what makes it unique, or I forget that not everyone has access to it all the time or that it’s not part of everybody’s lives. And so it’s kind of a moment to step back and go, ‘Oh, right, this is something that’s quite unique and really rich, and it reconnects me to all the different types of dance,’” Fandel said.
“It’s not International Contemporary Dance Day. It’s dance in every shape and form, from tango to hip-hop to these different social dances, and it reminds me that I’m part of that much bigger perspective on dance.”
Marlene Millar is a filmmaker and the co-founder of Mouvement Perpétuel with Philip Szporer. She says the significance of a digital pop-up for International Dance Day is that it’s free and allows people to see dance films internationally.
“It’s really nice to see the different artists that are featured,” Millar said. “Whether you understand the form that they’re dancing in or not, I think there’s a lot of beauty and richness in what they’re expressing through their physical form of dance and how we’ve captured it on film.”
Millar has created dance, documentary, and experimental media works since 1989. While she was a dancer, she was more drawn to creating things within camera frames than on a stage.
She says the main inspiration behind this project is to celebrate the work she has done over 25 years with co-founder Szporer.
“There’s something deeply personal in each of the films that I think can resonate really well with the audiences,” Millar said.
Kes Tagney has been working as a cinematographer in Montreal for 15 years. He felt inspired to become one because he’d always created various images since he was a young teenager, from photography to eventually video-based content.
He says this digital pop-up can be useful for people, as it can be a very solid platform for dance films to be presented in the public domain.
“Because it’s kind of a niche film category, which often is only shown in specific dance film festivals, and there aren’t actually many platforms or, like, moments where these films get to be seen by a larger audience,” Tagney said.
Fandel advises aspiring dancers to surround themselves with people they enjoy being around and working with. She adds that a dance career can be a difficult path to pursue in terms of precarity and feels it often lacks structure for oneself. She says it’s important to have other passions besides dance, as there may be ups and downs.
“When there’s a down, you don’t feel like you’ve lost your whole identity, but that you can connect to other things, and those things will eventually bring you back to dance,” Fandel said.
She says people can remember that dance exists in everyday life – it’s accessible through online platforms or theatres. However, there are other ways too.
“You can also observe people walking outside and the way everybody moves differently,” she said. “And I think that it’s important to know you can always make that connection, even if you’re not a professional dancer or you’re not taking classes; everybody moves in ways that have their own rhythm and their own beauty.”
Wednesday’s digital pop-up can be accessed here.
