Dance Camera West Celebrates Choreography on Celluloid

Dance Camera West/Compagnie Marie Chouinard

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While it loses the visceral immediacy unique to live dance performance, film can magnify and manipulate dance to produce incredible images and effects simply not possible on stage. It’s no surprise that Los Angeles, the film capital of the world, should be home to a dance film festival. In a short seven years, Dance Camera West’s Los Angeles Dance Film Festival has become one of the world’s premier celebrations of movement on celluloid and, increasingly, digital dance. The seventh annual festival is bigger than ever, both in number of events and geographic spread. Last week the festival opened downtown with three programs of short dance films. This week the action moves to Hollywood, where the Directors Guild hosts the second annual Choreography Media Honors, with screenings of nominated choreography in commercials, television, music videos and films preceding the award ceremony. Other events include a panel discussion at the Screen Actors Guild, excursions into filmed dance by noted choreographers at the Hammer Museum, a documentary on five Kirov ballerinas, at American Cinematheque’s Aero Theater in Santa Monica, and films involving choreographers from Brazil, Mexico, Argentina and Uruguay, at Van Nuys’ Braude Center Plaza. The Aero also hosts the final event, a screening of the film Across the Universe with what should be a lively Q&A with choreographer Daniel Ezralow. For details on this week’s events, see dance listings. For a complete list of events, go to www.dancecamerawest.org.