Portrait of Lester Horton, a Los Angeles-based dancer, choreographer and teacher who trained many world-reknowned dancers and built the first American theater devoted permanently to dance. Former students and friends, including Bella Lewitzky, Alvin Ailey, and Carmen de Lavallade, help create a picture of Horton through interviews. Includes numerous dance excerpts.
Follows the plight of real-life dancers as they struggle through auditions for the Broadway revival of A Chorus Line and also investigates the history of the show and the creative minds behind the original and current incarnations.
A love story, portraying the dilemmas and inevitable consequences of ambition. It is a film about a woman's fight for independence, a woman trying to succeed with her own art in the extremely competitive world of dance.
While most of Ken Russell's documentaries for the BBC's Monitor arts strand focused on a single creative figure, he would also occasionally make more wide-ranging surveys of the state of a particular art. The Light Fantastic (BBC, tx. 18/12/1960) was written and presented by Ron Hitchins, a Cockney barrow boy who has long been interested in a great many dance forms, and who has recently taken up Spanish dancing. Hitchins participates in some of the dance sequences, but his main contribution is an enthusiastic commentary that helps personalise what could have been simply a disparate collection of dance footage. He's not shy about expressing likes and dislikes, being none too keen on ballroom dancing (too choreographed), rock'n'roll (too monotonous) and Morris dancing (just doesn't like it), though anything genuinely spontaneous gets a thumbs up, even if it's a room full of people dressed in black swaying to the sound of a gong.
American dancer and choreographer Hermes Pan recalls his life and work as he relives the glorious history of the Hollywood musical.
BTS perform their Japan concert at Tokyo Dome and Fukuoka Yahuoku Dome during their Love Yourself World Tour.
Made in 1980, this film explores the contemporary dance scene through the work of seven New York-based choreographers. They discuss the nature of dance and the evolution of their own work. Filmed at rehearsals, performances, and during interviews, the film is a unique primary source. The artistic roots of these seven artists can be found in Martha Graham's concern with modern life as a subject for dance and in Merce Cunningham's emphasis on the nature of movement. In the 1960s, the interaction of art forms generated choreographic innovations. Especially influential was John Cage, whose radical ideas served as a point of departure for much of the new choreography. Each of the choreographers in Making Dances draws inspiration from the Graham/Cunningham tradition, yet each makes a highly distinctive statement. Structure, movement in non-fictive time and space, and the nature of movement itself are recurring themes.
A history of the work of Merce Cunningham.
Stéphane Lissner, director of the Paris Opera, entrusts the staging of the opera-ballet Les Indes galantes to the visual artist Clément Cogitore. Based on the experience of his short film Les Indes galantes, the artist updates Jean-Philippe Rameau's baroque masterpiece (1735) by bringing together lyric song and urban dance. The choreography is entrusted to Bintou Dembélé who supervises dancers from krump, popping, voguing or even experimental hip hop. From rehearsals to the Premiere, Philippe Béziat films the meeting of urban dancers with the lyric institution and invites the spectator to share a human and artistic experience.
A glimpse into the world and methodology of dancer Martha Graham.
Witness the never-before-seen footage and true story behind the John Wick phenomenon – from independent film to billion-dollar franchise.
The mavericks whose radical ideas created modern dance in the 20th century.
The story of Ohad Naharin, renowned choreographer and artistic director of the Batsheva Dance Company, an artistic genius who redefined the language of modern dance.
Penthesilea, the first of six films made by Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen, traverses thousands of years to look at the image of the Amazonian woman in myth. It asks, among other questions, is the Amazonian woman a rare strong female image or is she a figure derived from male phantasy? The film explores the complexities of such questions, but does not seek any concrete answers.
Alvin Ailey was a visionary artist who found salvation through dance. Told in his own words and through the creation of a dance inspired by his life, this immersive portrait follows a man who, when confronted by a world that refused to embrace him, determined to build one that would.
Filmmaker Maia Wechsler follows choreographer Stephen Petronio as he prepares dancers to restage the 1968 production of "RainForest."
BTS perform their New York concert at Citi Field Stadium during their Love Yourself World Tour.
Bill Moyers and filmmaker David Grubin give viewers a rare glimpse into dancer/choreographer Bill T. Jones’s highly acclaimed dance Still/Here. At workshops around the country, people facing life-threatening illnesses are asked to remember the highs and lows of their lives, and even imagine their own deaths. They then transform their feelings into expressive movement, which Jones incorporates into the dance performed later in the program. For this documentary, Jones demonstrates the movements of his own life story: his first encounter with white people, confusion over his sexuality, his partner Arnie Zane’s untimely death from AIDS, and Jones’s own HIV-positive status.
The documentary portrayed one of the most established dance companies in Hong Kong which has a history of over four decades. With a tradition of blending Chinese dance and ballet together in the training, the dance company has set sail to re-evaluate its artistic essence by adapting new physical disciplines and philosophy, picking up different cultural traces, meditation and Chinese martial arts. Through monologues of the company members, the film unveiled their fears, self-doubts, and findings in their quest to refine their dance forms and express their cultural roots. It's an uncertain journey towards the cultivation of inner peace and the essence of movement and stillness.
A filmed version of Aaron Copland's most famous ballet, with its original star, who also choreographed.