Both dance and film can draw crowds of people to the theater on a Thursday evening looking to enjoy a night of the arts, but a choreo-cinema fusion may be unconventional for the typical show-goer.
However, the Fowler Museum will continue its student arts series Fowler Out Loud on Feb. 25 by showcasing a collection of choreo-cinematic short films.
The screening will feature works created by graduate students in world arts and cultures Heather Coker, Nguyen Nguyen and Alissa Cardone.
The choreo-cinema viewing will be the only film showing of the Fowler Out Loud series this quarter.
While planning the season’s events, Fowler Out Loud coordinator Sara Stranovsky was looking to explore a less-frequented film genre and eventually approached Coker with the idea.
“I wanted to try to mix it up and not just do a straight film showing,” Stranovsky said. “I thought it would be great to incorporate dancers. … There had been a number of films created in the dance world on campus, and I thought that would be great to get them in.”
Choreo-cinema, a genre often referred to as dance for camera, combines the artistic creativity of both choreography and filmmaking, showcasing performance and body-movement while employing cinematic expertise.
A dancer since the age of three, Coker has been making films since she was a young girl as well. For Coker, who will be screening three short films, the mixture of film and dance has enabled her to combine the two creative endeavors she has always struggled to blend.
“I was always trying to capture things and always trying to show the way I saw things,” Coker said. “So I figured if I could learn more about composing dances, that there is something very elemental about my understanding of composing films. They can really feed one another.”
Nguyen, who will be screening three short films with a dark and mysterious tone, said the genre of film explores what is on stage with different angles and viewpoints in order to capture a certain feeling or tone.
“When you choreograph, there are two elements,” Nguyen said. “There is the physical choreography and then there is the editing room choreography of where things are placed. So a major part of choreo-cinema is actually in the editing. You can choreograph and film something, but in the editing room, new ideas evolve.”
According to Stranovsky, dance for camera is a steadily growing genre of cinema. Over the past decade, dance for camera film festivals have popped up across the country, including here in Los Angeles.
Though gaining in popularity, the three students are hoping to promote the genre, which is largely unknown to those outside of the dance world. Coker, Nguyen and Cardone all worked in the business professionally before returning to UCLA for graduate degrees and now hope their collaboration will expose a wider audience to choreo-cinema.
“I hope to get the audience to see dance in a different way than the music video genre,” Nguyen said. “I think that is what most people are familiar with when they think of dance on video. In these kinds of works we are creating, it is an exploration of what we would use on stage but using a very different medium and choreographing it specifically to film.”
For Coker, the screening is an extension to what initially brought her to love and create dance for camera.
“I realized somewhere along the way that I don’t necessarily see things the way everybody else does,” Coker said. “Sometimes it can be interesting for people to see that.”