This screening and presentation features works that synthesize the languages of dance and film that emerged from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s “Art in Cinema” screenings in the mid-1940s.
The Light Out West takes audiences on a journey into post-World War II San Francisco, illuminating how early dance film evolved alongside the West Coast experimental film movement and how choreographic approaches manifested in experimental film forms. The screening will also serve as a call to action to raise awareness about art archival initiatives in light of the closure of longstanding arts archives & institutions in the San Francisco Bay Area, and focus on the work of marginalized filmmakers whose work was often disregarded in their day.
The program will be preceded by a contextual introduction by SFDFF Staff member Clare Schweitzer, whose article Lone Mountain College’s San Francisco Dance Film Festival 1976-1978 was published in the most recent edition of the International Journal of Screendance.
PROGRAM FILMS
Introspection (1941/1946) 5:57 minutes
Director/Choreographer: Sara Arledge
The final form of Introspection, which premiered as a part of SFMOMA’s Art in Cinema series on May 2nd, 1947, is notable as it is likely the first abstracted dance films ever created. In the piece, parts of dancers move in a darkened space free from gravitational constraints. Their movement is elongated and abstracted, often evoking sculptural imagery rather than dancing bodies in space.
The creation of Introspection is almost as astonishing as the final product of the film. A visual artist by training, Arledge began work on the film as a means of “adding time to painting” in 1941 and explored every facet of her Kodak Cine Special to do so, placing colored gels over her lenses, using matte inserts to double or triple expose parts of the frame and using a car’s reflective hubcap
The acceleration of US involvement in WW2 and her husband’s enlistment in the army sent Arledge around the country. Upon the conclusion of the war, Arledge settled in Richmond, CA and was invited by SFMOMA to finish the film for the new Art in Cinema series (according to archived correspondence, Maya Deren was aware of the project and specifically recommended her).
Sara Kathryn Arledge’s work was groundbreaking for its time, though her films were not screened with much frequency until decades after their creation. In addition, Arledge was frequently institutionalized against her will for mental illness, highlighting the barriers faced by women artists working in patriarchal spaces.
Further Reading: Sara Kathryn Arledge: Serene for the Moment
Triptych (1950) 8:30 minutes
Director: Padgett Payne
Triptych is derived from a solo choreographed by former Martha Graham Company dancer Welland Lathrop. The original work, Three Characters for a Passion Play, depicts three distinct characters set to Bela Bartok’s Three Burlesques. In developing the filmic version of the solo, Lathrop strayed from a representational approach to the dancing body in space, favoring instead the application of filmic techniques to bring the dynamic and emotional qualities of the solo to the screen.
Limited light resources and a small filming space led to a compositional approach to capturing the moving body rather than a depiction of its trajectory through space, common in dance documentation. While the movement was performed to a pre-recorded tape of the music, the score was re-recorded to fit the final cut of the film.
The New York Times positively reviewed the film in 1956, calling it, “the most supple and mature merger of the two media [dance & film] to date.”
Further Reading: Impulse 1960: Dance in the Screen Media
Horror Dream (1946) 10 minutes
Director: Sidney Peterson
Choreographer: Marian Van Tuyl
Marian Van Tuyl, founder of Mills College’s Dance Department, created Horror Dream as a live work in 1941 and met Sidney Peterson during the Art in Cinema screening series in 1946. Peterson then asked if Van Tuyl would be willing to “destroy” the piece for purposes of making an experimental film. The primary element of this destruction was the placement of the camera, which was situated at the center of the performing space rather than at an angle that would capture the entire proscenium. This simple placement disorients the viewer in the space and the camera fixes their gaze, evoking a feeling of sleep paralysis.
This uneasy feeling is amplified by an early John Cage score. Cage was working and teaching at Mills College at the time and often composed for the teachers of the department as well as guest instructors for Mills famed Dance Summer Session, which included Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham & Doris Humphrey.
Clinic of Stumble (1947) 16 minutes
Director: Sidney Peterson
Choreographer: Marian Van Tuyl
The second collaboration between Van Tuyl and Peterson, Clinic of Stumble, was also created for the Art In Cinema series at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 1948. Choreographed specifically for the film, Van Tuyl played with the concept of figures clad in dark coats revealing their true outfits, which reflected the private personalities within.
Peterson double exposed the entire work, capturing the dance, then rewinding the reel to capture another element of the movement or scenic design. Thus, the film features juxtaposed movement that offers additional layers of meaning and evokes new potential for choreography specific to the screen space.
Further Reading: The Slowing Down of the Subject: A Medium for Choreographers
Hangar (1957) 7 minutes
Director: William Heick
Choreographer: Anna Halprin
HANGAR features Anna Halprin’s dancers improvising at a construction site at San Francisco International Airport. Filmmaker W.R. Heick captures them from both ground and air and demonstrates an extraordinary early example of a cinematic approach to site-specific performance capture. Films like Hangar (in addition to many site-specific captures) present provocative and still pressing questions regarding the delineations between dance documentation and dance film.
The full version print of Hangar is regrettably lost and the only complete version that exists is a copy taken from a VHS adorned with a time code. While unfortunate, this speaks to the precarity of preservation and the ease with which important work becomes lost.
