An Intriguing Marriage of Choreography and Camera

Whatever the film crowd may want from a dance-for-camera event, the dance fan seeks the same choreographic distinction and dancer quality found in the best stage performances, PBS “Dance in America” telecasts or feature films. Happily, in two programs a week apart, the Getty Center’s Dance Camera West film and video festival has offered audiences a number of major examples as part of an appealing if largely conservative showcase of 14 short pieces.

Concluding tonight, the festival traces a range from not-quite-dance (Victoria Marks and Margaret Williams’ documentary abstraction “Men,” which was screened on the festival’s first program, last Friday) to tonight’s not-quite-cinema (Lynette Kessler and Douglas Thompson’s souped up performance tape “Anima”). It is arguably overloaded with dance-on-the-rocks: dancers photographed amid picturesque mountain vistas. Moreover, there may be far too little of the new technologies that are transforming the field.

But who could complain about “Queens for a Day,” a freewheeling 1996 Swiss entry (on program two) directed by Pascal Magnin, with choreography by Marie Nespolo and Christine Kung? This improbable union of take-no-prisoners postmodernism, animal motion, folk dancing and ancient myth needs every inch of the Alps to hold its life-affirming energy. Filmic space is its natural habitat.

Magnin has another resourcefully directed film screening tonight, the urban “Contrecoup” from 1997, but Guilherme Botelho’s choreography about hopelessly angry and needy young people proves so derivative of Anglo-European stage achievements (most notably by Pina Bausch and DV8 Physical Theatre) that even its intense performances can’t save it from looking generic.

Another entry tonight, Allen Kaeja and Mark Adam’s elegiac 1997 “Witnessed,” also looks warmed over both in its familiar approaches to location shooting and choreography. However, the very notion of using a Holocaust site as a dance environment sustains it through its five minutes on screen. Among comic entries, Mitchell Rose’s 2000 “Modern Daydreams,” screened last week, earns pride of place for avoiding farcical overkill and finding unusual spatial contexts for the choreography by Jamey Hampton and Ashley Roland. A sad love duet for man and bulldozer, set to the same music as “The Dying Swan,” is but one of its inspirations.

Editing takes the reins in three works on tonight’s program, Hans Beenhaaker’s 2001 “Wiped,” Michael Downing’s 1997 “Cornered,” and “Rest in Piece,” a 2001 dance skit credited to director Annick Vroom and the Hans Hof Ensemble. Many of the participants in those films are talented, but their dancing is seldom allowed a life of its own and the collage of shots has few rewards for those interested in choreography or performance.

For depth of feeling, photographic sensitivity and movement invention, the central (duet) portion of Laura Taler’s 1995 “A Village Trilogy” may be the most memorable footage in the festival. Shot in black-and-white, the varied forest textures here add immeasurably to a vision of quirky brotherhood explored through a rich character-dance vocabulary and fine portrayals.

Unfortunately, Part 1 (a crazed solo) needs a stronger dancer and the incessant camera motion in Part 3 (a celebratory ensemble) often makes the dancing unreadable. Taler emerges as the big Dance Camera West discovery. “Trilogy” appeared only on the first program at the Getty, but her charming 2000 introduction to abstract dance, “A Very Dangerous Pastime,” which opened last week’s program and does the same tonight, again shows that her mastery of choreography and direction is unquestioned.

Not so the central “Pastime” thesis about how people are intimidated by experimental dance. Some of us would bet that there are probably more people intimidated by experimental film, and that dance-for-camera needs apologists far less than filmmakers willing to trust a choreographic vision.

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The “Dance Camera West Festival” concludes tonight at 7:30 p.m. in the Harold M. Williams Auditorium at the Getty Center, 1200 Getty Center Drive, L.A. Free; parking reservations required. (310) 440-7300.