12 January 19-25, 2023 miaminewtimes.com | browardpalmbeach.com New Times | music | cafe | Culture | Night+Day | News | Letters | coNteNts | Month XX–Month XX, 2008 miaminewtimes.com MIAMI NEW TIMES | MUSIC | CAFE | FILM | ART | STAGE | NIGHT+DAY | METRO | RIPTIDE | LETTERS | CONTENTS | 12 Month XX–Month XX, 2008 miaminewtimes.com MIAMI NEW TIMES | CONTENTS | LETTERS | RIPTIDE | METRO | NIGHT+DAY | STAGE | ART | FILM | CAFE | MUSIC | Captured Choreo ScreenDance Miami returns with a collection of diverse and timely films. BY TYLER FRANCISCHINE I n an age when iPhones contain the power to shoot a cinematic masterpiece, and a global pandemic continues to ren- der live performance a risky affair, no art form speaks more to the present mo- ment than screendance or dance performance choreographed explicitly for the camera. The Magic City’s long-standing Screen- Dance Miami festival, presented by Miami Light Project, returns for its ninth year with feature-length and short-film screenings, panel discussions, and workshops at the Mi- ami Theater Center, the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), O Cinema South Beach, and SoundScape Park. Miami-based choreographer Pioneer Winter has directed ScreenDance for the last six years. Winter, who serves as artistic direc- tor of the intergenerational and physically in- tegrated dance company Pioneer Winter Collective, says audiences and creators have remained enmeshed in ScreenDance’s com- munity partly because of the riveting, unique nature of the art form. “Screendance is an art form completely unto itself,” they say. “Dance and film are just a natural fit. Both are so caught up in time, but dance is ephemeral while film is more fixed. What we’re able to do with film is di- rect the eye of the audience — choreogra- phers don’t have that power onstage. Audiences will look where they want to look, but through film, you’re able to control what they see and how they’re seeing it.” This year’s curated collection of Screen- Dance screenings includes the Florida pre- miere of Ghostly Labor, a short film by Vanessa Sanchez and John Jota Leano that uses tap dance, Mexican zapateado, Afro-Ca- ribbean movement, and live music to reflect on the history of labor in the borderlands be- tween the U.S. and Mexico, and Sean Dorsey Dance: Dreaming Trans and Queer Futures, a short film by San Francisco modern dance choreographer and trans and queer dance ac- tivists Sean Dorsey and Lindsay Gauthier. Winter calls ScreenDance Miami’s 2023 offerings “a wide breadth of films that are very timely.” One of many highlights of the festival for Winter is the Florida premiere of Not My Enemy, a feature-length film by Flor- ida State University School of Dance assistant professors Tiffany Rhynard and Kehinde Is- hangi at the O Cinema on January 22. “Not My Enemy is about uncovering an ab- sent father’s past and choices, and in that pro- cess, we find a focus on what the Vietnam War did to men of color. It’s an experimental documentary,” Winter says. “There is conver- sation, real interviews with Vietnam veter- ans, and movement is used to process what’s being said. It paints this picture of how dehu- manizing Vietnam was for Black soldiers.” The festival kicked off on January 17 at the Miami Theater Center with a workshop led by Caracas-born, Miami-based interdisci- plinary artist Carla Forte. The following eve- ning, Miami-based performer and dancemaker Roxana Barba and Miami-based artist Claudio Marcotulli led a workshop culled from their collective history, creating work that weaves together dance perfor- mance, film, and immersive environments. This year’s ScreenDance Miami offers audiences several opportunities to engage with the art they’re viewing actively — and its creators — in unexpected ways. Following the screening of Not My Enemy, filmmaker Tiffany Rhynard will be on hand to answer questions, as will several of the filmmakers presenting their work at PAMM during the festival’s open-call film screening presentation on January 21. Bring a picnic to the festival’s pair of projection-wall screenings on January 21 and 27 at the New World Center’s Wallcast at SoundScape Park. Winter says the projection screenings invite Miami Beach’s greater community to experience screendance in all its cinematic glory. “Some films are just really epic, and they deserve to be larger than life,” Winter says. Many of the films showing at ScreenDance Mi- ami 2023, including Not My Enemy, were submitted by their creators as part of an open call. Each year, Winter leads a panel to determine the festival lineup, and they say films that made this year’s cut were “thoughtful, innovative, and relevant with an emphasis on cinematog- raphy and editing.” “With the help of a panel of diverse voices, ScreenDance Miami strikes a balance be- tween high-production films and some that are shot on phones. ScreenDance Miami is a platform for what was a response from Mi- ami artists. We have a very curious, open community that is always pushing the bound- aries of dance,” Winter says. “I personally find dance everywhere. You can see dance in how people navigate traffic, how they walk. I swear I see some shampoo commercials that border on dance film. To make something screendance, you have to have in mind where the camera is. It’s intention from the point of origin that sets screendance apart.” For the last nine years, ScreenDance Miami has been held annually, a testament to the power of both Miami’s arts community and the screendance medium. Winter says he’s looking forward to ScreenDance’s continued evolution, including a tenth anniversary in 2024 featuring a partnership with Amsterdam’s Cinedans Dance on Screen Festival. “Through the pandemic, we all found out that we can’t live without the arts, but we also can’t always see art live. Dance on film is a re- ally beautiful expression and way of marrying two mediums,” Winter says. “This may be the Sagittarius in me, but a lot of arts programs go on for a couple of years and fall off, and I’m really proud that we’ve been able to hang onto this festival for nearly a decade. We’re looking forward to our tenth year and con- tinuing to expand more and more.” Barba says the ScreenDance Miami festi- val always leaves an indelible mark on her year, whether she’s attending as a presenter or audience member. “It’s a beautiful experience when you can have consecutive days of seeing work and opening your mind to issues that maybe we haven’t thought of yet. I have fond memories from past festivals. I remember seeing a doc- umentary outdoors when it started pouring. We and many others were committed and stayed to the end of the film,” Barba says. “It’s also really inspiring and inviting to see works from local and international filmmakers and get to chat with them after the screenings. If there is an interest in screendance, this is the place to go because there’s such a strongly cu- rated selection of works, you can go to a workshop that may be useful, and you can meet people who might invite you to be part of their work. You never know.” She and Marcotulli say audiences attend- ing this year’s ScreenDance Miami festival will undoubtedly be moved by the art form’s synergistic marriage of dance and film. “Dance films are the ultimate art form. It’s a perfect marriage. Filmmaking and dance both create emotions in the audience through movement in time, but it’s not just filming choreography. It becomes something much more complex,” Marcotulli says. “It’s like being bilingual, using both lan- guages at the same time,” Barba says. “It’s sto- rytelling.” ScreenDance Miami 2023. Through Friday, January 27, at various locations; miamilight- project.com. Ticket prices vary. [email protected] ▼ Culture Heidi Duckler and Katherine Helen Fisher’s Where We’re Going will screen on January 21 at PAMM. Miami Light Project photo “IT’S A BEAUTIFUL EXPERIENCE WHEN YOU CAN HAVE CONSECUTIVE DAYS OF SEEING WORK.”
