Thought and Decision of Behind the Camera
One spring morning in London earlier this year, I had the opportunity to interview an artist who is part of the group of great names in the Screendance universe. In an hour of conversation, Margaret Williams answers questions about her work in collaboration with choreographers such as Victoria Marks, Lea Anderson and Jiří Kylián, and tells us about her long experience, which involves a behind-the-scenes camera, guided by a reflection in depth about her work as a director and also as a curator.
Photo: Stephanie Matthews
¿Do you think you could organize your trajectory, your work, in periods or stages? And if it´s possible, based in which aspects?
With dance film, I think about trajectories in terms of the people that I have collaborated with. In the beginning, I spent a lot of time working with choreographer, Lea Anderson. We made a film called Flesh and Blood, that was our first film together and is still used in the secondary school syllabus here in the UK.
Before Flesh and Blood, I was asked to make some filmed inserts for Antenne2, a French TV station. The idea of the inserts was for a Christmas Day special, to be broadcast on Christmas Day with a live orchestra conducted by Lorin Maazel, Geraldine Chaplin was presenting the show. When we discussed the project, maestro Maazel suggested that the inserts should be like a Chagall painting.
Wow! Difficult!
Yes, he said: “Ah, I want to see people flying over the rooftops of Paris!”. So, until that point I hadn’t made any dance films at all, and I thought: “Well I’d like to work with some dancers and put them on the rooftops of Paris”. That seemed to work and I got very excited by doing that. So, it was great. I mean, we were filming in December so it was freezing and the dancer weren’t wearing very many clothes, but I certainly learned a lot from making these short films with dancers.
One of the dancers said “I think you’d like Lea Anderson. I think you’d be interested to meet with her and talk to her”. This was in 1989, so a long time ago. And when I got back to London I contacted Lea and asked if she would be interested in making a dance film. And that’s how Flesh and Blood happened (with Lea’s dance company «The Cholmondeleys»). And from Flesh and Blood, we went on and we made, I don’t know, six of seven films together. We also made a series for television, for Channel 4, called Tights, Camera, Action! with dance films we curated from around the world. They were presented and introduced by Lea in different costumes… and it was great fun to do, and great to find all this material.
So the work that I did with Lea is definitely a period, the start of my trajectory into dance. And I found it fascinating and I loved the idea of telling a story through movement… of making things that didn’t need support in the dialogue to explain what you were doing.
The next trajectory was started by meeting Victoria Marks. This has been the most significant collaboration, of all the film work I’ve carried out. I saw Victoria’s work at the I.C.A, The Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, and I found it very, very thought provoking. She was performing and choreographing a couple of pieces in a shared show with Aletta Collins. I met Vic the next day.
We had a very short deadline to put in for a grant to make one film for the Dance for the Camera series to be broadcast on the BBC. I was nervous about asking Victoria to work with «Candoco», a company of disabled and non-disabled dancers. I thought, “This is a very hard question to ask any choreographer”, I didn’t know how she would respond… I’m delighted to say, she didn’t hesitate to say ‘Yes!” We went on to make Outside In with «Candoco» which is one of the most awarded arts films that the BBC has made. From that point, all the films I made with Victoria are very special to me. We’ve collaborated on many films.
My company made three series of Tights, Camera, Action! and two series of Dance4Camera for Channel 4 Television, and then, I think… about five or six series of Dance for the Camera for the BBC. We are talking about the 90’s, at that time, there were quite a lot of dance films being made around the world which we curated and were able to show on television. Now it´s very different and difficult to get funding, it has been for some time and it’s only going to get worse.
So I can see two important trajectories. But in amongst all that, I worked with many other choreographers, like Jiří Kylián, Mal Pelo and Wayne MacGregor, for example.
At the beginning of this year, Victoria invited me to UCLA to teach a Dance for the Camera course, which was fantastic. I absolutely loved it. Three months to talk about Dance Films! And I’ve been invited back to teach another Dance for Camera course, so I’m really excited to be doing that.
Oh, interesting! Yeah, very important, for this community, I think… So, you worked with many choreographers and artists in collaboration. I think you have a lot of different experiences to talk about. In the process of work, from who of them do you think that you learnt more or acquire more influences for your projects? I think Victoria…
Oh, definitely Victoria but, if I think about the time when I worked with Jiří Kylián, it’s just very special to be sitting next to someone and looking at dancers and thinking what can we do in terms of the camera rather than what to do in terms of the stage.
So I don’t think I had a bad experience with a choreographer at all. I’m very respectful of their work, I suppose. I find it a privilege to be able to collaborate with these people and I enjoy it very much, you know? I’m hoping to be working with Shobana Jeyasingh on a project next year. And, who knows? It might happen or it might not. These days, it’s so hard to get any funding at all to make dance films.
And why you think you felt closer to one choreographer than others?
I feel incredibly close to Victoria. It’s a very special relationship, it really is. We don’t always agree, she challenges me.
But can you describe why?
Oh! I often have thought why do we get on so well and, I think, in the early days, Victoria seemed to have a second sense about the camera and what we were trying to do. And so, if I said to her “Let’s do a sequence that is all close ups”, she would then work out something really good, different from stage work. So it’s really been a wonderful -uh, I don’t like to use this word, but- journey, for both of us, to continue trying to find different ways that we can work with dancers or performers to make movement based films.
We made a film called Veterans, where we worked with US soldiers who had recently returned from conflict. They were suffering from PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) and Vic started by doing what she calls “Action Conversations”[1]. So she had conversations with them and developed a movement vocabulary. They did a number of performances on stage and then we restarted to invent a movement choreography for a film. This is not the way we usually work – from stage to film. But in this case, we had to made a strong, clear relationship with the veterans. It worked out really well. Veterans is probably my favourite collaboration with Vic.
In most of our films, we worked with un-trained performers like Men, seven men in their 70’s, or Mothers and Daughters, twelve performers of which only two had any dance training.
Do you prefer that kind of experiences?
Well… It’s more emotional, definitely. I’ve questioned myself when we were working in this way and it’s because I discovered all sorts of things about life. I mean, Mothers and Daughters really was an experience… But, in the devising in the rehearsal, you’re finding out all sorts of things that you feel very privileged to be able to find out about people and yourself.
All of us, artists and academic researchers interested in dance and technology, have our own perspective about this relationship, what’s yours? It’s a question about the language, or use of technical resources…
It’s interesting, isn’t it? Because people are working with artists that might be using some high tech, some projections, or some holograms, or whatever. For example, I went to see Shobana Jeyasingh’s performance Material Men last weekend. And it’s two men and a sari (traditional dress from India).
It’s beautiful. It’s such a strong piece. Shobana took her inspiration from the slave trade using Indian people which we really don’t know very much about. There are two dancers, one is a traditional Indian dancer but wasn’t doing traditional dance, the other is a break-dancer. It was just completely compelling. It was a fantastic show, absolutely brilliant!
The reason I’m talking about it is because the two men and a sari had a very simple set with poles. At a certain point in the performance they pulled the sari up and there was a video projection onto the sari. So simple, so discrete. Of course, that projection isn’t that new but I just love that. Using technology in such a…
…subtle way…
Subtle, gentle…
Not the impact, not like an attraction…
No, and I think that’s the problem with technology. That people think “Oh, I’ve got this! Bright colors! Superimpose anything! I can do this!” …and it’s often just too much!
And do you think that this kind of abuse of technology varies according to different generations of filmmakers or is it a permanent trend or a sort of “easy solution”?
I don’t know, to be honest… I suppose, it’s something that never really interested me in the same way I rarely go to see blockbuster films that are constructed with green screen (chroma key). I’m not interested.
You prefer more poetry…
Yes, of course. All the films we made with Lea Anderson we shot on film. Outside In and Mothers and Daughters were shot on 16mm film. But then, because technology changed or has been changing, we started shooting on video. And that was… fine for me. It meant we could make films for cheaper budgets.
At the time, I was one of the first people to edit on Avid. We edited Outside In, the «Candoco» film on Avid. And that was quite different from having cut films in a cutting room. The technology really changed dramatically in the nineties. I’ve always tried to do my ‘special effects’ in camera. I wasn’t interested in doing special effects in the editing room. And I’m still not, really. If I can achieve an effect on location or on set, I’m much happier.
And you think you have always been conscious of that? I mean, if you now realize that this was your own election to work or not?
Yes, it’s always been my decision but not as a matter of caution. I feel like I want to be able to see how I can achieve something visually – collaborating with the DP or if I’m shooting on my own then using my imagination and working out how to translate it to a film idea.
Is that clear? You know, I’m…
Well, it’s because this discussion…, the situation is so clear in all the world, because there are artists who are so involved in the technology that can’t achieve the poetry or the real art…, I think. It’s strong to say it but, I think, it’s the reality.
Yes, absolutely.
Do you remember some interesting discussion about the use of the camera or other technological resource? Would you tell me about it? With somebody, some artist or filmmaker… some strong or radical discussion about your position about how to make films, or some artistic decisions… Because I want to know if there are different perspectives that you have to argue with, in a work or a symposium, for example, about a decision when you are working.
Well…Victoria and I have spent a lot of time, over a glass of wine, discussing things… but, you know, the truth is that at the start we do not agree about everything.
For example?
I do not know because we always solved it, always! And that is the wonder of working with her. OK, here’s an example: Vic always wanted me to teach her to edit, but I can’t because I don’t think I’d be very good at teaching her to edit. I mean, I can edit, of course I can edit. I don’t edit everyday so I’m not an editor. When I’m editing any of my films, I really have to concentrate on what I’m doing – it’s really intense and I just ‘know’ when a cut works or when it doesn’t. If I don’t like something I’ll change it and I can’t stop and explain why I’m doing that. So I’ve told Vic (laughter) to get someone at UCLA to teach her editing. There’s plenty of people there who could teach her, but I can’t do that. That’s the only thing that we’ve had a disagreement about.
What could you say about curatorial work in screendance, thinking in your own experience and experiences of others? I mean, what do you think about this activity in the dance-film area?
I love curating and wish I could spend more time curating dance films. As I said, in the nineties we made all these series and I was curating dance films from all over the world and I loved it, there was such a diverse range of work.
Things have changed… A dear friend and colleague of mine, Núria Font Solá, had an extremely good Dance for Camera festival in Barcelona. Núria and I would exchange dance films and videos. I sent to her films that I found exciting and she sent me films that she discovered, that she really liked, it was a wonderful creative relationship. Sadly, her festival doesn’t exist anymore due to lack of funding.
Changing the subject. Do you think, was it a learning process when you began? And now, what if you have to curate work?
If I have to curate again?
Yes, you have experience now…
I’d be very happy to curate again. Yeah!, I mean, I’d love that. I’d love the opportunity because I love looking at dance films.
And what do you see? What would you like to see in them?
I’d like to find an emotion there. I love it that a dance film can make me laugh, I mean, that is fantastic, but that happens very rarely. If there is humor, it’s fantastic, but any kind of emotion. Anything that tells me something new that I did not know, that’s what I like; or to show me a place that I’ve never seen; to show me performers in a space, doing fresh, original movement, where the movement vocabulary is attention-grabbing, something I haven’t seen before. I’m not interested in something that just existed on a stage, but doesn’t translate cinematically. If it’s definitely designed for the camera, that’s a huge plus.
The same with the use of music. There aren’t many people who use music very well, and of course it is very important – but that’s for another interview! Sound design has really improved over the years and it’s getting a lot more focussed. But just by thinking about the possibilities that there are, compared to how limited many films are, all these aspects show what degree of thinking is behind the finished film.
OK, we are finishing, so, the last question is: What can you advice to the new generations of filmmakers interested in develop works in screendance or dance film?
Oh sure! Well, that’s exactly what I told you about what I was looking for when I was curating. It’s looking, opening your eyes, taking your eyes off the tiny screen in your hand and just look at the world around you, you know?
Mmm.. it’s difficult now…
…get your inspiration from seeing, because I think we are losing the skill of actually looking at the real world. I find myself looking at my phone screen but actually make an effort not to. If I’m sitting on the train I enjoy looking out the window, I enjoy looking at the people sitting there on the train looking at their screens and I can look away at something else.
You´d like to add anything else?
Well, I love film, I love dance, and I absolutely love dance film. I just think it’s a beautiful way to express yourself and to be able to work in a cinematic way, with a movement vocabulary and music and sound… It’s a whole world to discover and I’m still discovering it. Gosh! Who knows what I will do next?
That’s it, Margaret. Thank you very much for sharing your experiences and your point of view of our artistic area. It was a pleasure listening to you!
To see a complete list of films and a Bio of Margaret Williams go to: https://www.margaretwilliamsdirector.com/
[1] Victoria Marks was in Buenos Aires in 2015 as an artistic guest of VideoDanzaBA International Festival, where she conducted a workshop on Action Conversations, and she presented her whole dance film retrospective.