The replacements of the scenic frame with the film frame opens endless possibilities to change perspectives and location. It’s one of the most fundamental features that differentiate the medium of film from theatre. It comes as no surprise that most dance films are realized outdoors. Nevertheless, experiencing of certain space is rarely inalienable for the interpretation by the audience.
In this article, I will analyze few selected films in which landscape is not only attractive background for dancing, but also inherently inscribed in work concept and crucial for their interpretation.
The most direct example of such approach is thematization of the landscape itself. The authors of the film FRAM, Thomas Freundlich and Valtteri Raekallio, are documenting their journey to the Arctic Circle, where they want to make a dance film – and which ultimately is brought to a few dance shots in open spaces and abandoned buildings of mining settlement. Although aerial shots showcasing the dances on endless, empty coast of Arctica leaves an unforgettable mark, the phenomenon of Arctic that exist for numerous travelers and conquerors becomes an essential film theme.
The similar idea of exploration of extreme landscape and record of personal experiences through film and movement accompanied female artists and researchers Heike Salzer and Anie Baer in the film Thule – Beyond the borders of the known world. They are both interested in researching liminal spaces and landscapes from the perspective of embodied experiences in their artistic and theoretic works. Thule could be read as a multisensorial journey beyond the boundaries of the habitable world, where both the movement of the camera and the dancer (Heike Salzer) purposefully creates sensual (visual and sound) and kinesthetic metaphors for the experiences happening in this space.
Thematization of landscape can also present the relationship between human and nature. This trend is also visible in another example of clash of physicality and extreme conditions – the film Human Habitat in which director Flavia Devonas Hoffmann “explores the oscillation between human resistibility and fragility”(Fragment of film synopsis – promo materials). The film has non-narrative structure in which used measures, dance, landscape and sound serves as equally important expressive functions. Consecutive scenes reflect the emotional states which are evolving when facing change: from sustainable to destructive relationship between human and landscape. However, in the case of Human Habitat the collision of fragility of human body and elemental forces intertwines with the second layer of interpretation – the clash of nature and progressive development of industry in the Arctic. Therefore, the relation of body and landscape was shown in a very ambiguous way; the literal and metaphorical senses are opposed to each other.
The film You Wanted Rivers (dir. Magdalena Zielińska) is based on similar ambiguity. It was shot in Jordanian desert landscapes, and most scenes were based on improvisation of the pair of dancers (Anita Sawicka, Piotr Abramowicz). The relation of dancers and the landscape was also embodied in this process – the actions and high-quality movement were shaped by growing tiredness and discomfort experienced by actors facing tough conditions: harsh sun, warm sand, sharp stones etc. The fast editing corresponds with choreography, which allowed to emerge the coherent narrative from the unrelated fragments of recorded improvisation (although the consecutive scenes have more of an associative-metaphoric than cause-effect link). This narrative emphasizes the mutual relation (codependency) of two people in rough landscape. The message of the film takes shape by its editing. The authors say:
We never get what we want. We are never pleased of what we receive. […] This is a dance film about desires that devastates us, forces to follow risky paths, makes us always thirsty and always blind. These pernicious desires destroy our inner selves but also everything what surrounds us, the nature and the planet. The constant need of collecting goods and our aggressive expansion destroy the world of living, leading to ecological disaster. (Description – film materials)
This wider interpretative context, related with climate catastrophe and water crisis, is particularly underlined in the last scene – the water splash audio strongly contrasts with the image of dance in the desert.
A particularly interesting example of multidimensional approach to landscape is visible in the film Fibonacci, created by Czech director and composer, Tomáš Hubáček. It was shot in locations of Moravian Tuscany. This unique hilly terrain was shaped not only by nature, but also by extensive agricultural and mining economy in the 20th century. The landscape, popular among photographers and visually fascinating for human eye, in the result of advancing erosion became desert for wildlife. In this non-verbal narrative film the group of dancers embodies animalistic herd behaviors and survival strategies which, throughout the course of the visual narration, are mixed with preparation of hunter to shoot them off. The dialectic of such landscape and the action happening within it is deepened by the film structure, in which the duration of consecutive scenes reflects the reverse order of Fibonacci sequence (13, 8, 5, 3, 2, 1, 1), ended with the scene symbolizing dead flock. The Fibonacci sequence, one of the “universal” Renaissance mathematical patterns that supposed to reflect growth pattern in nature, is also colliding with dialectic meaning of landscape. The reverse order of numbers simultaneously serves as override order in film structure and metacommentary about the destructive potential of human.
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*This text is a part of wider research project «Taniec okiemkamery. Sztuka tańca w mediachaudiowizualnych», focused on strategies and tools specific (and only possible) for presenting dance via film medium. This short part was published online (in Polish) last Autumn here: http://taniecmovie.pl/category/artykuly/. The entire book (also in Polish) is available here: http://taniecmovie.pl/taniec-okiem-kamery-sztuka-tanca-w-mediach-audiowizualnych/