Something inspiring about modern dance

by Noah Bloom Posted in Performance Art

This video came to me from Canadian online marketing guru Darren Barefoot, claiming it would be “the most beautiful piece of modern dance you’ll see this year.” It’s actually from 6 years ago, from a project this Montreal-based dance company, La La La Human Steps, undertook to capture dance on film. Or more importantly, to show something very new by interlacing these two media as is rarely done. Dance is often a live performance art, but this camera did not just capture a performance, but showed it in a very new way by mixing up the camera angles and using great dolly and rotating shots.

In any case, 6 years later, it just goes to show that modern dance could still slowly gain mainstream attention and not be considered too esoteric or contrived. Here’s the piece, Amelia (Amazon link to buy the DVD):

But don’t stop there. Modern dance has been progressive for years. I was resistant and forced to watch this David Parsons piece as a 13 year old sports nut, and was still able to be moved. Here’s the 1 minute excerpt version of this totally creative piece called Caught from over 20 years ago. This blew me away and will you too:

Here’s the full version. If you make it to 3:20, you won’t be able to stop:

Just this week I watched a beautiful video installation done by my friends at Caste Projects for a designer’s seasonal collection as part of Vancouver Fashion Week, and shown at the raucous and upside-down after-party. Similar effect but no relation… this begs to see lots more connection between dance and fashion (just like dance and film, above).