Comments on: Dance Publicity Photographs: Promotion of Dance in the Press

By: Great Dance Weblog

Great Dance Weblog — Tue, 18 Oct 2005 21:43:24 +0000

Where Are the Pictures of the Dance Performance?

There's an August 8th post at uncoy.com, "Dance Publicity Photographs: Promotion of Dance in the Press," by Alec (don't know last name) that caught my attention: I am often disappointed with the dance photos which I am able to present...

By: Great Dance Weblog

Great Dance Weblog — Tue, 18 Oct 2005 20:30:11 +0000

Where Are the Pictures of the Dance Performance?

By: Alec

Alec — Fri, 07 Oct 2005 13:05:16 +0000

Lots of choreographers film their work. Most of them have neither the money to do it properly (a decent record of dance performance requires at least three cameras with at least one of them operated by someone who knows the show) nor the technical expertise to do it themselves (why should they?). Then there is the whole deal of getting it on the web.

With the quality of archival videos that they have have no wonder they are hesitant to put it on the web. I have seen enough of them to know.

Anna Teresa de Keersmaeker works with a brilliant filmmakers (Thierry de May) and takes film and video very seriously as an addition to her own art.

I would like to do nothing but make great dance videos, including some performance records, but until I can learn to eat air, there are other demands on my time and energy.

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for your great weblog, gradually chronicling what's out there. It a great service.

By: JD

JD — Tue, 04 Oct 2005 02:45:00 +0000

Hello,
I totally agree with you about the lack of dance pictures, though many companies do accept to be photographed while performing - see for example the photographs made, and shown on the Net, by the Agence Enguerand-Bernand, Laurent Paillier, Agathe Poupeney, the Hungarian Peter Peti and many others (links on my blog). The most unbelievable for me is the absolute lack of available videos. You could not list the amount of Swan Lake DVDs, while contemporary dance DVDs are just one or two (I think of A. T. de Keersmaeker's DVD...) I cannot understand why. Sure it is not only a question of business... I wonder if many choreographers do not dislike the idea of being filmed, I mean that their perfomances leave some trace.
(Sorry for my horrible english)