Dancing on film

The Oklahoma Dance Film Festival returns

On a split screen, with a playful techno soundtrack offsetting a mysterious vibe, a man and a woman move in front of two deeply saturated walls. He looks into a mirror and sees the back of his head; she disappears into the other frame, her skin painted with blue sky and white clouds. 

The lush, witty film is called “This is Not Magritte,” and as one of the featured shorts in the 10th annual Oklahoma Dance Film Festival (OKDFF), it exemplifies the cinematic and emotional potency of a genre that’s currently exploding in popularity. You can see “Magritte” installed on the second floor of AHHA through March 26.

While the festival has been running since the beginning of the month, there is still an opportunity to catch a few films and see installations around town. On Tuesday, March 21, AHHA will show the documentary “In the Darkness of the Theatre I Take Off My Shoes.” AHHA also hosts installations of short films through March 26. The Circle Cinema hosts a screening of “Mr. Gaga,” a documentary about choreographer Ohad Naharin, artistic director of Batsheva Dance Company, on March 19 and “Best of the Fest” presentation on April 4. 

“Ohad is a game-changer,” said Jessica Vokoun, associate professor of dance at TU and creator of OKDFF. “He really has transformed the look and feel of dance and the language of movement.” 

Naharin’s movement language is called “Gaga”—a nonsense, baby-talk word that points to his belief that all of us share a passion to move. (Attendees at the screening will have a chance to sample a little Gaga movement courtesy of Amy Morrow, who worked with Naharin and also assisted with the film.) 

In Gaga, people quake, pounce, belly-laugh, float, and grab. Like the living organisms they are, they never stop moving. What dance films do visually, Naharin’s movement inspirations do physically: they make you fall in love with life.  

Vokoun said that when she started the festival here in Tulsa 10 years ago, many of the submissions were experimental work of mediocre quality. 

That’s not the case today. 

Dance film has become a full-blown international art form, attracting cinematographers and choreographers with an interest in exploring how movement and the moving eye can play together. Advancements in video technology allow artists to collaborate in dynamic, visceral ways that connect directly with a hyper-visual generation. 

OKDFF’s strength has always been the wild diversity of its selections—from haunting studies in nature to black-and-white streetscapes and sharp visual comedy to elegiac poetry. Each film is its own world. The dancing bodies that inhabit it call out, without words, every sinew of what it’s like to be a human being in it.

For more from Alicia, read her article on the 2017 New Genre Arts Festival.