The Turning World (9)/Dance on Camera

"I think it's important to know the world you're living in and that not everything is wonderful. That is very important to me."

--Pina Bausch in Pina Bausch, a 44-minute documentary by German filmmaker Anne Linsel (2006), part of the 2008 Dance on Camera festival, which runs through January 19 at the Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center

The Linsel film is a rich opportunity to watch quicksilver intelligence dancing across Bausch's face as she talks about her experiences and her creative process. Only her declaration of innocence--that she never intended that her work would provoke people--seems dishonest. Her works and her dancers' extraordinary performances speak for themselves, and there are tantalizing bits and pieces shown. One more thing: for this fairly recent visitor to Venice, the Venetian settings for the dancers' German-language interviews proved entirely too distracting from the English subtitles!

In Horizon of Exile (2007, UK), filmmaker/choreographer Isabel Rocamora sets two dissociated women alone amid the golden expanse of the Chilean desert. These dancers supposedly express the experiences--of longing for the homeland, of searching for one's true self--of four Iraqi women exiles interviewed by Rocamora. Often hypnotic in pacing, the 22-minute film devolves into tediousness and, in the passage where the women gasp and thrust, an unfortunate silliness. Overall, the movement ideas look obvious. A woman stands, her black burqa buffeted by wind and sand; later, she slowly rolls in the sand. Bodies crinkled up like burnt wood. After the screening, one of the dancers told the audience that the Iraqi interviewees were very moved by the film and saw their reality in it. Whether this film can reach beyond this--and beyond its stark visual seductiveness--to connect with an audience in a meaningful way remains open to question.

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