4Dance:Dance4Film
Performance Reviews || Friday, 6 January, 2006
The 4Dance Film programme on Channel4 over Christmas was approached with a genuine desire to see at least one good piece of dance film before the year finally ground to a halt and vanished forever.
Sadly it was not to be. Channel4 had been stalling for months. Failing to provide Article19 with an air date for this show or the names of the participants. As recently as late November last year they could provide no firm time when this show would be given its first public airing. After it finally limped out at 11.30pm on December 29th it was all too obvious why.
The show featured no less than thirteen short films, some of which were specially commissioned for the programme, with links and faux interviews provided by the shows presenter, Jonzi D. It is with the presenter we have our first problem.
The delivery from Mr D. was so wooden and painfully unconvincing that had we been watching this show on television and not on tape 90% of it would have certainly gone unwatched. The television would have been turned off in sheer frustration. If his lines were scripted then the writer should be flogged, if they were improvised we pity anyone who has to have a conversation with this man. The MTV style, shaky camera work, amateurish blue screen and dodgy 'street' dialogue made you deeply embarrassed to be in any way associated with dance.
We shall spare you a detailed break down of each of the thirteen films on show. As I said before I was desperate to see something that was in any way entertaining or memorable. Sadly, as with almost all dance on camera, there was nothing to get excited about.
The one film featuring actual creative movement was "Hasta La Proxima" directed by Mark Adam. It was nicely filmed, unfortunately it looked just like a rehearsal video, dance on film, rather than a dance film. Myself and a friend, whilst watching this particular piece, could not figure out why the male dancer was dressed as a fireman until someone pointed out a possible connection with September 11th. Must try harder on our story telling methinks!
Lacking almost universally throughout each of the films was any form of inventive choreography, striking camera work, innovative editing or a basic understanding of the principles of communicating and engaging with the viewers who were unlucky enough to have to sit and watch any of these productions.
In "Break' by Liz Aggis and Billy Cowie we were treated to a man sitting in the middle of a circle of cameras in a field eating his lunch whilst dancing (and I use that term very loosely here) to a forgettable, techno-opera sound track. The makers were obviously very impressed with themselves in being able to have enough Sony HDV cameras to place them in a circle around this irritatingly untalented individual because that is the sum total of their creativity. Taking cameras and placing them in a circle. Such film making is patronising, infantile and lazy.
Wayne McGregor puts in an appearance with "Tremor" directed by Ravi Deepres. Again they seem very pleased with themselves about locating the film in a wind tunnel (the kind used to test aerodynamics) and that's it. The movement material for the solo girl is exactly the same as Random perform on stage, so nothing new there. Filming in wind tunnels is a common trick of the pop music video industry. Hearsay, (remember them?) filmed their first video in a wind tunnel but they had flame jets behind them so they win on points. "Tremor" appears to have been given funding for no other reason than McGreogor was behind it. The name counts, the creative ability does not.
The worst thing about this show is not that it's completely dreadful throughout. Far more heinous a crime is that Channel4 knew it was terrible and for that reason alone there was little or no pre-show publicity, they declined to tell us when asked, when or if the show would air and they buried the broadcast in the middle of the night when nobody was watching.
Arts Council England and Channel4 must share the penalty for their crimes in allowing this programme to even exist. The sentence is two months watching this show over and over again on a looping DVD whilst sitting in the middle of a cow field. I'm sure ACE will commission someone to make a film of that and put it out on BBC4 at 3am.
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