One of the wisest statements Friedrich Nietzsche ever shared with the world was, “And we should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once.” EMPAC has been paying attention to this with their DANCE MOViES series, the third installment of which entertained an audience of well over 50 people in the Academy Hall auditorium Thursday night.
Icebreaker began with a most curious introductory piece, consisting of silent wintry landscapes, including a park area and beach covered in snow, and eventually featuring the title written in the snow. Appropriately, the first of the five short films screened was “Snow,” which comprised archival footage of winter tomfoolery from the 1890s to the 1960s. The film began on a very lighthearted note, with jaunty music and lots of images of people running and falling around large formations and drifts of snow. It then transitioned to poetic images of ice skaters, and then to some questionably scary images of a city gripped by an extremely powerful blizzard, ending with footage of people forcing themselves through tremendous snowfall, and the film washing out to noise. The film seemed to illustrate how snow and ice can both entertain and threaten us, and it did so most effectively.
The next piece, “Nascent,” was of a much more abstract variety. The Australian Dance Theater filmed its dancers in motion, and then blurred and distorted the images so that one dancer’s progress across the screen consisted almost entirely of visual echoes, undulating in tone and shade as the composite image snaked its way to the other side, dozens of limbs and heads protruding from all angles. This film was one for the surrealism fans, and it definitely gave the audience an unusual perspective on motion.
Then came “Pod,” which was surreal as well, but in a very different way. Four people are in a waiting room, when they notice a hole in the wall both spewing and sucking in a strange black liquid, and then sheets of rubber that seem alive begin to attack them. And then it gets weird. Parts of the film are clearly time-reversed, and this only adds to the oddity of seeing four people doing a strangely synchronized dance while completely covered in black plastic. This one left the audience both amused and confused.
The show then took a trip up north with “Magnetic North,” a brief look at the pastimes of teenagers in Finland. The film was mostly random splotches of girls skating and boys guitaring, but there is nothing quite like seeing a crowd of two dozen preadolescent Finnish girls all barking and howling like dogs.
The final film was a creative work of the Hans Hof Ensemble out of Amsterdam. Titled “Höhenluft,” it was 25 minutes of insanity—literally—at a sanatorium in the Swiss Alps in the 1920s. The movie mostly follows the new guy as he attempts to fit in, punctuated by disturbing images of inmates coughing up blood or coffins being stored away underground. Overall, however, the focus of the film is the inmates’ refusal to cease enjoying life, even in the face of certain death.
Icebreaker was a show of a sort not often seen at RPI, and it was a refreshing burst of cold air, just the thing to shake off a doldrum or two. This reviewer at least went home with an extra skip in his step. The next show in the series, Street Wise, will be in the Academy Hall Auditorium at 7:30 pm, April 20, showing a vintage 1980s urban-style dancing movie with a preshow at 7. Don’t miss it.
