Dance on Camera Tours to Jacob Burns Center 5/7

Jacob Burns Center in Pleasantville, New York makes its annual tribute to dance, with films that run the gamut from classical ballet to the avant-garde, the studio to the streets, emerging talent to international legends. Anne Bass's documentary "Dancing Across Borders" opens their season on May 7th, followed by screenings on the 9th and 12th.

"Dancing Across Borders," "Breath Made Visible," and "Urban Ballet" are selections from the 38th annual Dance on Camera Festival, co-produced by Dance Films Association and the Film Society of Lincoln Center, supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York State Council on the Arts.

Also to be presented will be "Only When I Dance," "Craneway Event" and the heartening "NY Export: Opus Jazz," initiated by NYC Ballet dancers Ellen Bar and Sean Suozzi.

"Only When I Dance," a 2009, UK/Portuguese production directed by Beadie Finzi, follows two teenagers who desperately want to dance their way out of Brazil and into a North American ballet company. This documentary sensitively conveys the young people's hopes and dreams, and the extraordinary natural gifts and willpower it takes to make them come true. May 8 at 9:15; May 11 at 7:30; May 13 at 5:15

Sunday, May 9 at 12:15pm will be the screening of "Craneway Event" completed in 2009 by British artist Tacita Dean. Dean uses 16mm color film to capture a rehearsal of Merce Cunningham Company in an abandoned Ford Motor Company plant. "Layering Cunningham's interactions with the dancers, the dancers' movements, activities on the dock outside the window, and the changing patterns of light in the enormous space, Dean has created a document of random movement and chance encounters that evoke the legendary choreographer's own sensibility."

Carolyn Brown, original member of the Cunningham company, will introduce the screening and afterward sign copies of her 2007 memoir "Chance and Circumstance: Twenty Years with Cage and Cunningham."

"NY Export: Opus Jazz" will be shown May 10, 7:15. Directed by Henry Joost/Jody Lee Lipes, broadcast on PBS in 2010, this screen adaptation is a stunning achievement!
DFA's Dance on Camera touring program has acquired 112 partners over the last 12 years. This has been made possible in part with support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the members of DFA, and the Susan Braun Trust. Becky Kendall from Momentum Dance Company reported on her first showing this April of Dance on Camera in Anchorage, Alaska, "The film night was extremely successful and our venues organization would love to make it an annual event! We really loved the films and the whole process was just wonderful."

In 2010, DFA has already toured to 15 venues. Somi Roy will include DFA's Festival in his Re:Play Festival in Manipur, India June 9-13, 2010.

On June 12th, DFA will have a screening and live performance event featuring the World Class Dancers at Alvin Ailey Center in New York as part of National Dance Week NY.