Lights Dance Festival

Strata of forgotten items discovered in any lost-and-found box present a certain history, be it plastic jewelry from the ‘90s, handwritten notes, or photographs. Each item tells a story of its former owner, while collectively, the mélange of abandoned objects provides a perspective of entangled histories. Such recollection – contact with the past – need not be merely object-based, but also, ephemeral, sensorial, and imaginative. The magic of moving images such as film is also a vehicle into the past through which we revisit familiar spaces and recontextualize certain events through the lens of time. Understanding this power of cinema, experimental filmmakers such as Matthias Müller and Sarah Appleton have worked with ‘found footage,’ or preexisting films made in another context, to craft new stories, breathing life into the forgotten, unveiling their unfulfilled potentiality.

Inspired by such found-footage films, this year, the Lights Dance Festival invites our screendance community to meaningfully engage with their histories, whether they are autobiographical journeys explored through home movies or more conceptual experimentations with digital materials found online. These stories can be told through a mix of found footage (family archives, YouTube videos, news footage, etc.) and newly filmed choreographies or animation – wherever your inspiration guides you. Whichever dance materials you unearth and experiment with, we hope that our 2022 theme of Remnants allows you to retrace your history and uncover new meanings in the process.

When we lean into the past and weave it into the present, what can we see that was once imperceptible? To where will our trail of white pebbles or bread crumbs eventually lead us?