D|S°DANCE film

Karen Bößer
The idea for the film came up after my last performance project. That was a stage production as I am a choreographer. I had often worked with video recordings during rehearsals as well as in my solo work to check the visual effect. At that time, the camera view had already become a counterpart and main reference point for correction on how to present on stage for me. When we happen to experience Lockdown, the moment had come to follow my idea of a documentary on the fleeting nature of dance. I was inspired by the medium of film and wanted to explore the many possible ways of recording and reproducing something like a dance performance. In addition, I wanted to start an artistic discourse.
In the many years of working with Dirk, I have admired his feeling for the design of a spatial situation, for a composition and his ability to capture and emphasise scenes on stage from a different perspective. I could imagine that Dirk has a talent for film composition and the inherent aesthetics of it.
As most of the performing artists had no jobs due to the pandemic, the film project, that was supposed to be realised via Zoom, was the perfect idea to establish an ensemble of artists in different countries. Thus, I brought together three artists plus myself and we are all very different in our artistic expression, in our physiognomy, and in our energetic dance vocabulary. I knew we would all bring our own inspiration to the project - although everybody was in their own home and all communication could only take place via the laptop camera. And indeed, during the shooting, the situation was very playful, the performers immediately got involved and started to work artistically and theatrically in their kitchens, living or bed rooms. A special mention deserves the work with the technical equipment. Each performer had to cope with a lot of technical stuff and its installation sometimes took a lot of time and effort. But once everything was set up, the cooperation with the performers and the musician was intensive, stimulating and expanding.
In terms of performing, I can say, that turning away from conventional ways of working, even in all its limitations, opened up new space for trying out, exploring and getting involved in the moment in what you have and what your opportunities are. A free space had been created and it became visible in a variety of impulses, in the way how to react to one another, in how we tried things out. At the end we can say, that despite the lockdown situation, we found a feeling of freedom.
In terms of film, we decided to use different kind of cameras for a maximum variety of perspectives. The juxtaposition of conventional images with film rides gained from the body cams brought a filmic experience that could not have been experienced in a staged dance performance.

Dirk Dietrich Hennig
After having been developing stage design and video documentation for Karen Bößer for years, it was an easy decision for Karen and me to consider a cinematic solution for the time when there were no performance opportunities available during the pandemic. It was a wonderful challenge to think about the handling of the technique for the performers in advance, since the dancers should film themselves at work, and problems with the technique should not be in the foreground. And as it happens often in projects, you think about so many things in advance, which then no longer play a role later.
I don't think it will be possible to get so close to the dancers again so soon. The camera sat on their hands, on theirs heads and on the feet and brought completely new dynamics and perspectives into the cinematic documentation. In the end, we had such a tremendous amount of video material that we could have made a film about each one of the group. But merging the individual positions into an overall concept was a great task, which was only surpassed by the task of bringing the whole thing together with the music of Thomas Klein. It was a tightly knit adventure to put together this film, and it was great fun, and we hope that it brings the dance closer in the truest sense of the word.