Movement at Several Frames Per Second

When the words “dance” and “film” are put together, most people think of musicals starring Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly, or maybe ballet documentaries, with the action contained neatly within a proscenium arch. But what if the point is not to film a musical or reproduce a stage experience?

Then you have a new kind of dance-on-screen genre, a hybrid that will be seen the next two weekends at the Dance Camera West International Dance Film and Video Festival at the Getty Center. In these experimental works, the word “dance” expands to all manner of movement: nuns who somersault across seats on a moving train, men who wrestle like bulls in a cow pasture, and a romantic duet between a man and a large earth-moving vehicle. Over and over, its not just a person’s performance, but also the camera’s dance that draws in the viewer.

Organized by Lynette Kessler and Kelly Hargraves--two Los Angeles dancer-choreographers who are also filmmakers--the festival will screen 15 selections, ranging from four to 26 minutes long. Kessler and Hargraves, who have both served on juries for New York’s Lincoln Center Dance on Camera Festival, brought the idea of a West Coast edition to Laurel Kishi, the Getty Center’s director of performing arts programs.

“I thought, Los Angeles is such a film town, why not here?” Kishi said by phone, explaining that she jumped at the idea.

Working with Kishi, Kessler and Hargraves decided not to try to move the latest edition of the 30-year-old Lincoln Center festival to L.A. For one thing, that festival has dozens of screenings at different venues spread over a month. For another, it tends to mix standard ballet documentaries with experimental work, and Kishi, who oversees contemporary dance concerts at the Getty, wanted to focus on the edgy and unusual, the works that see dance on film in a new light.

“That’s what we wanted too,” says Kessler, “and this first time out, we also wanted to choose some of the big winners that come from all over the world, with really high production values. Some weren’t in specific dance film festivals, and I think they’ll appeal to a wide audience.”

There is serious subject matter on the menu: domestic violence, for instance, in “Contrecoup” from Switzerland (choreography by Guilherme Botelho, directed by Pascal Magnin), and the Holocaust in “Witnessed” (by Canadian choreographer Allen Kaeja, directed by Mark Adam and Kaeja).

But there is also a lot of wit and humor; the tumbling nuns in “Hurtle” (from New Zealander Shona McCullough), or “Modern Daydreams,” which includes the man-machine pas de deux (choreographed by Jamey Hampton and Ashley Roland, directed by L.A.-based Mitchell Rose).

Kessler’s own submission, “Anima” (directed by Douglas Thompson), is one of a few that use special effects, in this case, waves of flowing images that play over Kessler’s moving body. She is a little sheepish about its inclusion, but she says it was chosen in part as a representative of local films.

The only film on both programs is the opener: Toronto filmmaker Laura Taler’s “A Very Dangerous Pastime: A Devastatingly Simple Dance Guide.” It’s a “Reefer Madness”-like collage of vintage dance films and talking heads, narrated in mock sententious tones, but offering this serious advice: There is no need to panic when trying to understand dance. Just watch, enjoy and think.

Sitting in the “screening den” of Hargraves’ Silver Lake house one late March afternoon, both Kessler and Hargraves are eager to show excerpts from the Getty festival, pointing out their favorite moments--the way two dancers are framed by a hallway in an old boarding school in “Measure” (from the Seattle-based dance troupe 33 Fainting Spells); and a close-up of a woman’s bare feet as she walks over a line of work boots in the Swiss film “Reines d’un Jour” (choreographed by Marie Nespolo and Christine Kung, directed by Pascal Magnin).

Their own stories of moving from dance making to filmmaking help explain why there is a genre that is half dance and half film. For each of them, it started partly as an impulse to extend choreography and partly because they were always around video cameras, which choreographers use to capture improvisation.

Kessler, 46, was making dances and working with video artists in San Francisco in the late 1980s and early 1990s. “I would be running a tape back and forth, slowing it down to learn the choreography, and suddenly I’d focus on certain moments,” she says about her filmmaking epiphany. She moved to L.A. in 1994, continuing her film work and presenting solo dances on programs at Highways and 2100 Square Feet performance spaces.

For Hargraves, 38, a Canadian who was living in New York before moving to L.A. a year and a half ago, the architectural details of a dance studio or the scene outdoors started to look alluring, necessary to her work. While rehearsing back in Montreal, she recalls, “I would be staring out a window and thinking, ‘It would be really great to be doing this out there.’ And the camera sort of allows you to take the studio with you. And if your dance is inspired by mountain vistas and beaches, or you want to hear sirens and babies crying in an urban environment, you can actually go there. I think it really connects you back to your life.”

The two discuss spiritedly what dancers can bring to filmmaking once they master the technology and procedures. They talk about the similarities between editing and choreography. For instance, both involve making shots flow or jump with rhythmic precision.

They think filmmakers who have a strong kinesthetic sense must be influenced by dance. Kessler sees dance-like properties in gunfights staged for old westerns. Hargraves likes the way film-collage ads on Turner Classic Movies have a strong sense of flow.

“I can see how dance fits into the history of film,” she said. “And what’s so great about [screen dance now] is that it’s exactly what this medium needs. It opens it up in a different way.”

But getting funds and audiences, and even getting the word out to dance makers are other issues. Kessler and Hargraves hope the Dance Camera West festival at least familiarizes more film people with new horizons, and encourages dancers and choreographers to consider the possibilities.

Will it happen next year? That’s uncertain. Kishi says the Getty is in wait-and-see mode. But Kessler and Hargraves have developed a few more strategies for spreading the word. Last year, for instance, they joined forces with the Dance Resource Center of Greater Los Angeles (a co-producer of the Getty festival), to offer a practical workshop on dance film and video.

They have also tested a “salon” format--small gatherings that feature the work of emerging screen-dance makers. In December, a small room at Santa Monica’s Midnight Special bookstore was packed for the first salon; another, which included many works from a dance-film project headquartered at UCLA, was put together at the Electric Lodge in Venice by choreographers-filmmakers Carol McDowell and Sharon Kinney.

Eventually, an additional audience may get to see some or all of the entries from the two Getty evenings on public TV station KCET, which is considering getting broadcast rights and sponsors for such a scheme.

The audience at the Getty will have the advantage of hearing some of the filmmakers introduce their works and possibly even answer questions afterward, if there’s time.

Among those scheduled to attend are Canada’s Taler, 33 Fainting Spells’ Gaelen Hanson, “Modern Daydreams’” Rose, and Hans Beenhakker from the Netherlands (“Wiped”) as well as Victoria Marks, whose film “Men” (with Margaret Williams) has been shown several times in Los Angeles.

For those who think film can’t do justice to dance, it’s a whole new age, Kessler and Hargraves say. “People have so many limited perceptions of what a dance film is,” Hargraves says. “But there are so many layers to it.”

She and Kessler haven’t given up stage dance and choreography, but it’s clear that for them, the lure of dance on screen is irresistible.

“In the past, dancers who have looked at my stuff have said, ‘Great, but it’s not really dance,’” Kessler says. “And film people say, ‘Great, but why so much dance?’ So, sometimes, I’ve felt like I’ve fallen between the cracks. But now I see it as growing out of the cracks, like this new plant.”

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DANCE CAMERA WEST INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL OF DANCE ON FILM AND VIDEO, the Getty Center, 1200 Getty Center Drive, Brentwood. Dates: Program A, Friday, 7:30 p.m. Program B, April 19, 7:30 p.m. Price: Free, but reservations are required for parking, which is $5. Phone: (310) 440-7300.

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Jennifer Fisher is a regular contributor to Calendar.