Dance Is Your Breathing
MOVEMENT
Dance Filmmaking with Ezra Hurwitz
Former MCB dancer Ezra Hurwitz is part of a new generation of dance filmmakers who are doing more than just filming beautiful steps. He’s using his unique insights as a professional dancer, combined with a keen eye for the conceptual and the unique, to elevate the medium.
One of my first real experiments was Heatscape, a film promoting Justin Peck’s first major commission for MCB. Justin and I are longtime friends, having trained in the same class at SAB. When he was in Miami, he approached me to direct and produce a short for the premiere of his work. Visually, there was the potential for an arresting piece, drawing on the stimulating mixture of Justin’s choreography with the work of visual artist Shepard Fairey. I jumped at the opportunity! Personally, it also represented a tribute to my time at MCB, which has so defined my career. Since then, I’ve been able to return a few times: I just filmed there recently for the production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Photograph by Teen Vogue.
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Dancing Out Of Poverty In South Africa
The school where Dane Hurst, star of Rambert dance company, learned to dance was eaten by termites and burned down by children. Thirteen years after he left South Africa, he has returned to the junction of Gelvandale and Helenvale in Port Elizabeth to show me where it was.
What does a child do in all this volatility? Well Dane, he danced. He tells Justin he wants to share this with other young people who want to escape the streets. I’ve recently bought a dance floor over in London and right now as we speak it’s on a ship being sent back here.
In the dance studio what colour you are means nothing. When music plays there are no barriers.
Gobisa believes: “If you are angry or sad or you’re feeling emotional, when you dance those things go.” This is Dane’s aim: to give them a way to survive that isn’t violent, because that’s what saved him.
Photograph by Karl Schoemaker.
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3 Of The Best Dance Films
The Red Shoes, 1948.
Dirty Dancing, 1987.
Black Swan, 2010.
Ballet Evolved: The Evolution Of Pointe Work
Former Ballet Mistress Ursula Hageli looks at the development of pointe work in ballet, where the dancers move on the tips of their toes – from Marie Taglioni’s experiments in the 1830s, through developments by Italian and Russian dancers through to the famed pointe work of Russian Classical ballet. With danced demonstrations by Gemma Pitchley-Gale and Fumi Kaneko.
Injury Prevention: Understanding Pain
Want To Perform Your Best? Prepare Your Monologue
