Longing
A Collection of Short Dance Films
Commissioned by Fujiwara Dance Inventions
Longing is a product of human aspirations. It can arise out of adversity, aloneness, overload, as well as pleasure. Buddhists consider longing to be a manifestation of attachment, the prime source of human suffering, but it is also an expression of hope, inspired by love, compassion, curiosity and the desire to create a better life and world.
In the midst of the pandemic, we asked dance artists associated with Fujiwara Dance Inventions to respond to the idea of Longing and commissioned them to make short solo dance videos.
The creative choreographers featured here took very different perspectives and locations in response to the challenge. We hope you will share in our delight with their continued creativity and resourcefulness in this time.
Performers
Brodie Stevenson, Jen Hum, Sylvie Bouchard, Gerry Trentham, and Lucy Rupert
Vestiges
Choreographed and Performed: Brodie Stevenson
Filmed and Edited: Zhenya Cerneacov
Post-Production Assistance: Jonathan Lawley
Music: Fur Alina: 2, composed by Arvo Part, performed by Alexander Malter from the album, Part: Alina – Spiegel im Spiegel.
About the film
Vestiges: A surviving trace; a memorial. (The Oxford English Dictionary).
This solo takes as its starting point an attempt to embody the act of forgetting, of loss, of remembering. In the impossible task of trying to show what is no longer present all that is left is the accumulated bric-a-brac of memory, details of what was, and the continued attempts to find again what has been lost.
Yellow is the Colour Of…
Choreographed and Performed: Jen Hum
Filmed and Edited: Henry Mak
Music & Sound Design: Yobi Allen
About the film
What is it to Be in longing?
What is it to be Longing to Be?
There is a deep longing to belong.
There is a glimpse of understanding
if I do not resolve my internal being,
I will never belong
I will always be longing.
I am searching for what is inside me. I move through the world as a child of immigrants, grappling with traumas passed on, straddling Eastern and Western worlds. It is painful to acknowledge the accumulating years and the potentials not being realized. Perhaps today though, I am a tiny bit closer to being.
Bleu
Choreography and performance: Sylvie Bouchard
Cinematography and editing: Rodrigo Michelangeli
Music composition: Rodrigo Michelangeli
Production assistant: Jade Silman
About the film
Inspired by Miro’s Blue Triptych, Bleu follows a woman determined to share her secrets, truths, and heart. Accompanied by sky, she attempts to bridge her inner cosmos with the outside world, and the outside world with her inner cosmos, defying the borders that sometimes divide these two spaces.
Missed
Direction and photography: Crafty Pony Experiments
Choreography and performance: Rebecca Hope Terry
Music: Drama King, by Dave Copeland
About the film
Missed is an introspective journey about one’s place in the world. The location is a nowhere place, without destination, but potent with longing and travel. Missed explores a few meanings of the word: A “missed opportunity”, as well as, what it means “to be missed” as in left behind, or remembered. Personally, for myself during periods of longing, I think about the desire for my life to have deep meaning, and to positively impact the life of others, to care and to be cared for.
Special thanks to: Justin Stephenson, Serge Bennathan, Julia Aplin, Taras Kovaliv, Dave Copeland and Denise Fujiwara.
Wound
A very short film by Gerry Trentham
Direction, Performance, Choreography and Design by Gerry Trentham
Editing Alex Boldt
Music Composition Jeffrey Livingston
Sound Wendy Tremont King
About the film
Invited by Denise into he be-longing project I created this very short film about how the pandemic and isolation changed my sense of time. Past present and future seem merged as I, for the first time in four decades of dancing, ceased moving forward, ceased a way of life. I had substantial time to ponder how very little time a life is and how substantial the choices i make about its’ use. The short film is a study in the view from one stationary camera, of what is in view and what isn’t.
Special Thanks to Denise Fujiwara and Adina Herling at Fujiwara Dance Inventions and my partner Jeff for the support and vision.
g minor/d minor
choreography and performance by Lucy Rupert
music: Antonio Vivaldi Cello Concerto in G minor RV 417 1st movement and Cello Concerto in D minor RV 405 3rd movement
Raphael Wallfisch (cello) Nicholas Kraemer (harpsichord) with the City of London Sinfonia
Courtesy of NAXOS of America Inc.
About the film
g minor/d minor digs into Lucy’s roots in classical music and was made to satisfy a longing to dance the musical structure. Filmed in 6 locations, the choreography threads together varying vantage points to create a disorienting but continuous version of the choreography.
Thank you to Denise Fujiwara, David Fisher, Jenn Sartor, Meagan Perry, Sharon O’Halloran, Mike Halis, Jamee Valin, Alan Ganev, Gerry Trentham, Augusto Bitter, Juan Villegas, Dennes Pehadzic and the man who checked to see if I was ok when he saw me lying on the ground along the Humber River Trail, where I was filmed part of this dance.
L.O.V.E
Choreography and performance: Jillian Peever
Edited by: Jacob Kriger
Music: Corinne Alice in Wonderland
About the film
The film was created with curiosities around routines and changes to routines. It was created at a time of many changes in my life. A move to a new community, a growing family, a Pandemic… it was a moment full of potential, and I was trying to break out of self-imposed (or societally imposed) “boxes”.
What emerged in the creation process was a poem, a playfulness, and a sense of moving towards vast spaces of nature. There is a little red ball in the piece that can be representative of something to be nurtured, a tether, love. The dance begins in a strange room with earthy tones and boxy shapes. The dance movement begins contained and rigid, then experiences a transition that leads towards openness and connectedness to the cosmos.