Dancer makes film, mess of S.F. streets
April 30 in the city creating a dance film that will premiere at this October’s festival, Flannery’s team buckled up and went along for the ride.
“I have no idea what’s happening right now,” co-producer Jenny Stulberg said during a break from shooting. “I just know that my shopping list for today was for a watermelon, cucumber, two half-gallons of almond milk, a gallon of regular milk, two bottles of Prosecco and a bag of flour. And fish.” Dead fish? “Yes.” Nearby, three dearly departed striped bass cooled their heels on ice.
“I brought sparklers, just in case,” said costumer Jamielyn Duggan. “And rubber gloves.” By dusk, those ingredients would become a spectacular mess.
Flannery had wanted to work with the in-demand Ekman — the former Nederlands Dans Theater 2 member created “Play” on the Paris Opéra Ballet last December and had a viral hit with the hilarious short film “Simkin and the City,” co-created with Rives — since the 2013 festival, when his film “Rare Birds” won an audience-favorite award. The Rives-filmed documentary captured Ekman’s creation process for the Norwegian Ballet’s “A Swan Lake,” a postmodern reimagining that entailed a 6,000-liter lake onstage.
“It’s the juxtaposition of his true respect for the art form of ballet,” Flannery said, “and being this young person totally engaged in the world today and using dance to make us look at ourselves in very different ways.”
She commissioned him and Rives through the Co-Laboratory program, which brings together choreographers, dancers and filmmakers for a weeklong collaboration and supplies a crew, locations and a budget of $30,000, then premieres their short films at the festival.
Flannery’s parameters were simple but crucial, given the pair’s anything-goes track record: “I said to them, you can basically do what you want, but it has to be legal.”
“It’s wonderful,” Ekman said in appreciation. Contrary to his roguish rep, in person he is reflective, self-deprecating and quick to laugh. “It’s the first time in a long time that I do something really on the spot. When you’re working like this, the best moments can be when someone just does something stupid.”
The guerrilla art-making started Monday with an audition/rave in San Francisco Ballet’s biggest studio. Two dozen dancers did contact improv, floor rolls and rhythmic undulations as the soundtrack shifted from the day-o of “The Banana Boat Song” to meditation mantras and electronica. “More joy,” Ekman called out as he danced along in their midst. “How does your body express joy?” Their sweaty, entwined bodies conjured a human lava lamp.
Sarah Cecilia, Britt Juleen, Nathaniel Moore and Ben Needham-Wood emerged from the ooze and into the cast alongside Ekman. Their task was to improvise ever more outlandishly at locations from the Embarcadero to the Eureka Valley baseball diamond, Clarion Alley to the Presidio forests. Working with minimal gear and ambient light, Rives let the camera roll; more than once he covered it with a plastic bag to protect it from sticky projectiles.
In the alley, Prosecco spewed into the air, dead striped bass were made to twerk, the watermelon was smashed and then crushed as cars passed through the makeshift set. Cecilia’s shoes slipped off in the muck. A man cruising on a Segway led an impromptu two-wheeled freestyle. And everyone within 10 yards got doused or dusted in Gold Medal All-Purpose flour. (“What did we just witness?” asked a passerby.)
If the antics were immensely entertaining to watch, creating them was revelatory for the artists. “The most amazing thing for me is that there isn’t anything wrong, ever,” said Needham-Wood, a member of Smuin Contemporary American Ballet. “I feel like he opens the door to curiosity.”
“Something comes to you in the moment,” said Cecilia. “I’m so amazed by what my body can do when I let it, not when I tell it to do something.”
After all that, the filmmakers are as puzzled as anyone about how they’ll yoke the chaos into five or 10 minutes of (potentially) coherent footage.
“We don’t know what it’s going to be at all,” Ekman said.
“The material will decide,” said Rives.
Like all the cast and crew, Moore was happy to wing it with them.
“This day has been whatever fantasy I come up with,” he said at wrap time, still coated in flour. “It’s been pretty wild.”
“It’s the first time in a long time that I do something really on the spot. When you’re working like this, the best moments can be when someone just does something stupid.” Alexander Ekman, choreographer and filmmaker