Street solos and a flock of swans: the best new dance created in lockdown
Three months into lockdown, things have moved on in the land of digital dance, from fun Instagram clips and online classes to some serious choreography. Many of the major ballet companies have now organised their troupes, including Dutch National Ballet, whose Gently Quiet project is choreographed by the company’s creative associate Peter Leung. Eleven dancers perform solos around the empty streets and landmarks of Amsterdam, compiled into a serene, freeflowing choreography. The individual films will be released in the coming weeks.
Shelter
There is no shortage of top-flight international ballet dancers setting limbs in motion around their carefully tidied living rooms/parents’ back gardens, often fundraising for performing arts crisis funds. You can see Royal Ballet dancers rollicking to the Rolling Stones or a choreographic chain letter from San Francisco Ballet and New York City Ballet. However, sibling film-makers Alexander and Valentina Reneff-Olson’s Shelter goes one better, introducing the voices of dancers around the world (including Matthew Ball and Mayara Magri in London) reflecting on their time in isolation.
Ex-Rambert dancer Dane Hurst’s Moving Assembly Project bridges the UK and South Africa, and his Beyond Borders film compiles lockdown dances of all stripes from multiple continents in a spirit of international togetherness. On Hurst’s Facebook page you can also see 21 of his own dances, freestyling his way through eerily empty central London, including a tour of some of the capital’s important dance sites.
Blow Your Style Battle
B-boy (and b-girl) dance battles normally involve in-your-face energy and heated one-upmanship – it’s very much a live art form. But French competition Blow Your Style adapted with an e-battle, dancers from around the world posting their clips to Instagram to be judged online. The kids’ battles are brilliant, some of them just primaryaged, filmed on DIY garage dancefloors and in front of their mums’ soft furnishings. Both the boys and the girls are technically fierce and they leave most older opponents well and truly (home) schooled.
Swans for Relief
Back in April, Birmingham Royal Ballet’s Céline Gittens danced The Dying Swan at home, a poignant ray of light at the beginning of lockdown. Well, multiply that one ballerina by 32 and you’ve got Swans for Relief, masterminded by the magnificent Misty Copeland, a fundraiser featuring dancers from North America, Mexico, Cuba, China, South Africa and
Europe performing the same Mikhail Fokine solo (including the Royal Ballet’s Francesca Hayward and English National Ballet’s Precious Adams). From Australian hijabi ballerina Stephanie Kurlow to Denise Parungao dancing on a rooftop in the Philippines, it’s a movingly universal portrait of the yearning beauty of ballet.
Boy Blue, #30byThursday
Having had to cancel two different shows during the shutdown, east London hip-hop company Boy Blue has been keeping its dancers busy. Co-director
and music producer Michael “Mikey J” Asante (who outside of dance has worked with Kano, George the Poet and Brian Eno) took up the #30byThursday challenge, to make 30 music tracks in four days. He handed the baton to Boy Blue’s dancers who used those tracks to make their own dances – a powerful 75 seconds from Theo “Godson” Oloyade, one of the best krumpers out there, is well worth watching.
Bolero Juilliard
New York performing arts school Juilliard produces some of the world’s best dancers and musicians, so you’d expect its lockdown offering to be impressive. Symphonic is the only word to describe its slickly edited performance of Ravel’s Bolero, with a vast cast of current students and esteemed alumni, including Yo-Yo Ma, Laura Linney, Renée Fleming and Itzhak Perlman. It’s a witty, heartening, communal crescendo.
no remake and, if they try, I’m coming back from the dead to stop it. Hahaha! I promise you, I will come back from the pearly gates, from the upper room, to stop a remake. So help me God. I will bring him with me, and Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Bill Nunn, Frank Sinatra. Anybody that’s passed; we’ll all come back to stop a remake.
Marlon JamesNovelist
Bamboozled didn’t just stun critics, it stumped them, like Sly Stone’s There’s A Riot Goin’ On, or Kara Walker’s work. Like those pieces of black art, they couldn’t quite figure it out, because there was no spot in there for them to feel comfortable critiquing it. So, too many just attacked it with this “you’ve made the wrong kind of black art” response. At least, that’s my take. Why do you think the same white critics (and a few black ones) who praised Do The Right Thing were outright dismayed by (in my opinion) one of your best films?
I guess they felt guilty watching it. They might have felt they were being targeted by Spike Lee. They weren’t – unless they were running around with blackface at a very young age. Which is what’s now coming out: all these politicians in the US who are blacked-up in college photos.
KoShamus
Would you consider doing a Britishset film with British actors? Especially as the US and UK share many similar racial politics issues.
Yes, I have worked with several Brits. Clive Owen! Chiwetel [Ejiofor]! Great actors. I would have no opposition to doing that. But the only thing I’ve ever shot in London was a Jaguar commercial.
Which of your films are you most disappointed by in terms of their critical and commercial reception?
People missed Bamboozled. 25th Hour. Miracle at St Anna. The biggest one is Chi-Raq. I think that film is gonna find an audience who’ll understand what I was doing 20 years from now.
Rosario DawsonActor
If you could go forward or backward in time to witness a historic or personal event, what would you want to see or experience first-hand, and why?
Well, first of all, I have to give my love to Rosario. The first time I saw her was in Larry Clark’s Kids and I’ve been very lucky to have her in two of my films: She Got Game and 25th Hour.
Rosario, I love you, I love you, I love you. That’s a really good question. I would have liked to have been at Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech in Washington DC in 1964. I was alive; I was seven years old. To have heard those words with my own ears …
Paul SchraderDirector
Would you cast an implausible person of colour in a historical drama for the sake of diversity, eg casting a black soldier in Custer’s seventh cavalry? What were your feelings about Ryan Murphy’s alternative history Hollywood, which placed persons of colour, gay people and women in positions of power they never achieved? When I cast two black actors and a white actor as best-friend factory workers in Blue Collar, I knew it was an unlikely pairing, but not implausible – therefore worth doing.
Oooh! My brother! Hollywood: I’ve yet to see it, but I’m gonna check it out.
Were there no black soldiers in Custer’s seventh cavalry? Also – and I love Paul; that’s my brother – I would do that film, but Custer would not be the hero. He would be the villain and I would tell it from the viewpoint of the Native Americans. One day!
snortontaylor
Does the recent win for Green Book, and that for Driving Miss Daisy 30 years ago, reflect the inability of the liberal, white US to confront the seriousness of racism in the US?
I’m gonna pass on that question. It does me no good to talk – especially in this time we’re living in – about stuff which is insignificant. People are dying every day.
Idris ElbaActor
Do you think Michael Jordan will ever let anyone make a movie about his life and times … and would you do it? I ask while shaving my head …
Hahaha! You’re a great actor, but I don’t know if you could handle “the rock”, my man. Two separate skills. You can’t do Mike on the court without some special effects from ILM. I don’t think he’s gonna allow anybody to play him in a narrative film while he’s alive – and he might put that in his will, too.
I love you, Idris. I wanna commend my brother for telling the world that he tested positive [for coronavirus] and telling the world that this thing is no joke. It was so important. There were some crazy ghetto rumours that black people could not be affected by – as we call it – That 19. You did a great service to squash that lie. People might have died or not proceeded with care because they thought their black skin made them immune.
impossiblyblack
Jackson, Tyson, Jordan: which Michael has been the greatest influence on you?
I’ve worked with all three and all three I consider good friends. I’ve been blessed.
Botox_Billy
Did you ever have political conversations with Michael Jackson? Was he knowledgeable and engaged about such things beyond a surface level?
Oh, Michael knew what was going on! Look at that film we made in Brazil: They Don’t Care About Us. It was an anthem when he was alive; it’s even more of one now. We had some deep conversations. He was very aware. All you have to do is listen to the music and read the lyrics. As a grown man, he’s not talking about ABC. He’s saying whole different stuff.
Asif KapadiaDirector
When did you first decide to cross from fiction to nonfiction? Why?
For me, it all falls under the umbrella of storytelling. Love your documentaries, Asif, keep doing your thing.
Jim JarmuschDirector
I realise this is very general, but I’m wondering: why are movies such a powerful and magical form of expression for you?
I love Jim. We were at NY grad school at the same time. He was three years ahead; for my class – which included Ernest Dickinson and Ang Lee – he’s our hero, because with Stranger than Paradise he provided a blueprint of how we could crack into this industry. Jim was living proof it could be done.
Floella BenjaminPresenter and politician
I strongly believe that prejudice is learned from an early age and that childhood lasts a lifetime. So, do you agree in order for children to grow up with empathy, more films should be made, specifically aimed at children, that address critical life issues such as racism – and would you consider making one?
I agree 100%. No embryo is racist. No human being that’s being formed in their mother’s stomach is full of hatred. The moment that child pops out – excuse the terminology, I’ve been there with two of my own children and they just popped out, hahaha! – they learn from their parents the good and the bad. Racism and hatred is learned; you’re not born with it. So, I agree. Let’s start teaching our children peace and love at a very early age.
ClassicMacGruber
Which actor from the past would you have liked to direct the most?
I would have loved to work with Paul Newman. And Marlon Brando. I’m sorry I never had a chance to work with Sidney Poitier. I did work with Harry Belafonte. I would have loved to work with Dorothy Dandridge.
Femorian
Why do so many white people teach their children to fear black people?
Ignorance. Guilt.
yukster_uk
You’ve created balanced, compelling and humane white characters in many of your films. Why do many similarly talented white film-makers not create compelling black characters?
They probably didn’t grow up around black people. Also: the minorities know more about the majority and it’s not vice-versa because we’re swamped by the majority culture.
Mike LeighDirector
Occasionally, I get mistaken for you; have you been mistaken for me?
What’s up, Mike, my brother! I haven’t had the honour yet! Peace and love.
Da 5 Bloods is on Netflix from 12 June