Dance for Camera

Most people who watch Dance for Camera, a compilation of six short films in which dance is used as a non-traditional form of narrative, will fall into one or the other of the famous In Living Color critical camps: "loved it" or "hated it." Personally, I thought the opening and closing films absolutely overshadowed the middle (and middling) four shorts, and interestingly enough both are from the same filmmaker, Switzerland's Pascal Magnin. In his "Reines d'un Jour (Queens for a Day)," an ancient folk legend is transformed into a breathtakingly physical bit of choreography (created by Marie Nespolo and Christine Kung) in a rustic Swiss Alps setting, where three men and three women playfully flirt while artfully flinging themselves down a mountainside, as well as emulate the bulls herded by the villagers who eventually join the half-dozen principals in a food and dance celebration, after which the mysterious three women are shown walking waist-deep in a lake making haunting, birdlike gestures. A temporal and physical world away, Magnin's "Contrecoup" has a distinct Latin flavor (the piece was choreographed by Brazilian dancer Guilherme Botelho, who also performs), focusing on the passionate and violent interactions of Botelho and female dancer Kylie Walters, as well as another couple and a strange single man who silently observes them (in the best scene, the single man does a wonderfully funky chicken routine that looks like Marcel Marceau channeling David Byrne…only better). Of the other four titles--"Measure" (a tedious sort-of duet), "Rest in Peace" (a tedious wannabe farce about three adult children tearing up the house after the double funeral of their parents), "A Village Trilogy" (a tedious tri-partite dance sequence in which everyone yawns, and the viewer most of all), and "Cornered" (a one-note--but short and mostly effective--piece in which a woman explores all the possibilities of dance in a corner of a room)--only the last one comes anywhere near capturing the energetic controlled anarchy of Magnin's bookend films. Recommended. Aud: H, C, P. (R. Pitman)