Dance@30FPS will be streaming for free on the Wexner Center of Arts website from Feb. 12 to March 11, 2021. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Pip Crowley
Viewers can experience live dance from the comfort of their homes this year, with dancers and filmmakers from around the world uniting virtually for Ohio State’s annual DANCE@30FPS festival.
Celebrating its ninth year at Ohio State, DANCE@30FPS will see a change in presentation as the film festival forgoes its usual one-night, in-person event in favor of streaming for free on the Wexner Center for the Arts website Feb. 12 to March 11. The festival will feature 12 short dance films from around the world, including a film by Mitchell Rose, associate professor of dance film making and the producer of DANCE@30FPS.
“Dance doesn’t have to just exist on the stage anymore,” Rose said. “This is a very media-savvy society. Dance has always embraced technology and has now become intertwined with media in the form of what’s called ‘dance film.’”
DANCE@30FPS, which stands for Dance at 30 Frames Per Second, got its name from video, which is usually shot at 30 frames per second. Although traditional film is generally shot at 24 frames per second, most of the artists who work in dance film tend to use modern video instead, Rose said.
Dance film reimagines the possibilities of dance by taking short clips or shots of different movements and editing them together in a way that creates the same feeling as watching live dance, rather than just filming a dance for documentation, Rose said. This process is typically used to highlight people dancing but can be done with objects in the same way.
“I always tell my students that what makes a dance film a dance film is that it makes you feel like you’re watching dance, even if there isn’t necessarily a human body doing it,” Rose said.
Rose said he presents DANCE@30FPS as an independent study for some of his students. This year, a team of six student curators were tasked with screening all 320 dance film submissions and coming up with a short list of 20 films. Rose chose the final 12.
Sara Wagenmaker, a third-year in dance and one of this year’s curators, said she worked with a team of undergraduate and graduate students to watch and choose films that showcased the marriage of dance and film, not just filmed dance.
“We were really looking for this perspective of dance film as not just dance and not just film,” Wagenmaker said. “We were also looking for films that took a new perspective on something or really had something to say.”
In addition to being entirely online this year, Wagenmaker said they saw a huge increase in submissions for DANCE@30FPS compared to last year because everyone is stuck at home.
“There are fewer ways to perform safely, so there are more people turning to the camera to show off their choreographic creativity,” Wagenmaker said.
In a time when live performances aren’t happening, Wagenmaker said film festivals are one of the few ways for dancers to get their voices out there and DANCE@30FPS provides a platform and voice to a lot of skilled, emerging filmmakers.
“Because of the year that it’s been, there’s a lot of films that resonate with social justice,” Rose said.
The lineup includes dance films inspired by the year 2020, Rose said. There are films about quarantine, loss during the COVID-19 era, the Black Lives Matter movement and the Free Belarus protests.
“2020 had a certain feel to it. It’s a profound time in our history, and I think that these films, you know, just seemed to resonate with the moment,” Rose said.
Wagenmaker said it’s been a long year for everyone in many respects, but that it’s encouraging to see something like DANCE@30FPS come out of it.
“It really shows the Department of Dance’s strong commitment to technology and exploring the boundaries of creativity,” Wagenmaker said. “That’s the magic of art.”
The festival is available on the Wexner Center for the Arts website, and a trailer for the event is available here.
