The 2024 DANCE@30FPS festival will be held at the Wexner Center for the Arts’ Film/Video Theater on Thursday. Credit: Katie Good | Lantern File Photo
For roughly 10 years, Ohio State has been bringing dance from the stage to the big screen.
DANCE@30FPS — or frames per second — is an annual free film festival curated by a team of Ohio State students and hosted by the Wexner Center for the Arts to celebrate international dance. This year’s event, which will take place Thursday from 7 to 8:30 p.m. in the center’s Film/Video Theater, includes films spanning a variety of themes and styles within the realms of dance and filmmaking, Kierra “Kiki” Williams, a second-year graduate student in dance, said.
“Because a lot of the films come from different regions and countries, we get a very big variety,” Williams said. “It’s really cool to kind of see globally what people are creating.”
Momar Ndiaye, an Ohio State assistant professor of dance, said the team behind this year’s festival received over 250 films since submissions opened in June via FilmFreeway, and they worked together to choose only 11 to be screened. Alisha Jihn, a graduate teaching associate in the Department of Dance, said it’s been interesting to see how the selected films vary in genre and style.
“I think it’s really interesting to know how diverse all of our interests are and how that really coalesces beautifully to create and curate this list of 11 films that are going to be shown this coming week and how eclectic they can all be but also still be in conversation with each other,” Jihn said.
This year’s films span seven different countries including Russia, Canada, Luxembourg, France, China, Greece and the U.S., Williams said. She said this year’s event also places particular emphasis on inclusion and diversity within the films as well as exploring what defines a dance film. Ashton Wise, a fourth-year in dance, said this examination is of particular interest to her.
“I’m especially interested in how we muddy the definitions of dance film,” Wise said. “There’s so many working definitions of dance film and screen dance and what do we call it and what constitutes a dance film? Does it have to be a dancing body or can it literally be an animal moving through space?”
In addition to a geographically diverse selection, Ndiaye said the chosen films’ genres will be similarly varied.
“It’s not a theme-based festival, it’s really open,” Ndiaye said. “We really try to be inclusive to all the different genres that exist within dance film.”
Wise said the festival’s combination of dance and cinematography presents a distinct way of viewing dance beyond that of a traditional stage performance.
“If you can view yourself as that second person in this kind of duet and conversation while viewing, I think it’s such a specific experience that you can’t replicate live,” Wise said. “And that comes with the ability to do close-ups and change camera angles instead of just getting one kind of 2D vision.”
Ndiaye said the curators aim to highlight the marriage of these separate mediums and how they can work together to form one piece of art.
“Here we have choreography double time,” Ndiaye said. “One is [how] the body is moving and how we place them in space, and then the other portion is how we place the camera and how we edit the thing is also another way of choreographing.”
Behind the scenes, the festival also offers learning opportunities for its team of student curators via leadership positions and hands-on experience with theories explored in Ohio State’s Dance Film 1, 2 and 3 courses.
“[The purpose is] to somewhat also build experience creating because you have to love dance film, you have to love all that, but also what it means to basically be on the side of those who make decisions about what to show and what not to show,” Ndiaye said. “It’s basically to serve an educational purpose as well. Later on, any of these people can lead or direct a dance festival anywhere.”
The festival was started roughly 10 years ago by Mitchell Rose, a faculty emeritus who specialized in and taught multiple dance film classes during his time at Ohio State. In 2022, Ndiaye took over the role as head faculty for the festival.
Though there has always been a faculty member involved in the process, Ndiaye said it has grown into a more inclusive student-led project.
“It was not like this in the beginning, but it shifted towards something that looks like what you see right now with the faculty, which is literally facilitating and making sure things run smooth and serving also as the liaison between dance and the Wexner,” Ndiaye said. “We give voice to the students a lot, a lot, a lot.”
More information about the 2024 DANCE@30FPS festival, including how to reserve free tickets, can be found on the Wexner Center for the Arts’ website.
