When movement becomes dance

11 min, 16 mm film, B/W, no sound
Camera: Bill Rowley
Edit: Elaine Summers
Dir: Elaine Summers
Prod: Hans Breder, Iowa University

There are two things about this short fragment I love.
The first is the choreography of joy. The slow-motion allows us to better appreciate the flow of the common movement, the combining of the bodies, the contrast between them and everything that happens around them.
But there is something else. The dance becomes obvious at the end, when the movement continues beyond what we expected. Yet there is one earlier moment, one step of the girl coming from "our" side, which makes that clear. At a very precise point, she deviates from the way she has been running, her body bends like a bow and then moves sideways. That is when the simple vectors of meeting become something else - something more complex, less obvious. The bodies, now, create a space for our meeting to go beyond the embrace.