After Anthony Atanasio dazzled the dance screen world with his haunting black and white short “Dust” written and performed by Brighton based Mim King in 1999, he seemed to vanish. Yet he was only invisible to an increasingly global dance and media (MAD) network. Anthony Atanasio was thriving as a savvy director in the commercial world, creating thrilling, amusing spots for Audi, Nintendo, Eurovia, and Nike to name a few clients.
The poignant photography of “Dust” hinted at Atanasio’s talent for distilling weighty psychological subtexts. But his witty layering of ideas and references is only one talent that serves him well in the commercial world. He knows how to translate the kinetic energy and flow of dance, its graceful patterns, and apply it to choreography for every product from cars to sneakers. Ironically, whilethe list of major corporations that hire choreographers for their commericals continues to grow, sponsorship for dance on camera that purports to do nothing other than explore the synergy of dance and film is shrinking. Perhaps it’s all in how you make your pitch.
Call it competition and you might get a series on your hands. Fox TV has just begun its 12 week reality show on July 20th called “So You Think You Can Dance?,” a dance-based “American Idol” spinoff. Call it impowerment as Scottish choreographer Royston Maldoom did and you could win hearts and gain new commissions as he did with grand success in the arts in education project initiated by conductor Simon Rattle documented in Boomtown Media’s winning “Rhythm Is It!” Call it a class in etiquette as Austrian born New York based ballroom dancer Pierre Dulaine did for his ballroom classes in New York and you might gain both an independent film and a feature. Dulaine now teaches 70,000 children in New York City with an army of ballroom teachers. This caught the imagination of Marilyn Agrelo and Amy Sewell whose documentary featuring 5th graders in “Mad Hot Ballroom” is sweeping art houses in small town USA as well as New York City. In 2006, a feature film “Take The Lead” from New Line Cinema will feature Antonio Banderas as the fetching ballroom teacher.
Only ten years ago, dance film artists were complaining about the ghettoization of the genre not knowing that the mid eighties to nineties would seem like a golden age for experimenting with the pure blend of dance and film. Alive From Off Center from the US offered healthy budgets. Dance in America produced nine programs a year with increasingly varied approached to their standard documentation of American masters. A myriad European television stations supported experimental dance shorts, documentaries, performance.
Today, programs for the US Public Broadcasting System quietly recommend that producers pitching dance programs to focus on the emotional and human element in their stories, rather than dance. Alive From Off Center is now gone for twelve years with still no replacement. Some burgeoning cable programs such as Plum TV claim their interest in dance and are optimistic that their well heeled markets will come forward with support. Dance in America now makes one special a year, this year a much lauded “Swan Lake” with American Ballet Theatre.
This year’s runaway winner “The Cost Of Living” by Lloyd Newson suggests one good point that producers and choreographers could heed. New York Times dance reviewer John Rockwell quoted Newson as saying, “For a lot of people who go and see dance it is not about anything and DV8 is about something.” Rockwell praised “The Cost Of Living” writing, “Nearly every scene strikes the heart.” Moving audiences emotionally and intellectually with dance so subtle youmight call it simply body language while moving Euros, Pounds, and Dollars with sleekly sophisticated, dynamic choreography for products compressed into a stellar 30 seconds. Interesting times for an artist. Taking dance out of the proscenium stage had its repercussions no one anticipated.