Bay Area Vertical Dance Movie Night

Vertical Dance Movie Night at Bandaloop Studios

The Bay Area is one of the birthplaces of vertical dance and is home to world-renowned artists and companies. Please join us in celebrating these artists as they screen some of their short films during this casual community event. Total run time 75 min. The artists will introduce their works, and be available to answer questions during an informal, post screening gathering. We will have snacks (including popcorn and red vines) 
available and wine for sale. THANK YOU to Bandaloop Studios for their support of this event!

ODE MARITIMA Trailer

A film conceived and performed by: Roel Seeber and Magalie Lanriot
Run time: 6:15

Inspired by Portuguese Poet Fernando Pessoa's poem, "Ode Maritima" - This work explores the movement of solitude and separation and the distance between the inside and the out, between the self and the other. The site, a long abandoned military grain silo in the waterfront area of the Beato district of Lisbon, Portugal, is brought to life and brings a poetry of its own to the film. 

Directed, filmed, and edited by Fu Le
Voices by Magalie Lanriot and Ricardo figueira
Music by Dead Combo
Production assistant: Olivia Sander
Rigging by Roel Seeber and Hartmut Reichel

Love, a state of grace  Trailer

Direction and Choreography: Joanna Haigood
Run time: 10:00

Love, a state of grace is an excerpt of a film by Bryan Gibel and Joanna Haigood, documenting the four-day performance installation between February 11 and February 18, 2022, at San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral. The original concept was a response to the rise in violent attacks and vandalism directed at sacred places in the United States. The project was reframed by the COVID-19 pandemic and the surge of social uprisings against racial injustice that followed. It is our hope that the performance and this film will create a shared experience that will reaffirm the role of kindness, compassion, love, and righteous social action in the national healing process.

Composer: Walter Kitundu
Scenic Design: Wayne Campbell and Sean Riley
Lighting Design: Norm Schwab and Krissy Kenny of Lightswitch
Master Rigger: David Freitag
Costume Designer: Joan Raymond
Ritual Designers: Yohana Junker and Cláudio Carvalhaes
Performers: Veronica Blair, Suzanne Gallo, Ciarra D’Onofrio, Nina Sawant, Saharla Vetsch,
Helen Wicks
Organist: Christopher Keady

SourceWater, Installment #2

Directed by Juan Leiba and Amelia Rudolph
Run time: 3:30

This film is the second in a series that documents the process of making the new work Source Water, a collaboration between vertical dance artists Juan Leiba (Spain) and Amelia Rudolph, along with Becca Dean (California.) Using the medium of harnessed vertical dance, the new work dives into the elemental, environmental, and biological ways that water is our source. Through physical metaphor, imagery, and dynamic rigging, the piece explores visceral relationships to water that suggest larger questions about humanity’s relationship to this critical life-supporting element. 

Performer: Juan Leiba
Music: Jorge Grela
Video: Ceasar Yáñez
Thanks to Espacio que Vuela, Madrid, Spain.

THE WAIT ROOM  Trailer

Directed by: Jo Kreiter and Austin Forbord
Run time: 14:57

The Wait Room centers the experience of women with incarcerated loved ones. 1 in 4 women and 1 in 2 black women in the US have an incarcerated loved one. For the project, we interviewed six women whose father’s partners or sons are incarcerated. The project was created for live performance and also created for film. We designed the set and engineering of the piece to align with its content. To have a loved one in prison is to enter a state of intense instability. So, we designed the set to embrace instability. The set moves up and down on a winch, but it circles only when enacted by the dancers, which is a second metaphor in the piece. Prison systems are designed to disempower. To keep people apart. So this project asked for inter-relationship and community building among the dancers in order to get and stay in motion. The project was filmed on an empty lot on Market Street in San Francisco, CA. 

Choreographed by: Jo Kreiter in collaboration with the dancers
Music composed by Pamela Z
Performed by Clarissa Dyas, Laura Elaine Ellis, Sonsherée Giles, Mary Starr Hope, and Megan Lowe
Costumes by Jamielyn Duggan

A Return to Movement

Kara Starkweather, Lauren Godla, and Jessica Swanson created this project in collaboration with artists an local community members of the Klamath River Watershed
Run time: 5:51 min.

A vertical dance film inspired by the largest dam removal project in world history. Celebrating the newly freed waters of the Klamath River and the cultural and environmental activists who have fought to make this dam removal project a reality. The movement that is returning to the river marks the beginning of what will be a long restoration process for the Klamath River. As a team of artists, activists and athletes we are excited to celebrate this crucial step and historic victory of people over power through movement!

Project Directors/choreographers/dancers: Kara Starkweather and Lauren
Film Director/Director of Photography/Camera Operator/Editor: Jessica Swanson
Music by: Ben Juodvalkis
“Water So Deep” written and performed by: Jesi Naomi, Cole Oak, Desirae Harp
Additional Vocalist: Hannah Levy
Interviewees: Dania Rose Colegrove, Isqots Scott, John Acuna, Paul Wilson
Costumes: Lauren Szabo
Drone Operator: Paul Wilson
Camera Operator/Lighting: Melanie Elms
Camera Operator/Sound: Christian Haas
Riggers: Maddie Lomonaco, Liesbet Bickett, Hans Florine
Cultural Liaison: John Acuna
Funded by: Upstate California Creative Corps

Peregrine Dreams

Conceived and directed by Amelia Rudolph and Greg Bernstein
Run time 10:00

Peregrine Dreams is a 1998 documentary of the six-day five-night performance ascent of the Shield Route on El Capitan in Yosemite by Project Bandaloop. Supported by legendary climbers Peter Mayfield and Steve Schneider, the group ascended the route capsule style (no ropes to the ground.) Every team member led at least one aid pitch to reach the 2,400-foot-high Shield Headwall that was the dance floor for the piece. The work was created as an homage to the Peregrine Falcon, a species that inhabits the big walls of Yosemite as well as urban rooftops. At the time of the project, the Peregrine was just being removed from the endangered species list.

Performers: Chris Clay, Amelia Rudolph, Peter Mayfield, and Heather Baer
Filming and editing by Greg Bernstein
On-wall Photography by Corey Rich, and by Galen Rowell, for LIFE Magazine

Counterweight on Tower Top Trailer

Directed by Helen Wicks Works
Run time: 3:10

Counterweight on Tower Top is excerpted footage from a film that looped on a 360 degree LED screen on the top of Salesforce Tower in San Francisco throughout September 2024. This work is an aerial dance film collage that uses a counterweight pulley system to explore mutual support. The choreography examines the rise/fall and push/pull of reciprocation. Counterweight on Tower Top is a collaboration between cousins, choreographer Helen Wicks and filmmaker Clio Gevirtz. The project was produced by Helen Wicks Works and commissioned by Jim Campbell Studio. HelenWicks.com & ClioGevirtz.com 

Cinematography: Clio Gevirtz and Sebastian Kleppe
Choreography: Helen Wicks
Vertical Dancers: Clio Gevirtz and Helen Wicks
Rigging Design: Dave Freitag
Film Editor: Clio Gevirtz
Drone footage: Duncan Sinfield
Musical Score: Simon Linsteadt 

Created in residence at Project Artaud’s SPACE 124, July 2024