Film Categories: dance

  • I Need a Man Like You

    “I Need a Man like You” is funny as it is provocative, and delivers a colourful and zany venue of Toronto’s finest Queen Street performers. Comedian Sheila Gostick is brilliant in her political satire and wildly hilarious as the dancing goddess. Performance artists the Clichettes bring a new awareness to rock culture through their original and unforgettable choreography to some of the great hits of the sixties. Helen Porter, as the killer Dyke in leather, shares a vision of the erotic that is tender, warm, and funny. The film is a timely and playful lampooning of some of the most…

  • In Heaven There Is No Beer?

    A joyous romp through the dance, food, music, friendship, and even religion of the Polka. The explosive energy and high spirits of the polka subculture are rendered with warmth and dedication to scholarship in this journey through Polish-American celebrations. Polka stars like Jimmy Sturr, Eddie Blazonzyck, and Walt Solek are featured.

  • Mirage

    Typical imagery of a naughty wahine dancing while removing her sarong is looped and superimposed on images associated with Hawaii such as fish, surfers, volcanoes and the Kodak Hula Show. The sound is a loop from the Elvis song “Dreams Come True in Blue Hawaii” and the effect is haunting with a touch of humor. The juxtaposition of these three elements parodies a travel film enticing one to the islands by associating sensuality and sexuality with everything from Kahunas to Pearl Harbor. It is a kind of pop, twisted mantra invoking an exotic space that perhaps only exists in a…

  • Nelligan

    “An Artist’s Dream,” by renowned French-Canadian poet Emile Nelligan, serves as the basis for this dance film. Choreographed by Ann Ditchburn (known for her work with the National Ballet of Canada) and set to music by Andre Gagnon, the piece is performed by two of Canada’s outstanding dance artists, Robert Desrosiers and Claudia Moore.

  • Pas de Trois

    “The question of whether certain kinds of film formalism tend to be sexually reactionary is encapsulated in this little triptych. Each of the three sections includes three kinds of information. In the first section, we see single frames of strippers dancing, single frame clusters of red and then yellow, and single frame clusters of what looks to be a light source. The imagery and clear colours mix retinally, and with the flickering light source, makes this section reminiscent of looking into a movie projector. In the second section we see live action footage of a little girl presumably competing in…

  • Passion Crucified

    “Passion Crucified” is an episodic rite of passage rendered in tableau style. Part creation myth, part medieval science fiction, it enacts a typology of the body – offering us glimpses of Adam, Eve, Christ and Joan of Arc. Together they are figured as subterranean ideals, which continue to haunt us, even as they provide the means by which we might come to understand our own bodies. Begun as a dance performance, Torossian recasts her naked charge into a series of phantasmagoric settings – trees whose fruit show the faces of Medici children, drunken underground rooms filled with a rotting, natural…

  • Private Flowers

    In 1832, a Canadian Infantryman was hanged for making love with another man. The victim’s rank was Private, and his name was Flowers. Commissioned by Toronto History Museums’ Artist Mentorship Showcase: Pride with Mentor Ashley Mckenzie-Barnes with additional support from the open space residency programme at the National Ballet, TD Bank, Pride Toronto and the Ontario Arts Council. Created as part of Awakening with Toronto History Museums Private Flowers is part of a series of art projects by Black, Indigenous and artists of colour, operating under the principles of anti-oppression, anti-colonialism and anti-racism and is part of the City’s efforts…

  • How To Burn A Cross

    A Super 8 experimental film transforms the ritual of cross-burning into a stark meditation on violence, spectacle, and inherited American terror.

  • E.C. Roe Expressway

    A Super 8 experimental film and a meditation on living in Windsor, Ontario under the influence of American television, blending dancers from a Detroit TV station with a quiet sense of hometown memory.

  • Danny in the Airship

    Danny in the Airship is a Super 8 experimental film test that blends home movies into an early meditation on space, time, and the memory of my brother Danny.