Partners in art

More than a naked snow man: Dance with Camera blurs the line between artist andlens

robbinschilds + A.L. Steiner, "C.L.U.E. Part I," 2007, is part of Dance withCamera.
Joachim Koester, "Tarantism," is one of the exhibits that might make you rethinkhow dance and camera interact.
Bruce Conner, "BREAKAWAY," a 1966, black-and-white film
Kelly Nipper, "interval," 2000, four framed chromogenic process color prints,Museum of Contemporary Art and gift of the Disaronno Originale PhotographyCollection

A naked man dances in the snow, while the late modern dance legend Merce Cunningham sits motionless at the opposite end of the room. A tarantella ritual explodes with a brutal raw energy, while Trisha Brown slows down time in a tucked away corner.

All of this made me stop in my tracks for Dance with Camera at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston running now through Oct. 17.

"With" is the operative word in this show.

"I describe the exhibit like a pas de deux, where the camera is partnering with dance," says Jenelle Porter, curator of the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) at the University of Pennsylvania and Dance with Camera curator.

"These are the works of visual artists. They only exist for the camera. None are records of a dance."

Porter makes us wonder, how a camera is like a dancer, in that it too moves, has a quality of motion, and is able to show us new and unconsidered angles for viewing. The camera is the dancer we never see, unless Charles Atlas, Cunningham's longtime video collaborator, happens to be involved. The exhibit includes two remarkable films by Atlas, one that turns the tables on the filmmaker.

A room full of dancers mid-motion packs a wallop whether it's live or on camera, so Porter isn't remotely surprised by my reaction.

"I did work with Toby Kamps on the floor plan for CAMH, but it's so different," Porter says. "At ICA, the show was more on a path, so the pacing was very planned. In the CAM installation, there are so many works in your view immediately. You can see almost everything from the midpoint of the space. That moment of seeing all those bodies moving in space came just slightly later in my version, so there was at first this kind of moment of quiet and stillness.

"For me, it was important to have bodies at all different scales, both time scales and size scales. Some pieces are so slow, even still, and some are exuberant and frenetic. My experience of the show is quite the same as yours, dazzled, as it was for many viewers in Philadelphia."

Not everything is in motion. Kelly Nipper's sequence of photographs, interval (2000), asks us to connect the dots ourselves, stringing together what happens between these images. "Opening with the Nipper photographs immediately throws off your expectation of the dance and the camera, and puts you in a position to be open to all these different types of relationships between the dancer and the camera," Porter says.

Dance with Camera is filled with abundant treasures, so pace yourself, visit often. Here are some of the dances that caught my eye.

Bruce Nauman's Dance or Exercise on the Perimeter of a Square (1967-68) might take a little explanation. Nauman is a conceptual artist, not a dancer, yet he lived and worked around the renegade energy of the Judson Dance Theatre, coming into contact with such icons of an era as Yvonne Rainer. The written instructions for Nauman's piece begin with the words, "Hire a dancer."

He didn't, and the result has become a signature performance archive. The constant clicking of the metronome becomes the unattended soundtrack for the show.

Equally curious is the zany fake ballerina, Eleanor Antin in Caught in the Act (1973). Antin learned ballet from a book and well, it shows, making a very witty comment on pretense. Antin reveals what usually remains hidden, bringing the usual ethereal nature of ballet crashing down to earth with a thud and a snicker.

Another group of non-dancers grabbed my attention in Ann Carlson and Mary Ellen Strom's film of lawyers acting out the gestures from their lives in Sloss, Kerr, Rosenberg & Moore (2007). Carlson is famous for using real people in her dances, and here the authenticity is particularly powerful.

Bruce Conner's Breakaway (1966) busts entertainer Tony Basil into a million cuts, laying the groundwork of what would become music video decades later. Basil, recently seen on FOX reality show, So You Think You Can Danceas a guest judge, also performs the song. It's mesmerizing and considerably more interesting than what you would find on MTV any day.

Porter includes a little history corner. Plan to park there for at least 30 minutes or make several short visits. Here you can watch Brown dancing in real time and then again in slow motion in Babette Mangolte's Water Motor (1978).

It's like getting a little closer to Brown's uncanny sense of flow. There's a rare chance to watch William Forsythe dance in Solo (1997), directed by Thomas Lovell Balogh. Rainer's Hand Movie (1966) reveals the camera as a way to direct our attention to the protean dexterity of the human hand. But it may be Hilary Harris' Nine Variations on a Dance Film (1966) that kept me most transfixed.

The amazing Bettie de Jong repeats the same phrase over and over while the camera chooses a different way of showing us the movement. It's a chance to see exactly how a camera can deconstruct choreography.

The exhibit is loaded with community events, film showings and performances. Houston choreographer and filmmaker Lydia Hance of FrameDance collaborates with Rosie Trump for Points and Coordinates on Sept. 16. Anthony Brandt of Musiqa plans a Loft Concert with video by Be Johnny on Sept. 23. The Judson icon Deborah Hay presents Lecture on the Performance of Beauty on Oct. 2, while the exhibit wraps up with Navigating the Hallway, including dances by Leslie Scates, KDNY, Becky Valls, Teresa Chapman and Core Performance Company.

Oh, about that naked guy in the snow.

The Luis Jacob film is called A Dance for Those of Us Whose Hearts Have Turned to Ice, based on the Choreography of Francoise Sullivan and the Sculpture of Barbara Hepworth (2007). Keith Cole, a well-known performance artist, actually makes several references to Sullivan's dances during his snow dance. He is most definitely performing just for the camera, and for you, too, should you happen to wander into Dance with Camera.

Hilary Harris shows us every angle in Nine Variations on a Dance Theme (1966):

Movie Review

Daniel Craig shines in Queer, an unapologetic tale of love and loss

Drew Starkey and Daniel Craig in Queer

Photo courtesy of A24

Drew Starkey and Daniel Craig in Queer.

As recently as the late 2010s, if a movie was made about an LGBTQ+ character, it was more than likely about their coming out experience. Romance, if it existed, was typically chaste, and actual sex was almost completely out of the question. Things have changed dramatically in the 2020s, to the point that a major movie star has no issue starring in a film called Queer.

Based on the 1985 novella by William S. Burroughs, the film features William Lee (Daniel Craig), whom everyone calls just Lee, a writer living in 1950s-era Mexico City who spends most of his time haunting local bars with friends like fellow writer Joe Guidry (Jason Schwartzman) and hitting on younger men. His early interactions in the film seem to indicate that Lee has a bad reputation within the local gay community, as multiple people avoid him or give him odd looks.

Lee senses an opportunity when he encounters a newcomer, Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey). Despite some awkward interactions, the two of them start spending time together, although Lee has much more invested in the relationship than Eugene does. Their hit-and-miss bond continues until Lee, who’s starting to get into drugs in addition to the booze, convinces Eugene to accompany him on a trip to South America.

Directed by Luca Guadagnino and written by Justin Kuritzkes (making their second straight film together after Challengers), early on the film seems to be mostly about the divide between an older person who’s grown comfortable in his ways and a younger person who’s living a relatively carefree life. The introduction of drugs into the plot changes things, though, with Lee searching out more ways to open his eyes to what the world has to offer.

Guadagnino and his team use some interesting visual storytelling techniques to introduce ideas that may not be present in the actual script. The most successful, demonstrated in multiple scenes, is the superimposition of movements by Lee over what’s actually taking place in the scene. The subtle overlay gives the audience insight into Lee’s true feelings, showing what he can’t or won’t say out loud.

Music also plays a big part in how the plot is perceived, with the use of anachronistic songs from Nirvana and Prince serving to heighten certain moments. The score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross is not as in-your-face as the one they did for Challengers, but it complements the film well, especially when the plot starts to get trippy in its final half hour.

Craig, who appears sweaty and disheveled for much of the film, is about as far from the suaveness of James Bond as you can get in this role. He takes multiple risks with his performance and almost all of them pay off. Starkey’s character is subdued by comparison, but still comes off well. Schwartzman and Lesley Manville are given showy roles, with both using altered appearances that make them nearly unrecognizable to deliver memorable performances.

Queer is not as accessible as Challengers was storytelling-wise, but the fact that it tells a story about gay men living their lives as they see fit with no interference or questions shows how far the film world has come in a short period of time. It also continues Guadagnino’s streak of making audacious films in a way that few other filmmakers are willing or able to approach.

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Queer is now playing in theaters.

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