Living
Email
Print
Dancing in His Vision: Painter's passion for dance started him on a journey in film
Journal Photo by Bruce Chapman
Steve Childs, a portrait painter in Winston-Salem, photographed and painted dancers before making a documentary film about them.
ADVERTISEMENT
Published: May 23, 2010
Steve Childs has sketched Garrison Keillor. He has painted Sen. Richard Burr.
But painting dancers is his real passion.
Childs, 54, is a portrait painter who lives in Winston-Salem, work-ing in a studio in the West End.
In February 2008, then interim dance dean Alex Ewing allowed Childs to take photos of dance classes and practices. The photos were meant to be references for his paintings. But Childs couldn't get the idea of a film out of his head. He didn't have any technical training in filmmaking, nor did he own a camera -- he just knew he wanted to do it.
So with the help of a UNC School of the Arts film professor, John Le Blanc, Childs presented the idea to Ewing. He agreed.
Gradually, a loose narrative shaped up. Childs followed 12 dancers, then narrowed the group down to the four who appear in the film's final cut -- Emily Nicolaou, Mark Tucker, Pierre Guilbault and Ali Block. Three students were in college, and one was in high school.
Other UNCSA students helped, too -- six film school students helped Child during their free time, including Duncan Bohannon, a graduate student who scored the soundtrack.
Filming on And We Will Dance came to an abrupt halt in November 2008, when UNCSA's new dance dean, Ethan Stiefel, asked Childs to stop.
"When I became dean, I met with Mr. Ewing and Mr. Childs," Stiefel said in a statement. "We decided that the filming could continue if there was a collaborative effort regarding selection of film content, and that Dance would give input and guidance. However, subsequent suggestions and advice concerning content were not incorporated. Because Mr. Childs indicated that his filming was complete, further access to the School of Dance classes and students was discontinued."
Childs says he would like to have shot more, though with 70 hours of footage, he had more than enough for the film. He loved the putting together of a performance, not the performance itself. "Part of it was there were a lot of shots where they were not in sync with each other. I said, ‘Ethan, these are students … they are learning, that's why they're in school.' I said it's not a documentary if you control it like that."
Nicolaou -- now an apprentice with contemporary-dance company Hubbard Street Dance in Chicago -- never got accustomed to a camera following her around practices. "He liked to get close. I never really got used to it, but I got more comfortable," she said. "He (Childs) filmed a lot of rehearsal, when you're messing up and when you're not getting things right, but he got the good qualities and the bad qualities of the rehearsal."
For as much time as he has spent in dance studios, Childs admits that he is ignorant about specifics. Much of the language of dance -- second position, pas de deux, port de bra -- is lost on him. "I'm not focused on that," he said. "I'm just so focused on imagery. I'm a pickpocket's dream, really. I'm just scanning for compositions and images and expressions."
Like Edgar Degas, the Impressionist painter who favored dancers and horses, Childs appreciates behind-the-scenes moments. "I don't get my thrills from dance by watching it and sitting in a seat, the way 99 percent of people watch it. I become a part of the dance by drawing, painting, photographing, filming or simply observing from the wings or the studio."
Childs has been painting dancers since 1982, when he painted a promotional poster for the North Carolina Dance Theatre. As a child, he, his brother and friends made movies with a Super 8 camera. "I thought someday, I want to get in film, but never pursued it. For years, I really wanted to make a film about dance, about dancers."
Childs didn't want And We Will Dance to be just another dance film. This is no Fame.
For one thing, he is actually part of the film -- painting, sketching and talking about his art work.
And while these dancers fight through injuries and long rehearsals, the film itself is short on story. The dancers' lives are part of the movie, but not at the forefront of it.
Instead, Childs created a visual patchwork of dance, shot tight and close, from the wings of the Stevens Center during a performance or in a mirrored studio during practice. There's the elegant arch of necks and feet, the sinuous bend of backs and arms. There's the flutter of a tutu, the grayed bottom of a toe shoe. In one frame, a dancer bites his nails in practice. Another spins, sweat spraying off his body, catching the light like crystal beads.
The film echoes Childs' oil paintings of dancers -- built from slashes of color and movement rather than pristinely composed scenes.
"To me, it's impersonal to take in the whole thing. It's the closeness to it. When I paint, I paint intimate scenes. I don't usually paint performance scenes."
lgiovanelli@wsjournal.com
727-7302
If you go
Aperture Cinema, 311 W. Fourth St., will screen Steve Childs' dance documentary, And We Will Dance, on Monday at 4 and 8 p.m. Tickets are $6.50. A reception and an exhibit of Childs' paintings and drawings will be held at Associated Artists, 301 W. Fourth St., from 5:30 to 7:45 p.m. the same day. For more information, visit www.andwewilldance.com.
Email
Print
