Isabella Boylston: I’m Isabella Boylston
and I’m a principle ballerina with
American Ballet Theater in New York City.
Sophie Cavoulacos: Assistant Curator, Film: I’m Sophie Cavoulacos.
I’m Assistant Curator in the Department
of Film at MoMA, and I’m so excited to watch
the film that you’ve picked today, which
is A Study In Choreography for Camera, a collaboration
between Maya Deren and Talley Beatty.
Sophie: So we’re looking at this in a 16mm
print, which is the original format of the film.
If we go to the galleries later, you’ll
see that it’s showing in digital.
But since we’re in the cinema, I thought
I’d show you the cinematic format.
Isabella: Yeah, I love this!
His starting position reminds me of Nijinsky
in Afternoon of a Faun.
How he starts in a low crouch and then he
stretches up and stretches up in each frame.
I feel like he’s definitely a depiction
of strength from the first frame.
Sophie: And strength in so many ways!
Isabella: And what year was it made?
Sophie: It’s from ’45.
Isabella: ’45. It’s so incredible.
And just to have like a woman making her own
films at that time.
Sophie: A woman and an African American man
who both had great expression and great successes
and great recognition, but also hurdles, you
know, their respective hurdles.
And so I really see the work as a work of
affirmation and of celebration and of presence
and of virtuosity and beauty, and all those
things rolled into one.
Isabella: I mean he has like the perfect ballet
body.
Watching it, it’s just like, oh man, those
legs and arms and face, everything.
He’s doing a Développé.
That’s what it’s called.
With a pointed foot.
I feel like dance is such a difficult thing
to capture on film, because, part of the beauty
of live performance is that it’s live and
it’s in the moment and then it’s over
and you can’t like edit it or filter it,
and I feel like when you see dance depicted
on film and it’s able to reveal something
different about the dance that you wouldn’t
get in a live performance, that’s when,
to me, it’s really effective and powerful.
Sophie: She had a name for that. She called it “choreocinema”.
Isabella: “Choreocinema!” Cool.
Sophie: So it’s choreography for camera.
It’s not choreography on camera.
It’s not a document.
It only exists in the film that they made
together.
Isabella: Yeah, and I love how in the credits
it says “by Maya Deren and Talley Beatty.”
Sophie: That’s it.
That’s exactly it.
It was a complete collaboration.
Camera and editing follows his movements,
so as you said earlier, it just completely
seamlessly goes from one movement to the other,
and jumps from interior-exterior.
Yeah, I mean, this work is self-portraiture.
These are somehow dual self-portraits by the
filmmaker and the choreographer.
Isabella: It’s almost like he’s achieving
godlike status in the end.
Leaping in front of the sky.
And I love how it builds too, from like him
being in a more natural location and doing
sort of slow and lyrical movements, and then
the fast turns, and then the big grande jetés.
It has a nice upward build.
Sophie: I love that.
Isabella: -like through the
physicality of what he’s doing.
Sophie: I wouldn’t know that without you. It’s true.
Isabella: Really? Cool.
Sophie: Well in a way.
Because, of course, there’s an arc to the
movements as well. Right?
Sophie: We are now in the galleries, looking
at the Deren film installed with its wonderful neighbors.
This gallery is about New York in 1945, so
thinking about bodies and intimacy and symbols.
You have Wildredo Lam, you have Deren, you
have Bourgeois, and then you have- I mean,
just the kind of conversation you can have
visually or emotionally.
Isabella: And honestly, it just makes me want
to dance.
Like when I come into a big open room like
this.
I just want to like move around.
I want to be him in the museum.
