Grand Performances presents
Dance Camera West: New Visions for Dance

Join us as Dance Camera West celebrates five years of bringing extraordinary dance films from around the world to Los Angeles with a program of highlights from previous DCW festivals.

Featuring highlights from previous DCW dance film festivals screened under the stars. Join us for this family friendly collection of our favorite dance films surrounded by the dazzling new Downtown amidst the flowing fountains of California Plaza.

Come have a Grand Performances experience!
FREE No reservations required

Grand Performances California Plaza
300-350 South Grand Avenue, Los Angeles 90071
California Plaza garage parking $5 all day Saturdays and Sundays. Garage is best accessed from Olive Street between 1st and 4th Streets. We suggest carpooling whenever possible.
FREE Admission, no reservations required
213.687.2159
www.grandperformances.org

Celebrating DCW’s five years of bringing extraordinary dance films from around the world to Los Angeles, “Dance Camera West: New Visions for Dance” will feature previous festival favorites such as Burst, Horses Never Lie, Hasta La Proxima, Rest in Peace and Ere Mela Mela.
Prior to the screening of his Modern Daydreams and Case Studies from the Groat Center for Sleep Disorders, Los Angeles based filmmaker/performance artist Mitchell Rose will engage the audience with a series of interactive “crowd pieces.” Called “the dance world’s Woody Allen” by The New York Times, Rose is a graduate of the American Film Institute whose films have won numerous awards at film festivals, including the Grand Prize for Short Film at Slamdance.

Burst
Iceland 2002/ 5 minutes
(screened at DCW 2004 Festival)
Director: Reynir Lyngda
Choreographer: Katrin Hall
A couple fights in their bedroom unleashing
not only their passions but also the raging
waters of a burst water pipe.

Ere Mela Mela
France 2001/ 6 minutes (screened at DCW 2003 Festival)
Director: Daniel Wiroth Choreographer: Lionel Hoche
A duet that uses stop-motion techniques to create a witty movement poem for the Other, whom we would be nothing without.

Horses Never Lie
Canada 2002/ 6 minutes
(screened at DCW 2003 Festival)
Director: Kathi Prosser
Choreographer: Caroline Richardson
A personal journey consisting of three solos: fear, recovery and power with no definitive beginnings and endings – only growth.

 

Hasta La Proxima
Canada 2003/ 7:30 minutes
(screened at DCW 2004 Festival)
Director: Mark Adam
Choreographer: Victor Quijada
In moments of great sadness love can traverse space and time. This duet exists in the place between waking and dreaming as a 9/11 firefighter says goodbye.

Modern Daydreams
USA 2000/ 15 minutes
(screened at DCW 2002 Festival)
Director: Mitchell Rose
Choreographer: Jamey Hampton, Ashley Roland
These four post-modern comedies with silent
film sensibilities explore the theme of
movement engendered by day-to-day life
and reveal movement as a metaphor for
both romance and isolation.

Case Studies from the Groat Center for Sleep Disorders
USA 2002/ 7 minutes
(screened at DCW 2003 Festival)
Director: Mitchell Rose
Choreographers: Ashley Roland, Jamey Hampton, Mitchell Rose
A faux-scientific investigation to ASDICT (Adult Sleep Disorder Induced by Childhood Trauma) and features rare archival footage from the renowned (but ficticious) Groat Center for Sleep Disorders. Not a yawner.

Rest in Peace
Netherlands 2000/ 9 minutes
(screened at DCW 2002 Festival)
Director: Annick Vroom Choreographer: Hans Hof Ensemble
Four siblings bury their parents. As they dutifully carry the coffin, they begin to exhibit signs of anarchic behavior. Back home, all restraints break lose in a flurry of inexplicably bizarre activity, as a discovery reveals that the parents had strange secrets of their own.

From Where I’m Standing
UK 2005/ 5 minutes
(screened at DCW 2006 Festival)
Director: Carl Stevenson
Choreographer: Lindsey Butcher
An average day where the forces of gravity conspire to make even the easiest task seem impossible. From where he is standing, she is making life difficult for him, while from her perspective, he couldn’t be more useless. Together they need to get a job done even though they can’t see eye to eye.

BEEN RICH ALL MY LIFE
A New Film Featuring
THE SILVER BELLES - HARLEM’S LEGENDARY CHORUS DANCERS

Please join us for the 7:20 pm screening followed by a Q & A
with director Heather MacDonald and dancer Fay Ray

DCW members discounted ticket price $6.00 at box office only

BEEN RICH ALL MY LIFE, the new film by Sundance Award-winning director Heather Lyn MacDonald, follows the most unlikely troupe of tap dancers you’re likely to meet, the Silver Belles, five former showgirls who danced at the Apollo and other legendary Harlem venues in the 1930s-40s. Now aged 84 to 96, they have been performing together to standing ovations at places like Carnegie Hall for the past 20 years, as sassy as they ever were.

In 1934, the 125th Street Apollo Theater opened, presenting shows featuring the great band leaders and a chorus line of 16 of the most beautiful dancers in New York. While the headliners came and went, the chorus dancers rehearsed a new show each week, working 15-hour days. It is little remembered that these young women led the historic first strike by African American performers. They walked out of the Apollo one Saturday night in a successful bid for higher wages and established the American Guild of Variety Artists, for black and white performers nationwide.

Been Rich All My Life offers the rare opportunity to see history through the eyes of these last surviving chorus dancers of that important era. The Silver Belles have rich stories to tell about the history they made dancing at Harlem’s legendary venues – the Cotton Club, Connie’s Inn, Small’s Paradise. They toured the world, were honored abroad, and danced on the first black USO tour (when they stole the “for colored only” signs off the trains they rode in America’s Jim Crow south). When the big band era ended, and with it the need for show dancers, they went into other work, until they put their shoes back on in 1985, and kept on dancing. These remarkable women will disrupt any notions you have of old age.

“THRILLING! The Silver Belles are bold, brash, and gorgeous!” - Village Voice

“NEVER MIND THE ROCKETTES! See this beautiful movie.”
– Savion Glover

“Providing an inspiration for active retirement, the ex-Harlem Renaissance Chorus girls… are still shaking booty while most of their contemporaries can only shuffle their walkers.”–Dennis Harvey-VARIETY

"I laughed and cried .... It’s priceless!"
-Sue Simmons, co-anchor of "News Channel 4

BEEN RICH ALL MY LIFE, 2006, 81 min. Produced and directed by Heather Lyn MacDonald, featuring Bertye Lou Wood, Cleo Hayes, Marion Coles, Elaine Ellis, Fay Ray and Geri Kennedy. Edited by BB Jorissen and Heather Lyn MacDonald; Cinematography by Heather Lyn MacDonald and Jon Miller; Sound/Additional photography by Orlando Richards; Associate Producer, Margaret Whitton; Music Score by Pete Whitman. A Toots Crackin Production. A First Run Features release.

The Laemmle Music Hall is located at 9036 Wilshire Blvd. in Beverly Hills.
Runs September 29 – October 5
Fri, Mon-Thu: 5:10, 7:20, 9:45
Sat & Sun: 12:30, 2:45, 5:10, 7:20 & 9:45
www.laemmle.com 310-274-6869

For information about the film or to view the trailer of BEEN RICH ALL MY LIFE, visit www.tootscrackin.com/braml.htm