A History of Dancing1977

A History of Dancing poetically and visually follows the transmigration of the soul after death, going through several states before reaching a final destination, a kind of peaceful Nirvana. To make the film, I used an optical printer to combine hand-painted calligraphy, paint-splattered “direct animation,” with footage I’d shot of a chicken being slaughtered and women playing tennis. My goal was to marry some of the tropes of abstract expressionism (i.e. direct action, brush strokes, splatters) with the heightened personal filmmaking I’d seen in Stan Brakhage’s Window, Water, Baby Moving or Harry Smith’s Heaven and Earth Magic.