Student-curated festival combines dance, film at Wexner Center for the Arts

DANCE@30FPS will be held Feb. 10 at the Wexner Center for the Arts. Credit: Courtesy of Sara Wagenmaker

Film and dance may be considered separate arts, except when they are combined at DANCE@30FPS.

DANCE@30FPS, which stands for Dance at 30 Frames Per Second, is an annual dance film festival curated by Ohio State students and will be hosted by the Wexner Center for the Arts in person Thursday at 7 p.m. The style of dance film, which is unique from standard video documentation of dance, takes short clips or shots of various movements and edits them together in a way that creates the sense of watching live dance

“With in-person performances, the element of interest is the liveness, right? It’s the kinesthetic empathy that comes from seeing a body do a thing and then feeling it in your own body,” Sara Wagenmaker, a fourth-year in dance and one of the festival’s curators, said. “On film, while that still exists, there’s a different realm of possibility of playing with perspective or playing with effect.”

Films will include “Child of the Screen” by Nathan Hirschaut, “Silk Paper and Bruises” by Gabriella Engdahl and “Wehnu Sai” by Mitchell Rose, according to the Wexner Center’s website.

Forrest Hershey, a graduate student pursuing a master’s in dance and programming associate for DANCE@30FPS, said the festival received 386 submissions, which student curators then narrowed down to the final 10 selections.

At the end of the day, Wagenmaker said the curators were looking for work that draws on the magic and the artistry of dance and combines it with that of film, creating something beyond just filmed dance.

“We do keep an eye out for films that speak to the times,” Wagenmaker said. “Which isn’t always a film about XYZ issue, but just films that are aware of the world of which they were made in and in which they existed.”

Live dance performances and dance films have their similarities, Hershey said, and although each has its own purpose, the marriage of dance and film will allow artists to make the audience feel a deliberate way, which he said is not always true for live performances.

“One thing about the film is that you’re able to really choose how the viewers [see] a performance as opposed to just sitting in a theater and experiencing something in front of you,” Hershey said. “Being the filmmaker and being able to control how the audience sees certain things or a certain angle you’re shooting from can give a different feeling.”

Tickets to DANCE@30FPS are free and can be reserved on the Wexner Center’s website.