KINETIC CINEMA: A SCREENING AND DISCUSSION WITH NEL SHELBY
Dir. Nel Shelby, Various years
USA, ca. 90 min.
ONE NIGHT ONLY!
THURSDAY, MARCH 13 – 8:00 PM
Pentacle is pleased to invite Nel Shelby, an extraordinarily talented dance videographer, to present an evening of films and videos that have inspired her illustrious career in dance and video.
Nel writes: “When I double-majored in dance and broadcast video, I had no idea where it would lead. Now, when I sit in a dark theater watching dance, trying to type as many notes as possible into my iPhone, I pinch myself and wonder if there’s any place I’d rather be. (The answer is NO!) Whenever I walk into a theater, it feels like home. Whether it’s midtown Manhattan, Vail, Colorado, or Becket, Massachusetts, each and every day I am inspired by the work that I do. More than anything, I want artists to have beautiful video to showcase their work so they can book more performances and keep sharing what they do best.”
Nel Shelby, Founder and Principal of Nel Shelby Productions, is deeply dedicated to the preservation and promotion of dance through documentation of live performances, fully edited marketing reels, live-stream capture, and documentaries and films that encapsulate the essence of nonprofit organizations.
Her New York City-based video production company has grown to encompass a diverse list of dance clients including American Ballet Theater II, Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company, Gallim Dance, Gotham Arts, Kate Weare and Company, Keigwin + Company, Monica Bill Barnes Company, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Shen Wei Dance Arts, Wendy Whelan and many more. She has filmed performances at venues throughout the greater New York area including The Joyce Theater, New York Live Arts, Lincoln Center, Symphony Space, St. Mark’s Church and Judson Church, to name a few.
For the past eight years, Nel has served as Festival Videographer for the internationally celebrated Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in the Berkshires. Each season at the Pillow, Nel’s responsibilities include documenting aspects of festival culture in addition to its 20 mainstage dance performances, filming and overseeing documentation of more than 100 free performances and events, managing two dance videography interns and an apprentice, and educating students about the technical and philosophical aspects of filming dance.
She now also serves as Resident Videographer at the Vail International Dance Festival where she spent her first summer creating five short dance documentary films about the festival in addition to documenting its events and performances. Her longer-form, half-hour documentary on Vail’s festival, THE ALTITUDE OF DANCE, debuted on Rocky Mountain PBS in May 2013.
This year, she is creating four short films for Wendy Whelan’s Restless Creature. In 2012, she collaborated with Adam Barruch Dance to create a short film titled FOLIE A DEUX, which was selected and screened at the Dance on Camera Festival in New York City. Nel’s videos for the New Jersey Hall of Fame were shown to an audience of 2000 people, and she is currently editing a dance documentary featuring Nejla Y. Yatkin that she filmed for three-and-a-half weeks in Central America in 2010. Nel has a long personal history with movement – she has a B.A. in dance and is a certified Pilates instructor. She continues to train with world-renowned Master Teachers Romana Krysnowska and Sari Pace, original students of Joseph Pilates. In addition to her dance degree, Nel holds a B.S. in broadcast video. She often collaborates with her wonderful husband, dance photographer Christopher Duggan on creative projects with dancers in New York City and beyond. They live with their beautiful daughter Gracie in Manhattan.
Kinetic Cinema, is a regular screening series of Pentacle’s Movement Media curated by invited guest artists who create evenings of films and videos that have been influential to their own work as artists. When artists are asked to reflect upon how the use of movement in film and media arts has influenced their own art, a plethora of new ideas, material, and avenues of exploration emerge. From cutting edge motion capture animation to Michael Jackson music videos, from Gene Kelly musicals to Kenneth Anger films, Kinetic Cinema is dedicated to the recognition and appreciation for “moving” pictures. We have presented these evenings at Collective: Unconscious, Chez Bushwick, IRT, Launchpad, Green Space, Uniondocs, CRS, 3rd Useless and The Tank in New York City, as well as at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia.
For more info on the current Kinetic Cinema season please visit our website and our blog, movetheframe.com.
About Pentacle’s Movement Media
Pentacle’s Movement Media provides services, strategies, and opportunities for dance artists to make dance works for screen and use media to promote and enhance their artistic pursuits. The core activities of Movement Media are screenings, consulting services, workshops, and interactive media publications (blogs, social networking, online videos, etc). These services address a growing need for dance artists to engage with Media, particularly online and on new media platforms, in order to reach audiences, grow artistically, and stay relevant in today’s media-rich world.
Pentacle’s Movement Media programming is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council. KINETIC CINEMA is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. The 2014 season of Kinetic Cinema is made possible through the contributions of generous individuals like you.