Dance on Camera Festival 2025 connects the worlds of moving bodies and moving images. It promotes dance filmmakers and filmmaking dancers to New York City audiences.
Dance on Camera Festival 2025
The 53rd Dance on Camera Festival 2025 screens 28 films from 13 countries, and honors legendary dancer and actress Carmen de Lavallade; in the Nimoy Thalia Theater at Symphony Space in Manhattan’s Upper East Side, from Friday-Monday, February 21-24, 2025. From $17. symphonyspace.org 🇺🇸 🇮🇪 🇪🇸 🇹🇹
The opening night film is “Resilient Man,” Stéphane Carrel’s 2024 story of Royal Ballet Principal Dancer Steven McRae’s return to dance after tearing his Achilles tendon.
The closing night film is the 20th Anniversary screening of “Mad Hot Ballroom,” Marilyn Agrelo’s 2005 story of the ballroom dance competition in New York City schools that continues to this day as Dancing Classrooms.
The 2025 Dance in Focus Awardee is Kennedy Center Honoree Carmen de Lavallade, the legendary American actress, dancer, and choreographer of Louisiana Creole heritage. The Festival is holding a special screening of “Carmen & Geoffrey,” on Saturday, February 22, 2025 at 6pm. The film is Linda Atkinson and Nick Doob’s 2005 love story of one incredible dance couple, whose artistic impact reached far beyond the dance world. Her husband Geoffrey Holder was a Trinidadian-American dancer, choreographer, and actor. The night opens with the world premiere of Lester Horton’s 1953 short film “Caribbean Nights” that features Carmen de Lavallade.
Many dancers have a great career while they are young, and Lavallade came up in a time when it was much harder for artists of color to succeed, but that didn’t stop her. She just kept going. She started her career with Lester Horton Dance Theater in Los Angeles. Horton was himself influenced by Native American dance. To be Creole in the Americas generally means being an African and Indigenous mix, so the circle is complete. Lavallade took her talent and training to Alvin Ailey in 1954 which put her in one of the creative centers of Modern Dance. There she inspired multiple generations of artists of color with her work in dance, opera, and television. Lavallade is still a great inspiration.
“The Alchemist’s Dance,” Arantxa Vela Buendía’s 2024 film focuses on María Pagés, one of the world’s great living flamenco dancers. It’s in Spanish with subtitles.
“Two Roads,” is the New York Premiere of Susan Wittenberg’s film about the historic intersection of African American tap dancing and Irish step dancing.
Dance on Camera Festival
New York is both a dance city and a film city, so there is no better place in the world for a dance on camera festival. Neither modern dance nor film where invented here, but they developed here. The diversity of dancers, filmmakers, and modes of expression are part of why people love New York.
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