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UB film debuts at Lincoln Center

Elliot Caplan observes a dance class in the Center for the Arts.

Elliot Caplan observes a dance class in the Center for the Arts. Photo: DOUGLAS LEVERE

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    Audio Slideshow: Elliot Caplan talks about the making of “15 Days of Dance.” | View slideshow

By PATRICIA DONOVAN
Published: November 4, 2009

“15 Days of Dance: The Making of ‘Ghost Light,’” a film by Emmy-award-winning artist and filmmaker Elliot Caplan that was produced and developed at UB, had its premiere screening recently at Lincoln Center.

Caplan is professor of media study and director of the Center for the Moving Image (CMI), an interdisciplinary initiative of the College of Arts and Sciences and the Department of Media Study.

In 2007, the CMI commissioned "Ghost Light," a ballet choreographed by Brian Reeder for dancers from the American Ballet Theatre Studio Company, as a gift from the City of Buffalo to the people of New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina.

Caplan made an 18-hour film,"15 Days of Dance," to document the creative evolution of the ballet. Excerpts from the film were presented on Oct. 22 in the Bruno Walter Auditorium in the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center.

Caplan, Reeder and ABT dancers all attended to discuss the excerpts.

It was the first of four programs in which different segments of the film will be screened. Other segments will be presented on Dec. 17, Feb. 11 and March 8, all with the principals in attendance.

All programs will take place in the Bruno Walter Auditorium. Admission to the NYPL Performing Arts Programs is free and generally first-come, first-served, although tickets are occasionally required. For information, call (212) 642-0142, or email lparog@nypl.org.

“15 Days of Dance,” which has 19 segments (any of which can stand alone as an independent film), will be “in residence” at Lincoln Center Arts Library through March and possibly beyond. During this period, visitors can check out any or all of the film’s segments and study them in the library’s individual film viewing booths.

The UB commission called for Reeder to create a ballet with dancers from the American Ballet Theatre Studio Company—its name has since been changed to ABT II—set to “Music for the Theater” by Aaron Copland, with costumes by Reeder. The public premiere of the dance was presented in Buffalo in 2007.

Caplan documented the process of the creation and performance of “Ghost Light” using advanced digital technology to make it available for future research and study. The project was funded by the CMI through the Robert and Carol Morris Fund for Artistic Expression and the Performing Arts in the College of Arts and Sciences, and the UB Humanities Institute.

“The goal of the CMI,” says Caplan, “is to create unique programs like this one that integrate traditional performing arts—in this case, dance—into the syntax of emerging media technologies so as to promote and preserve these traditional art forms in the U.S. and abroad.”

With his longtime collaborator, choreographer Merce Cunningham, Caplan became a leader in applying new technologies to the arts. He now is working with UB’s Center for Computational Research to develop a computer program through which dancers’ movements can be tracked to produce new models for digitalized dance documentation.

Caplan’s work as a producer, video maker, filmmaker, theater designer and cinematographer is internationally recognized and held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, France’s National Museum of Modern Art, Cinémathèque Francaise and museums in Taiwan, Germany, Israel and Brazil.

In 1998, he founded Picture Start Films to produce artistic and commercial media projects. Current projects include “Hidden Thing: A Children’s Story,” a feature documentary film funded in part by the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture; “UTANGO,” a performance film currently screening throughout the U.S. and Europe; and “Steel Work,” an experimental visual symphony on DVD with music by Philip Glass, David Bowie and Brian Eno.

Albany Records last month released the DVD “Shamayim,” a work for solo bass voice and eight channels of electronic sound made or modeled upon bass singer’s Nicholas Isherwood's vocal instrument. The music is by noted composer David Felder, Birge-Cary Chair in music at UB. The video was created by Caplan.

His additional documentary work and art films featuring such artists as Cunningham, Nam June Paik, John Cage and Bruce Baillie have been celebrated with more than a dozen major awards in the U.S. and across Europe, including a 1999 Emmy for Outstanding Cultural Programming, two Grand Prix Internationals for dance video, the Czech Republic’s Golden Prague award and similar distinctions in France, Germany and Sweden.