Sans Souci Festival of Dance Cinema

Sans Souci Festival of Dance Cinema is one of Boulder’s longstanding favorite arts organizations, and we’re so happy to return to one of our most beloved venues, the Boedecker Cinema at Dairy Arts Center for three separate programs this year - Locals’ Only, Dancing on the Planet, and Dancing as Ourselves.

I. Locals’ Only

Colorado-based films and artists pepper this lineup, representing the diverse dancers of the Front Range and beyond, of various ages, abilities, and styles. Directly after the screening, you’ll have a chance to connect with attending filmmakers in a Q&A and interactive discussion.

This screening runs approximately 46 minutes.

TerraMontes

2024 / United States / 6 min
Directed by Ana Baer, Heike Salzer
Produced by WECreate Productions
Choreography by Michelle Nance, Kim Olson, Heike Salzer
Featuring WECreate Productions

TerraMontes is a meditative site-specific screendance which explores an embodied sense of healing with the environment. As with the two previous works from the WECreate Productions’ Terra series, (HinterTerra and UrbáTerra), the dancers and camera explore the poetics of place through improvisation. In a matter of hours, The Lower North Fork Fire blazed through more than four thousand acres of pristine forest. Thousands were displaced, the fire destroyed almost thirty homes and resulted in three fatalities. The fire began on March 26, 2012 when firefighters lost control of a planned burn in Foxton, Colorado. Some of the fire was classified as high intensity, making the recovery of the land a very long process or impossible in some cases.

Ice of Breen

2024 / United States / 4 min
Directed by Alexandra Lockhart
Produced by Move To Protect
Choreography by Alexandra Lockhart
Featuring Move To Protect

A movement exploration of the audible interaction of calved glacial ice, sea, and air, Ice of Breen embodies the nuanced popping, crackling and complex composition of the ice and sea. Themes of erratic and randomness within a continuous flow are embodied and expressed through the movement and editing. The music composition is comprised of sound picked up from the camera during the filming process, overlayed with a simple composed score.

Jongo Abroad: Traditions in Transit

2024 / Brazil, United States / 11 min
Directed by Rosely Conz

In September 2023, Dr. Alessandra Ribeiro Martins, Bianca Lucia Martins Lopes, and Flávia Tamiris Soares Silva, members of Comunidade Jongo Dito Ribeiro, from Campinas, Brazil were invited by Rosely Conz, Assistant Professor of Dance at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs (UCCS), to spend a week sharing their traditions in Colorado, USA. Using archival footage filmed at Fazenda Roseira, Comunidade Jongo Dito Ribeiro headquarters, and UCCS, this documentary plays with the concept of transit – geographical, cultural, and social of Jongo. It includes points of view of the members of Comunidade Jongo Dito Ribeiro and UCCS students to highlighting dance education and race issues.

The Tender Gravity of Kindness

2024 / United States / 6 min
Directed by Rachel Oliver Young, Michelle Bills
Produced by Michelle Bills
Choreography by Rachel Oliver Young
Featuring Denver School of the Arts Students

Students ranging from 6th grade to 12th grade shyly relate to each other, finding their human connection. We ask ourselves how can we spread more compassion, more understanding, and most of all patience, to each other? How can we encourage each other to do our best, and believe, deep in our bones, that others are truly trying to do their best as well? That is the sentiment behind the creation of this piece, and how fitting to find Trevor Hall and East Forest’s song “A Reminder” with lyrics that state, “everything’s changing, all re-arranging….My love it’s just a reminder, find your center,” while we resonate with the Tender Gravity of Kindness, a line from Naomi Shihab Nye’s beautiful poem, Kindness.

Hambone Griot

2024 / United States / 13 min
Directed by Erika Randall
Produced by Erika Randall
Dancing by Rennie Harris
Written by Erika Randall

Shot in part at 10,000 feet at Gross Reservoir in Colorado over a span of 12 years, this short film, featuring the indomitable Rennie Harris, shares a dreamscape glimpse into the vernacular dance form, hambone, or “Patin’ Juba.” This work positions the powerful resilience of the Black male body in the face of white surveillance and the survival and evolution of the dance/music form of hambone within and beyond the histories of enslavement.