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Marisa Jane Green, Director of white road Dance Media, talks about SCREAMDANCE! 2017 at Triskelion

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Published on October 24, 2017
"Nightmares." Courtesy Fenia Apostolou.

While Anticipating The Annual Horror Dance Film Festival October 29, 2017

October 29, 2017, 7-11PM 

Venue: Triskelion Arts' Muriel Schulman Theater, 106 Calyer Street, Brooklyn, NY 11222.

Presented by Marisa Jane Green of white road Dance Media (NYC); co-directed by Marisa and Zeb L. West (Oakland CA), and curated in 2017 by Natalie George (Austin TX).

TICKETS : $12 at for SCREAMDANCE 2017 / www.eventbrite.com/e/screamdance-film-festival-2017-tickets-38777386206

OFFICIAL SELECTIONS for SCREAMDANCE! 2017:

• The Center of The Room, Vanessa Calderon, USA

• HEIR, Zach Green, Canada

• Infanticida, Amber Schmiesing, USA

• Nightmares, Fenia Apostolou, Greece

• Warm Touch, Anya Bogorad, USA

SCREAMDANCE! 3rd Annual Dance Horror Film Fest is an experimental dance horror film festival that seeks to support movement-oriented films with a dark vision. Official selections are screened for one-night-only in conjunction with a Slasher Fairy Tale Halloween party, where you can party like a godmotherless Cinderella-meets-Freddy Krueger as The Simple Pleasure bloodies the soundwaves.

Sammi Lim for The Dance Enthusiast: What is SCREAMDANCE! known for?

Marisa Jane Green, Director of white road Dance Media: Experimental dance horror films, wild Halloween party-plus-band-plus-Official Selection screenings, the occasional nude festival goer. Zeb West and I co-direct the SCREAMDANCE! madness and our friends The Simple Pleasure are the house band; each year it's curated by a different team of artists.

The Center of The Room. Image courtesy of Eduardo Manuel Muñoz & Manuel Argüelles.

TDE: Experimental dance horror films sound like one hell of a niche category. How do you circumnavigate the challenge of finding films that fit the bill?

MJG: One of the first questions I asked when founding SCREAMDANCE! in 2015 was, "Is dance film ready for genred storytelling?" I believe the answer, given the continued quality of our Official Selections each festival, is YES. So it seems to be less about us finding films that fit our bill and more about us holding a space where dance horror can build its own wonderful weirdo community and define itself in the process. See, we've found that many artists create for our festival specifically; we've also found that artists are already out there making dance horror, which we believe means dark experimental movement films. Bring these two kinds of makers together, year after year, and you're creating a dance horror genre! A bloody, pirouetting genre.

TDE: Some films at SCREAMDANCE! 2017 don’t address ‘horror’ by way of ghouls but highlight the horrors of history. The Center of The Room by Vanessa Calderon, for instance, is political. Tell us about this film.

MJG: Horror comes in many forms, and political horror is kind of the new American reality, right? Vanessa's film specifically deals with forced sterilization in Peru in the mid 1980s. It's a really terrifying and heartbreaking subject that she and the director are able to bring into intense focus.

TDE: So SCREAMDANCE is not just to entertain but to make the audience more ‘woke’?

MJG: Yes, we certainly hope that the audience takes away what wakes them. I mean a film that helps push your imagination in a fresh direction, helps pull your mind into an alternate shape, that's going to in turn move you in new ways. Horror film is a powerful medium, dance is a powerful medium. Together? Explosive. The possibilites to speak forcefully to all kinds of issues, including atrocious political ones, are endless. 

HEIR. Image courtesy of Fatal Pictures.

TDE: What’s another film that made the cut effortlessly?

MJG: So many we're excited about, and I can't speak for our curator, but HEIR by Zach Green has about two minutes in it that literally make my mouth fall open each time I watch it.

TDE: Has the festival evolved since the first edition?

MJG: We may have slightly more of an idea what we're doing now? Slightly. Other than that we're still figuring out this recipe of what we are: an experimental film festival plus a party plus a loud band plus . . .

Also, we switched locations this year from UnionDocs to Triskelion Arts in Greenpoint. We feel lucky to have developed and grown our vision at UNDO and we're looking forward to partnering with Trisky on this one of a kind event. 

Infanticida. Image courtesy of Amber Schmiesing.

Will you be dressed up for the event? Do guests have to dress up?

MJG: I definitely will be! This year's theme is 'Slasher Fairy Tale,' and while we don't require any of our guests to be in costume, how could you not want to take on this theme? I mean. The options! Cinderella loses her shoe at Hostel, Aladdin meets the Chainsaw Massacre, Sleeping Beauty vs. Freddy . . .

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