Former Choreographer/Performance Artist and now Filmmaker Mitchell Rose is perhaps currently best known for his often comedic dance films which have won 87 festival awards internationally. His films are great at making connections – spanning distance and time zones – as seen with such films as “Globe Trot” and “Exquisite Corps” – seamlessly morphing mid-movement from one subject and location to another.
And So Say All of Us is the 5th in what Rose calls his “hyper match cutting” series that includes (in order of creation) the films “Advance,” “Contact,” “Globe Trot,” and “Exquisite Corps.” It happened because New York City’s venerable performing arts institution, Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) called Rose in the summer of 2017 after having seen “Exquisite Corps,” because they wanted an alumni version of the latter to honor their outgoing long time, visionary Executive Producer Joseph V. Melillo’s 35 years of service. BAM was throwing Melillo a huge bash in September of 2018, and with the film linking 52 choreographers that he had nurtured it would deftly take care of the dance homage portion of the evening. Each film in the above mentioned series is so much work, requiring so many detailed cuts and other specifics, Rose swore he was going to stop after “Exquisite Corps.”
“But…,” he said, “it was hard to turn down BAM.”
What’s wonderful about this film is that it features 52 choreographers – international and many NY centric or NY launched (I’m hoping for an LA version at some point soon!) – all dancing themselves in a site-specific “dance chain letter.” All are known mostly for their stage work, but are merged herein in a wonderful piece of screen dance. And So Say All of Us has great color, movement, feeling and for those who have been privileged to see much of their beautiful work live, even nostalgia. It was directed and edited by Rose, with a score by Composer Robert Een (currently on faculty at UCLA), and who also composed music for “Exquisite Corps”.
If you are in the LA area you are in luck. You can see Mitchell Rose this Thursday January 10 in The Mitch Show as part of UCLA World Arts and Culture/Dance’s “Depth of Field – Take 2” from 3:00-5:00 pm at Kaufman. For FREE tickets, info and reservations go to: https://www.facebook.com/pg/UCLAWACD/events/
Enjoy!
