9 Variations

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9_variations

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Alternate Title: Nine Variations on a Dance Theme

Directed by: Hilary Harris

year: 1966 13 minutes

As the title of Hilary Harris’s 1966 avant-garde classic suggests, the film unfolds the same concise dance (performed by Bettie de Jong, longtime member of Paul Taylor’s company) nine times, each from a different cinematic vantage. The first variations are duets of camera and dancer: Harris gracefully circles de Jong’s movements, maintaining a full view of her body in the light-flooded studio. As the flute-and-harpsichord score becomes more dynamic, however, so does Harris’s montage. He formulates variations based on vertiginous camera angles, absorbing close-ups of de Jong’s hands and feet and constructivist editing patterns accenting her slightest extensions. Our grasp of the dance is shattered again and again as Harris works towards an impressive range of kinetic and psychological inflections. 9 VARIATIONS is one of the few dance films to transcend mere documentation; Harris’s deconstructive approach shares much with modern dance choreography, though instead of upending classical forms on a stage, he does so in time. - Max Goldberg

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Reviews

Tara O'Rourke

Fantastically succinct. The film begins with "the" dancer performing her piece and closes with "our" dancers laying her head in relief, in exhaustion, in submission to her art? Nine variations or nine hundred...therein lies the brilliance of this short.


Doug Graves

holy shit! this is one of the best fucking movies i've seen! exquisite editing and moving camerawork. dynamic purely cinematic use of space, movement, timing, and multiple camera angles. extremely beautiful and choreographic. graceful and sublime. Harris is an exceptional filmmaker! I'm very grateful to be turned onto his work.


jjinux
jjinux

In this film, Hilary Harris shows the same short modern dance nine times. Each time, she uses a different film technique to portray a new perspective on the dance.

The reason I say that this film is perfect film school material is because it's practically a play book of many of the things that you can do with film that simply aren't available if you're showing a performance live. For instance, you can rotate the camera around the dancer. You can shoot from above and below. You can do extreme closeups. You can quickly alternate between two perspectives. You can focus entirely on just the hands and feet of the dancer. You can quickly jump around on the time frame of the dance.

Although these techniques are now commonplace, some of my film buddies have explained to me that Hilary Harris was one of the first to shows how to use these techniques to produce something that wasn't really possible before film.