Screendance at the University of Utah

You are warmly invited to a Screendance showing by the Screendance 101 students on Wednesday, December 3, from 5:30–6:30 PM in MCD 240. This casual sharing (with some light appetisers!!) marks their first experience working within this genre. Your presence and support will help them gain confidence in sharing their works and reflecting on this exciting intersection of dance and film.
About the course:
Screendance 101 introduces students to the art of dance made for the screen—exploring how movement, camera, sound, and space come together to create meaning. The course moves from video documentation to site-based creative works, combining aesthetic, historical, and cultural approaches to understanding the moving body through image and media. Students choreograph, film, and edit their own short screendance pieces, developing an embodied relationship with both body and lens.

One last post from me!

Screendance can connect emotions and meanings within dance that we may not be easily portrayed on a stage.

The ripple of water expanding outward as a body is swallowed by a lake of grief. The feel of land and water connecting human to earth. And a cloud of sand as it spreads into the shadows of the human psyche (In order of presentation above).

As you reflect on these pieces what do you notice when the environment moves with a physical body? Is a new meaning created when the physical body is in a certain space? What textural characters do you most enjoy?

Thank you to for letting me take over for the day!

Shoutout one more time to !

Movement extends beyond the physical body. By incorporating movement through environmental characters such as water and sand, texture is not only added to movement with a physical body, but also to the message or emotional story that is being told. Shown above are frames captured from three pieces created by : Morning, Evergreen, and Ashes to Ashes. In Morning, the film is a tribute to those lost in COVID-19, and the grief that has come with this difficult time. The use of water here not only amplifies the portrayal of grief, but also amplifies the texture of thrashing and painful movement that can accompany this grief. In Evergreen, dancers explore the human animal and what that means in connection with our environment. Hair, limbs,and hands explore the ground, foliage, water, and space throughout this piece. In the frame above, water is an extension of exploration. It is a curiosity that physical bodies exist near and within. The water is the texture of connection to the body and to itself. In Ashes to Ashes, bodies explore the shadows and the feel of what human primal urges are. Sand is manipulated through scrunching, pouring, and smoothing movements. In the frame above, sand is pushed and later pulled in the texture that is human primal urge. Sand is the texture that emphasizes this the parts of us that are ingrained within the deepest parts of ourselves. These frames within themselves create movement. But it is within the context of these pieces that we can see how earth elements add to a screendance film. Stay tuned for that in the next post! And feel free to share your thoughts on this below!

Join the Screendance I class for a special guest lecture from Assistant Professor Kiri Avelar!

Lecture Description: How does the medium of screendance facilitate artist-scholar inquiries, especially in cultivating “perspectives from the cracks” as nepantleras? This class will explore rasquache sensibilities and strategies, reflecting on how the inherently embodied practice of screendance functions as a vital space for both collective and individual identity expression, encourages curiosity in the archives, promotes the act of “reading against the grain,” and acts as a powerful form of counter-storytelling.

Kiri Avelar (she/ella) is a fronteriza artist-scholar and educator from the U.S./Mexico borderlands of El Paso, Texas/Cd. Juárez, Chihuahua. Her work is rooted in Chicana/Latina feminist epistemologies, border(lands) studies, and interdisciplinary frameworks.  

Wednesday, October 22 @ 12:25pm in MCD 213

Images from Descubriendo Latinx (2021), a film by Kiri Avelar

Join the Screendance I class for a special guest lecture from Dr. Urmimala Sarkar Mundi!

Through the lens of Uday Shankar’s Kalpana (1948), this session reconsiders the genealogy of ScreenDance beyond Euro-American frames. Exploring Shankar’s multi-art experiments—his choreographies, play with magic, shadow, and cinema—we will reflect on how Kalpana dissolves the boundaries between documentary and fiction, performance and film. The session invites us to think of imagination (kalpana) not merely as theme, but as an embodied method of creating movement for the screen where dance and camera is a conversation and the screen becomes a living stage of vision.

Prof. Dr. Urmimala Sarkar Munsi, retired Dean and Professor of dance studies of at the School of Arts and Aesthetics of Jawaharlal Nehru University, India is currently a Senior Fellow of the Prime Ministers’ Museum and Library. She is a social anthropologist / performance studies scholar and a trained dancer- choreographer, with research interest in socio-political assertions of identity through cultural practices and interdisciplinary research on corporeality. Her recent publications include her co-edited (with Aishika Chakraborty) book The Dancing Body: Labour, Livelihood and Leisure (Routledge. 2025); Mapping Critical Dance Studies in India (Springer, 2024); Dancing Modernity: Uday Shankar and his Transcultural Experimentations (Palgrave, 2022), “Alice B***r Across Geographies and Arts”, (Rietberg Museum, 2021). 
 
Wednesday, October 15 @ 12:25pm in MCD 230 or via Zoom (message for link)

Join the Screendance I class for a special guest lecture from Merel Noorlander!

Here’s what Merel has to say about their lecture: “My talk explores how community-based media design can expand our understanding of intimacy, play spaces, objects, and tool design across physical and digital platforms. I approach this work through perspectives that value fluidity, multiplicity, and embodiment, exploring how performance and design can foster playful, resistant, and connective spaces.”

Merel is a Dutch artist, designer, curator, and Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Utah’s College of Architecture + Planning, Multidisciplinary Design Division. Their current teaching combines Research, Community-based Media Design and Mobile Projection Mapping in collab with the SLC Bicycle Collective, Owen Geary. Together with Ashley Iordanov, they co-teach and developed an on-site Immersive Installation Studio with a team of architects, (fashion) designers and V. Project.

Monday, September 22 @ 12:45pm in MCD 230

✨ In our current module, Choreography of the Camera, we’re diving into the groundbreaking work of Maya Deren — filmmaker, dancer, and visionary.

From Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) to her writings on the Amateur vs Professional, Deren shifted the lens: the camera was no longer just recording dance, it was dancing itself. 💫

This idea — the dancing cinematographer — brings the physicality of the filmmaker and camera operator into play. The body behind the lens becomes as choreographed as the dancer in front of it.

We’re also looking at Evann Siebens essay on “The Dancing Cinematographer” in the book Envisioning Dance on Film and Video by Judy Mittoma, expanding how we think about movement, film, and embodied practice.

💡 In Screendance, choreography happens both in front of and behind the camera.

Graphic courtesy

🎥✨ What is Screendance? ✨💃
It’s dance… but on screen. And it goes by many names 👇
🔹 Dance for Camera
🔹 Dance Film
🔹 Videodance
🔹 Dance on Screen
🔹 Embodied Filmmaking
Whatever you call it, Screendance is where choreography meets cinematography, where movement shapes the lens, and where the camera dances too. 💫
From experimental shorts to full-length films, Screendance blurs the boundaries between stage and screen, body and image, motion and memory. 🌍
💡 At the University of Utah, we’ve been shaping this artf orm since 1998 — and we’re still asking: how does the camera move when dance leads the way?

✨ Screendance Certificate at the University of Utah! ✨
Since 1998, the School of Dance has been at the forefront of Screendance — also known as dance for camera, videodance, and embodied filmmaking. From founding the International Screendance Festival to developing one of the first graduate certificates in the U.S., we continue to nurture innovative practices that merge movement, film, and critical inquiry.

🎬 Founded in 2010 by Ellen Bromberg, this interdisciplinary certificate—developed in collaboration with the Department of Film & Media Arts—offers dancers, choreographers, and filmmakers the tools to build an international portfolio and a critical lens for screen and studio practices.

🌍 Our graduates have screened work across the globe, from Ireland to Cyprus, Japan to Los Angeles, and beyond. Behind this program are visionary artists, educators, and collaborators: Ellen Bromberg, Katrina McPherson, Eric Handman, Kiri Avelar, Ben Sandberg, Kym Mc Daniel and Sumedha Bhattacharyya

📚 From the course catalogue: “The Screendance Certificate is a two-semester program that can be completed alongside MFA studies in Dance or Film & Media Arts, or pursued as a non-matriculated student. Students gain opportunities to collaborate, screen work internationally, and be part of a vibrant, growing community of screen-based dance makers.”

💡 Applications are accepted throughout the year.

🔗 Learn more + apply via the link in our bio.

Spring 2024 Screendance Newsletter! Link in bio and text below ✨



We submitted two films for the ACDA Festival at Weber State University: Acoustic Touch by Constance Anderson (MFA Modern ‘24), and tr(ip)eat by Aneta Parpouli (MFA FMA ‘26).

As part of their FAF Grant Award, Roxanne Gray (MFA Modern ‘24) and Sam Stone (MFA Modern ‘23) will present two new screendance films in June 2024.

Assistant Professor in Screendance, Kym McDaniel, was the lead curator for the Screendance Cultural Tour, a collaboration with the Salt Lake Film Society. She was awarded a University Teaching Grant and Tanner Humanities Center Grant to support the 3-day film festival. As curator of the festival, she discussed the process of rethinking screendance with Studio Magazine - keep an eye out for the article!

As part of the Tour, the Screendance Program invited Tania Hernández Velasco from Mexico City as the featured guest artist. Tania screened a solo show of their films and participated in a panel on culture and filmmaking with Roxanne Gray, Dr. Elena Shtromberg (Art + Art History), and Stephanie García (SoD MFA alumni).

SoD student Devin Etcitty, as well as Screendance Certificate candidates Constance Anderson, Roxanne Gray, and recently graduated Irishia Hubbard screened in closing night of the Tour.

There were several conversations available online as part of the Tour. Screendance Certificate founder Ellen Bromberg and Kym McDaniel were in conversation, as well as Tania, Devin, and disability artist Petra Kuppers. Congratulations to all for a successful festival!

Lastly, Assistant Professor Kym McDaniel has accepted a position as Assistant Professor in the Dance Department at the Ohio State University, and will be leaving the U at the end of June. She wishes all the best for U of U Dance!

Congratulations to the Spring 2024 screendance students! ✨ 🎥

Projects for the Dance 3100: Screendance and Dance 6440: Screendance Capstone final screening today are rolling in! Come celebrate with a showing in the Union Theater at 5pm! The screening will last about an hour. Free and welcome to all! See you there!

Films by
Dance 3100: Screendance
Wesley Ge**er
Reya Handman
Angelina Miller
April Radford
Lillian Riley
Lydia Smith
Katie Winslow

Dance 6440: Capstone
Constance Anderson
Devin Etcitty
Roxanne Gray