A Study in Choreography for Camera

Maya Deren was a pioneer Avant-garde filmmaker who made several movies like this during her lifetime. This one is rather different since (1) it's only 2 minutes, very short for a film by her, and (2) There isn't as much depth to it. Normally Deren's films have a hidden meaning or a hidden story in them; this particular aspect isn't really clear here. To most people this is going to look like a guy dancing in a couple spots, but while the meaning isn't clear, it is there.

Now for those of you who've read my reviews on other Maya Deren films, you'll know that when I analyze a film like this I pick out symbolism and use it to find a hidden narrative. For instance, in the director's first, "Meshes of the Afternoon" we follow a woman as she struggles with her marriage, wondering if what she did was good for her. In that film I used the record playing on the record player to symbolize a beautiful start to the marriage, a knife to convey the couples' relationship being torn apart, a mysterious hooded figure with a mirror for a face to give us the idea of the woman's dark desires being mirrored and reflected until they overcome her, etc. Likewise here. There's a hidden idea here which I will explain in a moment.

The film begins with the dancer Talley Beatty in the forest. What, in this case, does a forest symbolize? Forests are big, wide, never-ending places, evoking a feeling of loneliness. Saying that, we can think that this man portrayed is lonely, at a hard place in his life. Thus, "A Study in Choreography for Camera" is a look at the different areas of a character's life.

The second spot the man dances in is a living room. If you've got a living room in your house, you'll know that they get messy. A messy living room can represent a cluttered mind, so we are now assuming that this second stage in life of the man is cluttered with problems. He has gone from lonely to rushed and confused.

The third spot is a museum. What can a museum symbolize? Wisdom. Knowledge. Wonder. We can assume that through wisdom the man has found out how to fix his life.

But we are all human. We all make mistakes. And so sometimes we slip. That is why suddenly the man finds himself slipping back into the feeling of loneliness he had at the beginning.

But why is the man dancing throughout the film? A lot of people, in these predicaments, would find life unbearable. But this man knows how to handle his feelings. His dance symbolizes joy. Throughout life he knows being unhappy will do him no good, so instead of being miserable he is joyful. From the title, Deren probably hadn't meant to make this movie to be symbolic in any way, but quite unintentionally she has provided us with an interesting morality lesson. It may not LOOK special, but there's a lot more than meets the eye.

Okay, so I have no affinity for dance of any sort. I used to dance when I was younger and drunkier, but now I'm as clumsy with dancing as a bronco buck is with bucking. But still I have an appreciation for the human body as form, for its shape and line, the ways it can bend, twist, contort, stretch, in harmonic beauty. A Study in Choreography for Camera (1945) does nothing more than capture the well toned body of a dancer as he dances. Some of the geographic games we're used to expect by Maya the Trickster are present, but it's mostly a study, not a film. A dancer dancing. There have been shorts with even less to say but not many that said it as gracefully.

Maya Deren's shortest, five-minute A Study in Choreography for Camera seems like an exercise piece to capture a dancer's movement on celluloid, which later on developed into her masterpieces such as Ritual in Transfigured Time and Meditation on Violence.

Maya Deren always loved dancing and always wanted to make a film about that art. A study in choreography for camera is a result of her collaboration with dancer Talley Beatty and while it's too short to make someone understand what Maya Deren's films were about it will surely interest her fans.

I liked. Maybe little more than her previews films. Because it is pure poetry of dance, the different locations : the forest, the living room, the museum hall working just well , the dance representing the beautiful bridge between them, with inspired reference to a classic like The Afternoon of a Faun.

It is only choreography in maximun two minutes. A pure delight, I suppose, not only for dance admirers and a seductive work of camera.

Difficult and pretty unfair to write too much.

Only a beautiful show and admirable poetry of image .

For me, like in almost each film by Maya Deren, the story lives in myself and imagination gives it coherence.