Mocean makes leap to television screen
New Scotland Pictures at home making 'emotionally powerful' TV
By Elissa Barnard / Arts Reporter
DIRECTOR Charlie Cahill has taken his love of dance into film, and profiles Halifax's new troupe, Mocean Dance, in a half-hour TV special airing on Bravo! Monday, 9 p.m.
Cahill, of New Scotland Pictures, follows Mocean as they rehearse and perform their debut show, Quintecentric, in Halifax last fall.
The film focuses on performance from stage shots of Howard Richard's edgy piece with dancers in red slips pushing each other down, to a sinuous duet shot by Dean Skerrett at Bayswater Beach.
The viewer gets to see brief clips of the five dancers working with Howard Richard, who pushed them into darker emotions and sliding into water on stage, Andrea Leigh-Smith, the self-described "local girl" making an urban, aggressive, percussive piece and Allen and Karen Kaeja, who first gave the dancers pen and paper and asked them to write out their most significant memories, and then create a movement language from that.
"We don't just set movement on them, we pull movement from them," says Karen Kaeja.
"Halifax, Nova Scotia is very lucky to have them not only coming from here but wanting to be here and establish themselves here," says Allen Kaeja.
Cahill first met Mocean's dancers Lisa Phinney and Sarah Rozee when he shot Nova Scotia Ocean Fantasy with them and Rhapsody Quintet, his first piece of dance integrated with music and shot outdoors.
Two years ago he sat down with dancer Alicia Orr to discuss a show featuring her. She told him about her new project, Mocean Dance, a dance company formed by Halifax Dance students who'd gone away to train and come back home. Also in the company are Carolle Crooks and Sara Harrigan.
Cahill was first excited by the idea of putting dance on TV with the camera moving all over the place, even outdoors, instead of at stage front when he first watched the BravoFact clips that featured contemporary dance shot as if it were in a music video.
The dance "became much more dynamic."
"Dancers are athletes; it's strong, young beautiful bodies and beautiful music and if it's properly edited it's just emotionally very powerful television."
New Scotland Pictures is the only production company in Atlantic Canada that creates performing arts programming exclusively. The company's music specials include The Barra MacNeils' Celtic Chrismas, which aired last month on PBS in the United States.
New Scotland recently produced a music video for 60WattVAMP. Among its arts and music based projects in development is a series of dance performance programs.
The TV special repeats on March 8, 8:30 p.m., and Cahill plans to distribute it internationally.
