Directed by Ulysses Jenkins • 1983 • United States
This video documents “Cake Walk,” an installation and performance piece by artist Houston Conwill, staged in November 1983 at Linda Goode Bryant’s pioneering New York gallery Just Above Midtown. The piece refers to the cakewalk dance that developed in the eighteenth century among enslaved African Americans as, among other things, a way to covertly ridicule slaveholders. The dancers in “Cake Walk” move amid Conwill’s sculptures and paintings, with one of the artist’s cosmograms painted on the floor beneath them.
Up Next in Shorts for Days: Dance on Film
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About Tap
Directed by George T. Nierenberg • 1985 • United States
George T. Nierenberg’s brilliant and blissful followup to NO MAPS ON MY TAPS is introduced by legendary dancer Gregory Hines, who shares his childhood memories of watching and imitating the tap-dance greats at the Apollo Theater. ABOUT TAP ...
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Liberian Boy
Directed by Mati Diop and Manon Lutanie • 2015 • France, Canada
Starring Jules Langlade
A boy channels his inner Michael Jackson in this experimental dance film set to a pulsing electro-pop beat. -
A Guide to Breathing Underwater
Directed by Raven Jackson • 2018 • United States
Traversing New York City, a dancer seeks freedom and peace through movement.
