DEAR DANCER

As the COVID-19 pandemic is forcing theaters and dance companies to close down, the American choreographer Deborah Hay decides to let her dancers at the dance company Cullberg in Sweden continue their work and perform her latest piece in front of an empty theater in Stockholm. From her home in Austin, Texas, Hay writes them a letter proposing an experiment where instructions for movement will be replaced by a set of unanswerable questions. The film follows the dancers on and off the stage and captures their different reactions to the experiment.

The film is a commission from the Swedish dance company Cullberg and premiered in March 2022 at Moderna Museet in Stockholm as part of Tempo Documentary Festival. It had its international premiere at CPH:DOX film festival in Copenhagen.






INFO & CREDITS

TITLE Dear Director
LENGTH 23 min
GENRE Documentary
FORMAT DCP – 2:39 Scope, Color
LANGUAGE English, French (with English subtitles)
YEAR 2022

DIRECTED BY Marcus Lindeen
CHOREOGRAPHY AND NARRATION Deborah Hay
CINEMATOGRAPHY Ita Zbroniec-Zajt
MUSIC AND SOUND Hans Appelqvist
EDITING Alexandra Strauss
PRODUCER Jesper Kurlandsky
EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS Gabriel Smeets, Stina Dahlström. Emmy Astbury
PRODUCTION COMPANY Fasad Production AB
DISTRIBUTION Cullberg Dance Company

DANCERS/CAST Agnieszka Sjökvist Dlugoszewska, Anand Bolder, Benjamin Pohlig, Camille Prieux, Eleanor Campbell, Eliott Marmouset, Eszter Czédulás, Freddy Houndekindo, Johanna Tengan, Katie Jacobson, Louise Dahl, Mohamed Y. Shika, Unn Faleide, Vincent Van der Plas





EXTRA MATERIAL

︎ Interview in Business Doc Europe