MOVEMENT/IMAGE: Re-situating Dance and the Moving Image in Hong Kong, 2020
In early March 2020, right as the COVID-19 pandemic began to intensify globally, the performing art sector of Hong Kong was asked to respond to the escalating context of major lockdowns, which resulted in not just the shutting down of performance spaces and theatres, but also the suspension of all live performances slated to take place in-person. A situation not unique to Hong Kong but in fact happening worldwide, dance communities were tasked with the sudden objective of mediating their works digitally, with whatever available online streaming platforms at hand, and finding some semblance of normalcy in the continuation of their artistic productions. Though experimentations and collaborations between both lens-based and performance-based practitioners have taken place consistently since the 1960s in Europe and North America, these inter-medial ventures have not gained much traction in East Asia until recent years, with the advent of various initiatives and projects that featured explicitly collaborative works. In this regard, what the pandemic prompted, I argue, was not a sudden transition into a forced pas de deux between dance and the screen, but rather an acceleration of a process that is still fairly nascent yet gradually coming into being. I speak of this from experience, as a practitioner whose practice has been influenced by exposure to artists and works such as Maya Deren from the 1940s, Yvonne Rainer from the 70s, Derek Jarman, DV8, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, and La La La Human Steps from the mid-80s, to name a few.
Noting that digital adaptations have thus arisen as a natural response to mitigate the impact of a global catastrophe that is the pandemic, they have also become ubiquitous and necessary, even beginning to affect and facilitate a certain undercurrent in the development of the artistic and creative processes of performing artists and performance-based practitioners. Observing the increase in inter-/trans-disciplinary collaborations between practitioners of the performing arts and assorted media-based practices, including but not limited to film, digital art, and new media, unique situations and unforeseen collaborations have yielded both novel audio-visual propositions and unexpected experimentations in hybridised forms that sometimes work, and other times do not. What is particularly interesting lies in the process: these practitioners mostly struggle to understand each other since they do not have the same background, artistic language, or even practical and productive context.
This new mode of working, foisted upon the artistic community by an inescapable context, and the prevalence of needing to create collaboratively have thus raised intriguing questions and themes that draw into view some new ways of thinking and making performances. Identifying three main thrusts in contemporary developments, this essay aims to unpack the following observations through a few case studies that I encountered and have been privy to the process of, over the course of the last year:
- The development of new imaginaries in both form and content mediated by technology, where the usage of digital media has transformed the expression and perception of movement and performance, leading to shifts in creative paradigms;
- The steady transitions between functional intents of digital media, where practitioners are forced to use technology to overcome physical limitations in exhibition or production, and artistic intents, where practitioners adopt the idioms, formats, and idiosyncrasies of digital technology as part of their (expanded) artistic practice;
- Differences in expectations and understanding within collaborations between moving image practitioners and dance practitioners.
Intersections and interplay between these three trends have led to an overarching concern with how these hybridised works muddy notions of authorial agency and ownership, which implicates not just the intellectual property of the works at large, but much more profound questions of artistic intent and origins.
This essay will explore the convergence of dance and digital technologies with reference to a few projects that have experimented and experienced the different processes and outcomes borne through collaborations, which relate to my own interest in how new presentation modes through technological interventions could shape a new paradigm for future moving image projects working with/through dance. This essay will also re-examine digital technology and media in relation to their representation of corporeality, liveness, and spectatorship, in the context of a broadening knowledge base and acceptance by both content creators and audience who have been experiencing performance from radically re-defined spheres, time, and perspectives. In this regard, this essay is thus orientated towards the implications, both logistical and artistic, of the digitally ‘native’ work, that is, works produced through the amalgamation of technological considerations, the uniqueness of digital platforms and processes, and artistic concerns, and not works which function more as documentations or live broadcast of a traditionally staged work.
Will the development of this new presentational lexicon facilitate the growth of a new generation of digital native dancers and choreographers, who have the necessary skills and experience to understand and create within the mode of digital performativity? How do we enable them to develop and engage further with accessible digital tools to support and expand the horizons of the choreographic process and creation? The vessel of presentation may indeed be shifting, and therefore if the body, as the vessel for performance, is undergoing a transformative process in relation to form, practice, production, and its interaction with the audience, we may thus be entering a new frontier of performance-making and -viewing rooted in an entirely new imagination and vocabulary.
When we speak of the audience and spectatorship, we may also suddenly realise that the undefined geographical context of the digital realm has also opened up discussions of how the borderless-ness and post-spatial nature of a site-specific performance may be approached physically. This borderless-ness is also mirrored temporally: the ease of which we have been given unlimited access to international content from past to present, from un-defined time zones all over the world, have also erased temporal boundaries that previously limited physical productions to specific localities.
The increase in geographical diversity in spectatorship owing to this borderless and timeless condition, alongside a certain glut of content which are almost excessive, constitutes interesting phenomena that have also raised new points of concern and consternation on many scales and timeframes, involving major institutions, artistic agents, commercial agents, as well as the many independent scenes and practitioners from across the world.
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Ivy Tsui’s My Life As A Dancer, Sudhee Liao’s Hermetic Diode, and Wayson Poon’s A Letter to Father of the ‘Hong Kong Jockey Club Contemporary Dance Series 10th Anniversary Series’ presented by Hong Kong Arts Festival 2021.
These three projects shared the same premise and element: they were conceived and commissioned as live theatre performances as part of the Hong Kong Jockey Club Contemporary Dance Series 10th Anniversary programme produced by the Hong Kong Arts Festival 2021, which in total featured fourteen works. Owing to the limits of this essay, I will focus on the three mentioned works, all of which featured the same filmic collaborator, Vincent Ip, who filmed and edited the subsequent footage into the final presented works.
Taking up the role of production director, film consultant, and artistic collaborator to six of the works in the series, Ip was a consultant hired by the Hong Kong Arts Festival to assist the choreographers in transferring their work from live performance to film. When I asked him about the process and obstacles of collaborating with different choreographers in this adaptation process, Ip shared his view about the different perspectives of live performance versus film production in relation to a common language, concepts of time, and spatial orientation. He explained that the openness and timeframe for live performance were much broader and stretched over a much longer sense of time compared to video presentations. From his experiences, a ratio of 1:4 in condensation is needed when we transfer a live performance into a film presentation. This is because we have less patience for screen-based materials and the director’s specific perspective of which is being framed, whereas in live performance, we, as the audience, can more freely interpret sensorially what is happening. Spatially, Ip also stressed that the cinematic apparatus meant that we could now look at a work from different distances. While the distance of the audience to the dancer is fixed to a proscenium configuration, limited to where your seat is, the distance of the camera from the dancer is in constant flux depending on the shot size and intensity that the creator hopes to convey and achieve. Considered as a form of time-based media, live performance generally has a linear progression, which differs from the construction of time in film where the sense of time, emotion, and narrative are constructed through editing either the montage or the mise-en-scene of the camera. Specific to each scenario and vision of the dance-makers, Ip has thus gone through different processes collaborating with Tsui, Liao, and Poon.
In My Life As A Dancer, the camera is more observational and still because of the nature of Tsui’s choreographic structure – to portray the performative act of her textual presentation as the dancer in her work. It was important to take this minimal and archival approach so that the camera did not overtake the performance. There was an interesting observation from Tsui that she recalled while sharing about her filming process, where she contemplated the way in which a stage was spatially divided and defined with specific perspectives in her practice. The training of both the audience and performer(s) inhabiting the space of proscenium stage has long been rooted in the traditions of classical theatre, while the spatial concept of cinema could be quite fluid, hence not a centre to be anchored. While this encounter of spatial difference appears to be basic and fundamental, it is not a perspective to be easily articulated unless by experienced collaborators during the actual process of creation. Before completing the adaptation of the work, Tsui also questioned the notion of an archival approach which she had doubted previously, a valid concern when envisioning the work as a collaborative film piece as opposed to a direct documentation.
Going beyond the archival approach, A Letter to Father by Wayson Poon was more documentarian in how it followed the choreographer’s journey in mourning the loss of his father. Through connecting the inherent spirituality of the natural environment with the voice of a nanyin singer, the work served as an intimate conversation between father and son, between a body and nature, and between a singer and the dancer. While originally proposed as a ten-minute long-take featuring a duet between a singer and a dancer, as it progressed, the team decided to expand the camera movement into different perspectives and open up a more imaginative logic to the film. Ip’s participation in Poon’s work involved a more improvisational approach as well as actively shifting his own presence as a camera person, editor, and observer. In response to Poon’s original choreography for a black box space with the physical chair owned by his late father, the duo expanded their filmic imagination to include a more spiritual encounter with nature, leading to the replacement of the chair with the metaphorical branches which the choreographer found onsite. Subsequently, the visual imagery of the mountain and forest did lend a more mystic tenor to the final piece.
Depending on what each choreographer needed or wanted, Ip’s position likewise shifted. For Hermetic Diode, choreographer Sudhee Liao provided Ip with much leeway to re-interpret her work. As a result, Ip took the liberty of partially re-situating her work in an actual alley way instead of a fully filmed production in the theatre space, alongside intervening in the choreography through the introduction of different filmic elements such as camera movement and perspectives, especially the macro view of the choreography and body which had not been feasible in live performances. In the process of creating the film, both Liao and Ip adopted a more traditional filmic approach to the creation: working on storyboards and scripting the scenes, as well as deconstructing the dance with different shots. It is important to note that Liao has already had prior experience working on film production in her previous works, and this prior experience may in turn serve as a prerequisite for Liao’s furthering of her choreographic practice through a filmic language. With the final film presentation almost entirely remade, Hermetic Diode is perhaps one of the most film-influenced adaptations among all the works in the series.
Looking at these three works and collaborative processes, it is clear that the completion of these adaptations did not come from equal artistic initiations of the filmic propositions from the very beginning. Ip’s role as a supporting agent helped to address many unforeseen gaps and expectations between collaborations of moving image practitioners and dance practitioners in the usual sense, when both claimed an equal stake to authorial primacy and power. This case study potentially indicates how successful collaborations dealing with filmic creation in the performing arts could take place in the future. However, this also brings up an existential question of whether any medium needed to be placed in a supportive role even during supposed partnerships. Nevertheless, it is exciting to witness such an unprecedented bumper crop of filmic dance works in Hong Kong. Though some are more successful than the others, it provides an opportunity for the choreographers to tap into the expertise of a supportive film production infrastructure, subtracting the director-centric mode of cinema-making while at the same time eliminating the intimidation of having to utilise a previously unknown film language. In any case, this may well be the most useful takeaway for future projects in promoting audio-visual dance works.
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Conclusion
The exploration of the different aesthetic dimensions of presenting dance through the moving image in this essay are but a fraction of the observations I have made, based on some of the digital presentations from the dance community that I have encountered between mid-2020 and early 2021. They constitute part of the spectrum of works that explore how ideas of ‘dance’ and the ‘moving image’ could be re-defined or re-produced as a mode of presentation and manifested as a clear product of the circumstances.
As a long-time dance filmmaker, facilitator, and curator, I am interested in how this process, which originated as a consequence of the constraints posed by the context of a crisis, could expand new imaginations and possibilities for practitioners from both film and dance, and facilitate productive conversations and collaborations between dance and film organically.
In Being Watched: Yvonne Rainer and the 1960s, Carrie Lambert-Beatty noted that ‘[a] dance film is a captured, remembered version of performance’.[1] Memory and remembrance are often poetic, metaphysical, and deceptive. If the remembrance of a performance could be revisited, re-presented, rewatched, and replicated to an endless audience, it could challenge the ephemerality that is the fundamental nature of live performance. In this sense, the making of a mediated performance relies more on a transformative discourse rather than a digital discourse. Just as how television-based performances influenced the viewing of theatre in America in 1960s, the idea of mediation has expanded much further into experimentations on how technology could and has intervened in the lives of ordinary people without taking away the essence and importance of live performance. Likewise, while the development and proliferation of machines have modified human’s collective thinking process and somatic routines in daily life, they did not change the fundamental human physiology nor its functions. The thesis of digital transformation comments on the process of artistic paradigm shift between changes in the social condition and evolutions in the somatic environment brought forth by the ever-shifting technological relations present in our daily life.
Even if the contemporary flood of images and the simultaneity of their circulation have led to a kind of numbness in terms of consumption, I believe that there can be a more active and practical approach to looking beyond the static mediated image – to explore not just visuality but an altered physicality. There are, of course, more complex relations between memories and the moving image, the individual and collective. Such relations surround the emotional bonds that we form with these moving images which harbour the risk of forgetting that the body, as the producer and recipient of these images, is always present. Spaces, in which a simultaneity of images is projected, can be perceived from different axes related to not just the continuity and flow of the images themselves but also to the wear and tear of the traditional viewer’s point of view. In this format, the work is activated by the viewer, who has to move in order to measure the space – a reality constructed when a picture becomes an illusion of movement. In short, I am not at all worried about mass media supplanting live performance culture.
From antiquity till now, dance has always been an essential, if not fundamental, element to constructing our identity, to negotiating our own humanity, to fertility, to rituals, and to daily living. This is evident from not just the remaining cave drawing of our prehistoric selves, the existing rituals in many cultures, but also our social life across all human existence. Cinema as a reflection and abstraction of life, in a concentrated, condensed way, cannot avoid the existence and power of dance. The power of body language and how the somatic self speaks will continue to transform the poetics of cinema as an alternative to dialogues, through which the language of text can never become ideological. Digital presentations that draw on the life force of dance could be transcendental in many ways, and not at all culminating in the potential death of live performance.
I recall Philip Auslander’s Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture in which he discusses the binary relationship between a live performance and a mediated reproduction of a live production; there, he questions the common assumption that the live event is ‘real’ and that mediatised events are secondary and somehow artificial reproduction of the real. In the era of the audio-visual hybrid, the boundary between various forms of practices has become fluid and intangible, which lends itself to an exciting array of possibilities in creative outputs and viewing norms. Particular to the pandemic context, a rising urgency to adopt the moving image has led to emergences in various forms. Dance film, as a crucial sub-genre in film history, is undergoing a transformation and slowly developing an innovative language of its own. It has transcended the documentation or mediation of dance or performance in many aspects. In the 2021 edition of the Jumping Frames Festival, my team and I constantly found ways to initiate possible expansions in understanding and to contemplate a new dimension of ‘dance film’ in its methodology and discourse. Therefore, this immediate transference from the medium of dance to that of film in the rush of the pandemic could become a touchpoint for re-examining and re-discovering how we look at and experience live performance with a more progressive and non-biased approach. After all, the truth, the fact, is that the conditions, situations, and outfalls of the pandemic will continue to affect our lives and society.
As a dance film curator, I have observed the lack of artistic reflections and multiplicity of this hybrid genre in Hong Kong for a long time. More often than not, we could not see the necessity of collaborations or the enormous potential of exploring how to expand the peripheries of each medium. The ‘dance film’, and its twin ‘screendance’, are a hybrid re-organisation of dance and film media that has come a long and exciting way internationally, but not so much in Asia yet. It is not just about the collaborative process between two different media, but the idea that the form of each medium could be challenged and transformed to create a new system of communication and meaning and shifts the ways we encounter each art form. Perhaps the pandemic will change this, even amidst not well-founded fears of the potential death of live performance as an aftereffect of the development of mass media productions of dance. However, it is always problematic when we categorise dance film as a facet that is part of the bigger market of the film world. Though we see the potentiality of dance films rising, the presence of a market is not quite a certain existence yet. More than that, I see it predominantly as a necessary progression for the world of dance, because the accessibility and multiplicity of a screening can and will expand the exposure of dance creations and performances across the globe on a far larger scale. Beside its transnational and trans-temporal potentials, the medium of film also preserves the ephemerality of dance and body in its natural habitat. In 2020, we saw an overwhelming number of creations of this nature in Hong Kong, and gradually but certainly, almost every performing artist would have to accept the new challenges posed by this new norm in the long run. The plague is not going away – but perhaps, this will lead to some positive, productive conversation on how we can move forward together, on the streets and on the screens.
動態／影像：2020 年影像媒介和香港舞蹈呈現的新可能性
中譯：張紫茵
2020年三月初，全球2019冠狀病毒病疫情急轉直下，香港表演藝術界也匆匆需要應對日漸升級的封鎖措施。表演場地與劇場關閉，而一切和現場表演有關的項目也告暫停。忽然之間，舞蹈工作者必須用任何手頭上的資源透過網上串流平台將演出數碼化，嘗試在表面上維持正常，延續表演與創作。這情況並非香港獨有，而是全球性的現象。回看1960年代，歐洲和美國的影像媒介與表演藝術工作者早已廣泛合作和實驗，相對來說直到近年，隨著多個明顯以合作形式的計劃與項目湧現，這些跨媒介實驗才開始在東亞廣泛興起。由此看來，我認為疫情所促發的，並非逼迫舞蹈和影像跳起突如其來的雙人舞，而是加快一個仍處於起步但已逐漸成形的過程。這是個人經歷之談，觀看和接觸多個藝術家作品讓我深受啟發，當中幾個例子包括1940年代的瑪雅・黛倫（Maya Deren）、 1970年代的伊凡・瑞娜 （Yvonne Rainer）、德里克・賈曼（Derek Jarman）、DV8形體劇場、安娜・德瑞莎・姬爾美可（Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker）以及1980年代中期的人類足跡舞團（La La La Human Steps）。
值得探討的是，數碼改編演變成應對這場全球災難性疫症的天然反應，它們亦變得無所不在且不可或缺，對於表演藝術家以及表演為媒介的工作者的藝術發展和創作過程，甚至開始促成某種暗湧。從觀察所得，表演藝術家與多媒體人（包括但不限於電影、媒體藝術及新媒體）之間綜合／跨媒介的合作增加，而這些獨特的情況和意外的合作，不但塑造新的視聽意念，也產生意想不到的混合形式實驗，有時成功，有時未如人意。然而，有趣的是過程：這些工作者大多難以理解對方，因為他們有不同的背景、藝術語言，甚至實踐和製作語境。
這種新的工作模式，由無法避免的環境強行加諸予藝術界，而共同創作的普遍需要，又引起一些耐人尋味的問題和主題，揭示了思考新方式和製作表演的新形式。本文確認當代發展的三大主要推動力，旨在通過在過去一年我遇到或參與的幾個案例，剖析以下的觀察：
- 因為新媒體的介入，在形式與內容發展出新想像，當中數碼媒介轉化了對動作與表演的表達和認知，導致創作的範式轉移；
- 數碼媒體目的從功能性過渡至藝術性——前者是創作者被迫使用科技，以克服展覽或製作的物理限制，而後者是創作者採用數碼科技的風格、格式和特徵，作為其（經拓闊的）藝術實踐的一部分；
- 在移動影像創作者與舞蹈創作者的合作中，期望與理解的差異。
這三種趨勢之間的重疊和互動所引起的關注，主要在於這種混合創作模式如何處理作者主體性與擁有權的複雜概念，這不僅涉及整體作品的知識產權，亦牽涉對創作意圖與本質更深刻的提問。
本文將會通過數個合作項目，探索舞蹈和數碼科技的融合。這些項目已實驗與經歷不同過程和結果，並與我自己的興趣息息相關——經過科技介入的新展示形式，如何通過／聯同舞蹈創作為未來的移動影像塑造新範式。擴張作品評論和觀賞的開放性及接受範圍，創作者及觀眾在徹底被重新定義的空間、時間及視角體驗表演。以此類推，本文會重新審視數碼科技與媒體，與其對肢體、現場感及演出再現的關係。由此觀之，本文因而面向數碼「原生」作品的創新及藝術追求，而數碼「原生」作品即是結合科技考量、數碼平台及處理過程的獨特性，以至藝術碰撞重生而製成的作品，而並非紀錄或直播現場演出的作品。
新一代原生本地舞者和編舞家，擁有在數碼表演模式之中理解和創作的必要技術與經驗，這種新的表現語言發展，會否促進他們新的方向？我們如何讓他們進一步發展及接觸可用的數碼工具，支援編舞的過程，擴展創作視野？呈現的容器確實正在改變，如是，身體作為表演的容器，同樣經歷形式、實踐、製作以及其與觀眾互動的轉化，故此，我們可能正步向製作及觀看表演的新領域，而它植根在全新的想像和語言。
當我們談及觀眾，或會突然意識到，數碼領域未經定義的地理背景所開啟的討論：場域特定表演及無邊界的空間特質，如何以更形象化的方式處理？這種無邊界的特性，同樣反映在其時間性：我們可以不受限制，觀看不同地域由過去到現在，來自世界各個不定時區的內容，而過往將實體製作局限在特定地區的時間邊界，也一併被消除。
觀眾所在的地域更為多元，也是多得這種無邊界以及無時間的狀態，與此同時，近乎過剩的內容也造成有趣的現象，在多種規模和時間框架上引發全新的關注和憂慮，當中牽涉各大機構、藝術代理、商業代理，以及世界各地多個獨立圈子及工作者。
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徐奕婕《我的舞蹈生涯？》、廖月敏《煉金》及盤彥燊《髮膚》，於2021年香港藝術節呈獻《香港賽馬會當代舞蹈平台：十周年紀錄特輯》演出
三個計劃（《我的舞蹈生涯？》、《煉金》、《髮膚》）都有相同的前設與元素：它們都為2021年香港藝術節製作的香港賽馬會當代舞蹈平台十周年紀錄特輯演出節目委約及構思，該節目共有十四個作品。礙於本文限制，我會集中討論以上提到三個作品，三者的影像部分都與葉雲生合作，他負責拍攝及將片段剪接成最後展現的作品。
葉雲生在該系列六部作品擔任製作總監、電影顧問和攝影師的角色，而作為香港藝術節聘請的顧問，他亦負責協助編舞將作品從現場演出轉化成電影。當我問及他在與不同編舞合作改編的過程及障礙，他分享對於現場演出與電影製作在共同語言、時間概念及空間方向上的不同觀點。相比影像，他認為現場演出的開放性及時間框架都更廣，在時間上的伸延也更長。在他的經驗，當我們將現場演出轉化成電影呈現，需要以1：4的比例濃縮。這是因為我們對放映素材和導演特定的拍攝角度較缺乏耐性，而對比之下，當我們在現場觀看演出，我們可以根據感官自由解讀正在發生的事情。空間上，葉雲生亦強調使用電影設備，意味著可以從不同距離觀看作品。觀眾與舞者的距離受鏡框舞台設置固定，並受限於座位位置，但是，攝影機與舞者的距離卻時刻變化，取決於創作者希望表現與達成的鏡頭取景大小與強度。現場演出作為一種時間性的媒介，通常都以線性進行，不同於電影中對時間的處理，可以通過蒙太奇剪接或攝影的場面調度，建構時間感、情感與敘事。由於各個舞蹈創作家的處境與願景不同，葉雲生與徐奕婕、廖月敏及盤彥燊的合作的過程，亦各有不同。
《我的舞蹈生涯？》鏡頭相對靜態與觀察式的取態，源於徐奕婕編舞結構的性質：作為其作品之中的舞者，描繪其文字呈現的表演。故此選取這種簡約與文獻式的處理相當重要，這樣攝影機才不會凌駕於表演之上。徐奕婕回想拍攝過程時，有一個有趣的觀察，她發現舞台的空間根據她實踐的特定角度劃分與定義。觀眾與表演者適應鏡框舞台空間的訓練，早已深植於古典劇場傳統，然而電影的空間概念相當流動，並無一個可以固定的中心。雖然這種空間的差異看似基礎和根本，然而這個角度不易表達，除非在創作過程中有經驗豐富的協作者提出。改編完成之前，徐奕婕亦曾經懷疑檔案式的拍攝方式，由於作品的願景是協作的電影作品，而非直接紀錄，這種關注亦相當合理。
盤彥燊《髮膚》超越檔案式的處理，並採取紀錄式的方向，跟隨編舞悼念父親的旅程。透過連結自然環境蘊含的靈性與南音歌手的聲音，作品展現了父與子、身體與自然、歌者與舞者之間的親密對話。作品原先計劃以十分鐘的長鏡頭，拍攝一位樂手與一位舞者的雙人舞，但隨著作品發展，團隊決定將攝影機運動擴大至不同視角，令作品的邏輯更具想像力。葉雲生採取較即興的方式參與盤彥燊作品，在攝影師、剪接師及觀察者之間持續轉換身分。作品本來是在黑盒空間演出，當中放置已故父親的椅子，而為了回應原初的編舞，兩人擴闊了電影的想像，包含更多與自然的心靈接觸，故此以舞者在拍攝現場拾到的樹枝作為比喻，代替椅子，結果，山林的視覺意象，也為最終成品增加更為神秘的基調。
葉雲生的角色隨著每位編舞所需所想而變換。 在《煉金》中，編舞廖月敏為他提供不少重新詮釋作品的空間，結果，葉雲生利用這種自由度，將她作品的一部分重新置放在小巷中，而並非在劇場空間進行完整拍攝，同時，他又加入不同的電影元素介入編舞，例如攝影機運動和角度，尤其對於舞步與身體，採取現場表演無法實現的宏觀角度。在創作影片的過程中，廖月敏與葉雲生都採用相對傳統的電影創作方式：使用分鏡與劇本處理場景，並以不同鏡頭解構舞蹈。值得一提的是，廖月敏在先前作品已有電影製作的經驗，而這些經驗可能就是她通過電影語言進一步深化編舞實踐的先決條件。《煉金》的最終成品幾乎是重新創作，也可能是系列所有作品中，最受電影影響的改編之一。
縱觀三部作品和合作過程，這些改編從開始就明顯對有電影不同的藝術前設。當移動影像與舞蹈的創作者同樣自認擁有作者的最高權力，葉雲生就擔當支援的角色，協助在兩者間處理預料之外的差異與期待。此案例可以指出電影與表演藝術，未來如何可以成功協作。然而，這也帶出一個存在意義的問題：即使在伙伴關係之中，是否有媒介需要成為支援角色。即使如此，能夠在香港見證如此史無前例的電影舞蹈作品豐收，亦是相當令人興奮。雖然某些作品較為成功，這仍為編舞提供機會了解電影製作的相關程序與作業流程，既免去電影製作中以導演為中心的模式，同時消除運用未知的電影語言的不安。無論如何，對未來推廣影視舞蹈作品，這也可能是最有用的收穫。
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結語
本文探索移動影像呈現舞蹈的不同美學面向，是我就著2020年中至2021年初遇到一些舞蹈社群的數碼呈現，所作觀察的一小部分。這些作品構成了一個光譜系列，探索「舞蹈」與「移動影像」的概念如何被重新定義，並作為一種展示形式重新製作，並且明顯因為形勢才得以面世。
身為舞蹈影像創作者、協調者及策展人多年，我感興趣的是，源於危機衍生的限制而造成的過程，如何擴展影像與舞蹈創作者的想像和可能性，並且在影像與舞蹈之間，有機地促進成效斐然的對話與協作。
在《受到關注：伊凡・瑞娜和1960年代》（Being Watched: Yvonne Rainer and the 1960s）一書中，凱莉・蘭伯特-貝蒂（Carrie Lambert-Beatty）表示：「舞蹈電影是被擷取的、被記住的演出。」[1] 記憶往往是詩化、形而上且虛幻。如若演出的記憶可以被重新檢視、重新呈現、重新觀看以至複製予無數觀眾，它就可以挑戰現場表演一瞬即逝的本質。因此，製作媒介化的表演需要具轉化意義的論述，而非數碼化的論述。就如在1960年代美國的電視表演影響劇場觀賞一樣，媒介化的概念已經進一步擴展，試驗科技如何可以和經已介入一般人生活，而不減現場表演的本質和重要性。同樣，雖則機械的發展和擴散經已改變了人類集體思考過程，以及日常生活中的身體規律，但卻沒有改變人類根本的生理機能及功能。在日常生活中，科技關係的不斷變化，引致社會條件改變以及身體環境演變，而此數碼轉化的命題，則是評論以上過程的藝術範式轉移 。
雖然當代圖像的泛濫，以及圖像流通的同時性，導致消費上產生麻木，我仍相信有一種更積極及實際的方式，可以超越靜態媒介化的圖像，從而探索視覺以至經過改變的身體。當然，在記憶與移動影像之間、個人與集體之間，存在更加複雜的關係。這類關係圍繞我們與這些移動影像形成的情感連繫，但也有其風險，就是我們或會忘記身體一直存在，作為生產和接收這些影像的載體。當不同影像同時在空間投射，此空間可通過不同的縱軸感知，這不但關乎影像本身的連續性與流動，更關乎傳統觀者視點的損耗。在這種格式下，作品由觀者活化，而觀者需要移動以量度空間：當圖像變成動作的幻象，就會建構出一種真實。總而言之，我完全不擔心大眾媒體和科技會取代現場表演的文化。
從古至今，舞蹈一直是構建我們的身分、調解我們的人類本性、生育、祭祀和日常生活的基礎，甚至可說是根本要素，證據不但見於史前人類遺留的洞穴繪畫，和很多文化中現存的儀式，甚至在所有人類的社交生活亦然。電影以濃縮凝練的方式，反映與抽象化生活，亦無法迴避舞蹈的存在和力量。身體語言的力量，以至身體本身說話的方式，也將繼續作為對白以外的方式改變電影的詩性，而對白文本的語言，無可避免具意識形態。利用舞蹈的生命力而作的數碼呈現，在多個方面都能超凡卓越，而現場演出亦不會因而滅亡。
我想起奧斯蘭德（Philip Auslander）在著作《現場性：在媒介文化裡的表演》（Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture）論及現場演出與其媒介化製作的二元關係，當時他質疑一般人假設現場表演就是「真實」，而經媒介化的事件就次一等，或只是對真實的人工複製品。在視聽混合的時代，不同實踐形式之間的邊界已變得流動無形，以致創意作品與觀看常態也出現令人興奮的可能性。尤其在疫情之下，突然急需使用移動影像，以致不同形式出現。舞蹈電影作為電影史之中重要的子類型，正在經歷轉型，漸漸發展出一套獨有的創新語言。在很多方面，它超越了單純紀錄和媒介化舞蹈或表演。在2021年度的跳格國際舞蹈影像節中，我和團隊一直找尋方法，擴闊理解「舞蹈影像」在方法及論述上的新層次。故此，在疫情下，急切將舞蹈媒介轉化到電影媒介的情況，可以成為一個接觸點，讓我們重新審視與發現，如何以比較先進及不帶偏見的方式，觀看和經驗現場表演。始終，現實是疫情的情況、處境與後果，將會繼續影響我們的生活和社會。
作為舞蹈電影的策展人，我留意到，這種混合形式在香港長期欠缺藝術上的反思及多樣性。大部分情況下，我們看不到合作的必要性，以至探索如何擴張各個媒介邊界的巨大潛力。「舞蹈電影」及其雙胞胎「舞蹈影像」都是對舞蹈與電影媒介的混合重組，而它們都在國際上走過漫長且令人關注的路途，雖然在亞洲日子尚淺。這並非只關乎兩種不同媒介的協作過程，而是挑戰和轉化個別媒介的形式，創造新的溝通和意義系統，並改變我們面向個別藝術媒介的方式。疫情可能會改變這個情況，即使有人會杞人憂天地認為在大眾媒體上發展舞蹈作品會趕盡殺絕現場表演。然而，當我們將舞蹈電影類型歸入更大的電影市場時，總會遇見問題，即使眼見舞蹈電影潛力日增，它的市場仍未確實存在。我認為，更重要是視之為舞蹈世界的必要進步，因為放映的普及與多樣，令舞蹈創作與表演可以在全球更大幅度增加曝光。除了跨國及跨時間的潛力，電影媒介更在舞蹈與身體的自然環境之中，保留了其一瞬即逝的特質。在2020年，我們見證此類性質的創作如雨後春筍，但確實的是，幾乎每位表演者長遠都要接受這種新常規下帶來的新挑戰。疫情沒有遠去，但或許，它會帶來正面有效的對話，讓我們探索如何在街頭上和銀幕上共同前行。