UC Irvine

ABSTRACT

Feature Film and Dance Film: A Match Made in Movement

By

Alexandra Thomsen

Master of Fine Arts in Dance

University of California, Irvine, 2017

Professor John Crawford, Chair

This study identifies correlations and mutually beneficial approaches in film making styles and techniques in the works of selected feature films, experimental films, and dance films. Key compositional elements in the signature styles of film directors can be applied to dance film. Feature film directors Terrence Malick, Alfred Hitchcock, and Wes Anderson, as well as dance film artist Maya Deren, provide diverse materials for this study. Deren, a pivotal figure in experimental filmmaking and an artist highly regarded in the dance film field, is central to this analysis because of the role of human movement and bodily forms in her aesthetics.

Studying film directors can inform the creation of dance film by relating techniques in filmmaking to dance and movement as well as by developing a deeper understanding of signature styles in cinema. For this thesis I created one dance film to represent the techniques I studied based on the signature style elements of Terrence Malick. In the broadest sense, this study investigates how applying the methodology of one artist to another might guide the development of one’s own signature style.