Day 16 - DV8 on TVC4

If you've never seen DV8, either live or on film, make sure it's one of these things you promise to do before you die. They're astonishingly good. I had seen The Cost of Living some time back and was interested to see how it fared as a TV programme.

I wasn't wholly convinced. Film gives you real locations and control over editing and therefore time. But this is an edgy piece and the physical presence of the live dancers was truly menacing on stage. It lost some of that menace on TV which can both distance and, because it is essentially a close-up medium, dilute the physicality of dance. But Lloyd is a smart guy and he did manage to make a credible film.

He was bold enough to go along to C4 having never directed a film in his life, but they trusted him enough to do the job. Interestingly, they had a budget for 50 mins but the programme ended up being 30 odd minutes long - with no budget cut. He was lucky on that one.

It opened up to the audience and I asked two questions:

1. The tyramnny of TV is the 30 min and 1 hour schedule. Do you think that the internet with YouTube and Google Video may suit dance better as it copes well with shorter, low budget pieces? Jan thought that TV will have to cope with this new threat but also thought that TV was still the best source of budgets.

2. Would you allow a film director with no choreography experience to come along and choreograph your next piece? His answer was interesting. No, because choreography is one-on-one direction and creative build, as opposed to the teamwork and general directing in a film. A reasonable answer.

A third question was:
3. Why don't they have more dance and less reality TV, (which I hate (the questioner not me))?
Jan explained that the only way dance gets a look-in on TV is because of the earnings from reality TV.

An interesting short reflection on how two very different media are coming to terms with each other but not enough revelations or questions from the audience.

**
2 stars