REALNESS

"Dance, reality television and irony are good recipes for experimental film

The dancers behind the Subject Award 2020 winners Nagelhus Schia Productions are out with a new digital dance performance. "Realness" is an exciting project we would like to see the development of, a good starting point for similar projects in the future.

Dance can be an inaccessible genre for many, especially when it is shown through a longer performance without dialogue between the stage changes. Some would call it a more honest form of performing arts, but one should not underestimate the precision and intensive planning behind each movement.

Daniel Proietto is the man behind "Realness" (2021), a dance film about reality "vision, dance and a good dose of irony. Here he masters making experimental dance available to the ordinary mortal through fine interludes and simple but precise humor.

We follow an incomprehensible TV program, where the participants are subjected to inhuman treatment, which suits them when they have to express themselves through dance.

Proietto plays together with Guro Nagelhus Schia the main roles as cynical producers, willing to expose the desperate dancers to inhuman treatment to get sufficient viewership. For the action, a TV program has been added that at first may be reminiscent of So you think you can dance, because here too the participants compete through dance. But Proietto's version is far more complex and incomprehensible. The dance program here becomes the starting point for dictionaries about both racism and prison policy, to name a few.

The Wannabes, get to express themselves through dance and movement. The scenes in between the dance are mostly humorous and very ironic.

No one plays complicated roles, but the dancers still work well on screen, especially when they have expressed themselves through their usual format, namely dance. There are several long elements of experimental dance that are done both alone and in collaboration with others. This is where everything is best, and lifts the film up to something bigger than a fig satire.

The photo works best in the dance sequences. But the edit is more solid. The structure is interesting to dive into, and it triggers reflections on time and place. For there is something almost unreal about the atmosphere, something spurious, but nonetheless worth seeing, just as reality's vision for many is.

To sum up, we technically have many better films, but "Realness" still has a lot to offer.

"Realness" remains as something unfinished, but still interesting and rewarding. 

"Realness" is an exciting project with a lot on its mind, and enough time is devoted to the film's main vision to convey dance.

For even this is primarily promoted as a digital dance performance, but it is still experienced as a dance film, as it is actually a film we are watching with structure, location and scenes.

It is clear that the artistic team has had fun with this digital performance, and so do we as viewers. There is a lot to mingle with exciting movements, funny inventions and biting satire.

"Realness" may not be perfect, but it is certainly worth seeing. With small modifications, this would be a complete movie experience, and maybe the next project will be just that. "