Award winning director and producer, Janet McIntyre premiered a new project, Ebb and Flow, which successfully helped sell out a showcase event this past January at BodyVox Dance Center on 17th Avenue in Portland. Selections were also performed recently at the Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle.
The dance and film collaboration brought together Tracey Durbin as choreographer, Marcus Swanson for cinematography and McIntyre in the director’s chair. The production also featured dancers Eowyn Emerald Barrett, Anna Hooper, Alexandra Maricich, Franco Nieto, Claire Olberding, and Emily Zarov.
McIntyre described the project as a fusion of dance, music, speech, and film that explores the overriding impulse to submerge our sorrows, desires, anger and pain. As far as filming was concerned, the project also presented some special challenges, with shooting underwater in HD and integrated slow motion.
Swanson achieved the surreal and flowing underwater cinematography with careful camera selection, Magic Lantern research, extremely careful coordination and the determination to manage challenges, such as not being able to manually pull focus when using underwater housing. More information on their filmmaking process can be found on the Swanson Studio website and blog.
McIntyre herself is no stranger to success and has a reputation for producing for tough topics that are a live feed to human struggle and emotion. Her 2012 documentary, FADED: Girls & Binge Drinking, was featured on Nightline, World News with Diane Sawyer and ABC’s 20/20.
Ebb and Flow has maintained McIntyre’s ability to impact audiences, even when showcased with other works. Bob Hicks of Oregon ArtsWatch described the BodyVox presentation of Ebb and Flow as “the heavyweight of the evening,” for The Pacific Dance Makers Showcase, “that lowered the emotional boom, demanding that the night be taken seriously and poetically.” The Pacific Dance Makers Showcase is a one weekend event of work by Northwest choreographers and artists made possible in part with a grant from the Regional Arts and Culture Council.
This is the second time McIntyre has collaborated on this type of production, her frst being Flying Over Emptiness, which she partnered up with choreographer Josie Moseley. McIntyre also holds an MFA from New York University, is the dean of Performing and Visual Arts at Mt. Hood Community College and has shown success with several other productions such as Covered Girls, Luigi: Father of Dance, and Walking with Sister Helen Prejean.
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