SSF @ Peak Academy of Dance 2025

A poignant and timely reflection through the eyes of a child on our human impact on the natural world. The legacy of our time is the challenge for generations to come. Understanding our human impact on the natural world and environment the film negotiates time, scale and innocence while reflecting on ways of seeing, belonging and connecting to our natural world.

Female Jingle Dancers and Male Fancy Dancers offer a combined piece in honor and recognition of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (specifically amongst Native American and Alaskan Native women). “Ozhigaabawi” means “One Stands Ready.” As a group of indigenous dancers, we feel it is important that we not only represent the beauty of our communities, but also the realities of our people. It was important to me to create a work that empowers both our female and male dancers to show that they stand ready to make a change for the better. Traditionally, Jingle is a dance of healing and strength. Men’s Fancy is a dance of agility and strength. Our hope is that by putting them together, we offer strength and healing to those who have been harmed by sexual and physical violence — not just the individuals but also the families and communities at large.

Lift Off is a caption of play and joy of five merging female aerial dancers doing what they love: dancing in the air. Despite of their aging bodies they have released themselves from what they are expected to be able to do with their minds and bodies. It is a revolution on movement!

This is a one minute dance film interpretation of a woman experiencing the confusing and schizophrenic nature of loss. Confronting many versions of herself and the beginning of the healing process.

I heard once that hope is just a memory of the future. What a beautiful perspective on something that offers so much light throughout life. To challenge the normal flow of time and acknowledge that we somehow have already experienced the future shows us that the present moment will soon give way to what we hoped for. Our choice to follow a path that leads us to our biggest dreams is just retracing our steps. Memories of the future. How magnificent.

F3VER follows the journey of Andrew “3D Dance Fever” Jones, a native of Bakersfield, CA, who defies societal expectations as a street dancer, high school substance abuse counselor, and globally recognized dance fitness instructor. As Andrew navigates the challenges of his hometown, he discovers the power of dance as a transformative tool, using its rhythms to overcome personal adversity and inspire others. Through movement-based scenes and heartfelt moments of reflection, the film shines a light on Andrew’s resilience and showcases the universal language of dance as a means of healing, self-expression, and empowerment.

I feel confined/stuck. In this home. In this room. In this mind. Confined to both psychological and physical space. Stuck in a continuous, never ending loop. Ever changing but staying the same. I feel confined…stuck in this Home/Room. This film was created as a part of Sans Souci Festival’s Community Dance Film Project, with funding from the City of Boulder Arts & Culture.

Water – Leonardo da Vinci called it ‘the blood of the planet.’ A group of people emerges from the water. They try to resist the current of the river and the stream of people in the city, but have to surrender to the flow and are washed ashore. On the shore, the stranded seek for hold and refuge. In the course of the film ‘against or with the flow’, ‘resistance and devotion’ manifest as a primal instinct, as a survival strategy.

It is a search and recognition of the identity of fraternal twin dancers. We share similar genes, but we are also searching for our own unique identity. We have both harmony and conflict, similarities and differences between us. We Feeling the complexity of identity and the importance of finding one’s unique position. This is our dialogue with the environment, as well as our dialogue with our own souls.

A witty and whimsical meditation on free will, identity and the afterlife. A narrative made through the collision of unlikely elements: dance, digital code, Franz Liszt, and playful echoes across the history of onscreen physical storytelling, paying homage to films like “Modern Times” and “The Red Shoes.” A man in white-winged angel shoes is awakened, then multiplied and manipulated through all the dimensions of infinite black, finally to be returned to his original form and spat out onto the junk heap of history.

Boy meets girl at a coffee shop, and the two are thrown into a mud wrestling ring to find a common path forward, while their best friends act as coaches.

This short dance film features a mysterious and ambiguous masked figure embodying both animalistic and human characteristics as it travels across the country in search of home and self. InterState is an investigation of identity, migration, and displacement, set against the backdrop of America’s most dramatic and dynamic landscapes. From Seattle and St. Louis to Mt. Rushmore and variously magnificent national parks, InterState explores the connection (or lack thereof) between living organisms and habitat, at every turn questioning the idea of a “natural environment.” What do we carry with us when we move—literally? Each new location, each new scene provides an opportunity for the soloist to unearth a symbiotic way of moving in relation to the environment while simultaneously maintaining a sense of self, physically holding onto idiosyncrasies regardless of place, space, or time. By the film’s end, the audience is caught up in the soloist’s journey, bound to the rhythmic sense of timing created as the singular body carved space—and identity—in each terrain it inhabited.