SSF @ Colorado Mesa University 2022

Filmed on the rooftop of the historic Bendix Building in the garment district of Los Angeles where Heidi Duckler has her office space, this work is choreographed by Heidi Duckler and performed by her dancers, her staff and several workers from the building. This short work explores a common feeling in Duckler’s oeuvre – a sense of belonging and how we define family.

The Air Before Me is a short dance film that connects ethereal space and light with human agency in a continual affirmation of the present’s power.

Flood is a depiction of time and its build in spacial dynamics. Showing moments of interaction that dwell in surreal forms of suspension.

The Nangiarkoothu Artist is a portrait dance film that uses a multi-narrative approach of traditional storytelling and a staged dance performance to create a poetic profile of a young Nangiarkoothu artist, who practices and teaches a 2000 year old Sanskrit dance/theatre art form in Kerala, India. The audience is invited to become part of the dancer’s world and leave with a new awareness of an art form so ancient and yet little known to the larger world.

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the streets of Amsterdam have changed, and so have the people. A group of international dance artists through a common movement task reflect the time of the pandemic – how has it affected them? A common experience but an individual interpretation. Each with their unique story, filmed individually, untouched. When so much has changed, how can we connect again?

Akasha: the all-embracing fifth element. It moves effortlessly on the shores of the world. It overcomes gravity, explores the deepest of waters and fuels with its power the eternal flame of life. Akasha knows no space, no time, no fixed form. This high-tension dance short offers the viewer a surreal encounter with the sovereign of earth, air, water and fire. Akasha is embodied by four different performers who move to the futuristic song Ants by Los Angeles based musician edIT. His quintessential electronic music contrasts heavily with the metaphysical theme of the film. The result is a vibrant and ephemeral glimpse into the powers of the universe.

The Gift is a dance performance to express the beauty inside all of us.

Tide contrasts the pace of industry with human movement, and the soft yielding nature of the body with the hard edges of manmade objects.

The “axis mundi” is a connection between heaven and earth, between the divine and the material. With this gravity-defying choreography, imagined and performed at the top of a mountain and on the verticality of a pole dance bar, I wanted to deliver my own vision of this “axis mundi.” Two bodies merge and evolve precisely between earth and sky, in a quest for physical and spiritual elevation along this invisible thread.