We’re delighted to join hands with director and cinematographer Derek Howard to present a night of dancing, revelry and observations of trance as we tune into Cannibalizing the Conductor, a film he co-directed with Emma W. Howes and Justin F. Kennedy!

The night will have two parts. Director Derek Howard will be present for the NYC premiere of the film,  with an introduction from Co-directors Emma W. Howes and Justin F. Kennedy.  Howard will then be joined by Anand Wilder who composed and performed the score for a short conversation following the film. Part two will have Wilder giving us some inspiration to move! He will DJ us into the next phase of the night where we all will be invited to be inspired by the movement of the film. Dancing will be open til late.

Come watch, dance, be inspired. All are welcome – invite your friends.

FILM PROGRAM

Cannibalizing the Conductor combines dance with narrative and documentary film techniques to encourage deep observations of trance. A group of performers improvise in various lucid states with imagination, voice and movement. The movie was shot in the frame of the research project CAMing: Collective Auto-Mythologising for the Camera by Justin F. Kennedy und Emma W. Howes at ImPulsTanz 2021. It shows how the performers interact with each other and with the camera, interrupting the monocular focus of the lens, forgetting themselves and discovering new knowledge and agencies in the process.

Original music composed and performed by Anand Wilder (US)

BIOS

Derek Howard is a director and cinematographer whose collaborations on short and feature length documentary and fiction films have led to screenings at the Venice, Toronto, Sundance, Telluride, Tribeca, DocNYC, NYFF, HotDocs, IDFA, True/False, SXSW, and many others. His work focuses on climate change awareness and lgbtq+ visibility with a strong emphasis on experimentation and visually driven storytelling.

Anand Wilder (original score) is a singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and record producer, best known as a founding member of experimental art rock band Yeasayer, which rose to prominence in the late 2000s, touring the world and releasing five studio albums before their break-up in 2019. Anand’s solo album “I Don’t Know My Words” was released on Last Gang Records in 2022. In 2019, he provided original music for the play “Nylon,” written by Sofia Alvarez, and Cannibalizing the Conductor is his first film score.

Justin F. Kennedy (b. 1983, Boston) is a Berlin-based community dance & vocal artist, teacher, dramaturg, and DJ, from St. Croix, US Virgin Islands. Justin’s research evolves from a durational dance and singing practice, and its further transmittance into cyphers, workshops, science fiction operas, installations, street interventions, happenings, music and film.

Emma Waltraud Howes works as a translator between movement and form. Her interdisciplinary projects are guided by observations of bodily and material gestures, with a focus on the development of an expanded choreographic practice. Her film and video works have been screened at Moves, Manchester, UK; INPORT film festival, Estonia, FI; 20es Instants Numerical and Poetic, Marseille, FR; Vancouver Film Festival; amongst others, and are a part of both private and museum collections.