On Film presents “Dance on Film,” a free public screening starting at 5:30 pm on April 8, 2026, at the Gowen Room, Wilson Commons. The screening will be followed by a dialogue between David Velasco and Rachel Haidu.

Selected films include Trio A (Yvonne Rainer, 1978); Beach Birds for Camera (Merce Cunningham, 1992); and Rosas danst Rosas (Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker, 1997). Following the screening, Rachel Haidu and David Velasco will lead a conversation on the role of dance in contemporary social or cultural life, grappling with its relationship to film and other visual art forms. 

This event is also intended to celebrate Douglas Crimp’s upcoming posthumous collection: Dance Dance Film Essays. Crimp was a renowned art and cultural critic, the Fanny Knapp Allen Professor of Art History, and a Professor of Visual and Cultural Studies. This new book collects the critic’s incisive pieces on dance (a lifelong interest) and dance on film. Written from 2006 to 2010, these in-depth essays are devoted to choreographers and filmmakers such as Charles Atlas, Trisha Brown, Merce Cunningham, Tacita Dean, Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker, and Yvonne Rainer. Before his death in July 2019, Crimp penned a new essay specifically for this book that probes the idea and definition of the “dance film.”

This project is made possible with the generous support of: The Schwartz Performing Arts Fund of the Institute for the Performing Arts, the Humanities Project, the University Committee for Interdisciplinary Studies, Graduate Program in Visual & Cultural Studies, Department of Art and Art History, Film and Media Studies, and the Department of Modern Languages and Culture.