dance videography

by Nel Shelby

I’m amazed by Sumi Clements and Taryn Vander Hoop of Summation Dance. I started filming for them when they first started their dance company, and I was blown away by how driven and organized they were off the bat. We continued to film and edit their dance videos together and formed a really wonderful working relationship. I really respect what they continue to put out there choreographically and in their ideas of how to present dance.

Their Dancing Literate Project features performances by multiple emerging or established artists, curated by Summation Dance. The program was made to offer insight into the choreographic process and provide space for the audience to engage with the companies firsthand through Q&As with leaders in the dance world, a mini-lecture on “What to Look For” in dance and a free performance and class for kids in local public schools.

Ben Richards and Ashli Bickford filmed their most recent installment of the Dancing Literate Project at Judson Memorial Church for Nel Shelby Productions. Take a look:

Contributor Nel Shelby, Founder and Principal of Nel Shelby Productions, is deeply dedicated to the preservation and promotion of dance through documentation of live performances, fully edited marketing reels, live-stream capture, and documentaries and films that encapsulate the essence of nonprofit organizations.

Her New York City-based video production company has grown to encompass a diverse list of dance clients including American Ballet Theater II, Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company, Gallim Dance, Gotham Arts, Kate Weare and Company, Keigwin + Company, Monica Bill Barnes Company, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Shen Wei Dance Arts, Wendy Whelan and many more. She has filmed performances at venues throughout the greater New York area including The Joyce Theater, New York Live Arts, Lincoln Center, Symphony Space, St. Mark’s Church and Judson Church, to name a few.

For the past eight years, Nel has served as Festival Videographer for the internationally celebrated Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in the Berkshires. Each season at the Pillow, Nel’s responsibilities include documenting aspects of festival culture in addition to its 20 mainstage dance performances, filming and overseeing documentation of more than 100 free performances and events, managing two dance videography interns and an apprentice, and educating students about the technical and philosophical aspects of filming dance.

She now also serves as Resident Videographer at the Vail International Dance Festival where she spent her first summer creating five short dance documentary films about the festival in addition to documenting its events and performances. Her longer-form, half-hour documentary on Vail’s festival, The Altitude of Dance, debuted on Rocky Mountain PBS in May 2013.

This year, she is creating four short films for Wendy Whelan’s Restless Creature. In 2012, she collaborated with Adam Barruch Dance to create a short film titled “Folie a Deux,” which was selected and screened at the Dance on Camera Festival in New York City. Nel’s videos for the New Jersey Hall of Fame were shown to an audience of 2000 people, and she is currently editing a dance documentary featuring Nejla Y. Yatkin that she filmed for three-and-a-half weeks in Central America in 2010.Nel has a long personal history with movement – she has a B.A. in dance and is a certified Pilates instructor. She continues to train with world-renowned Master Teachers Romana Krysnowska and Sari Pace, original students of Joseph Pilates. In addition to her dance degree, Nel holds a B.S. in broadcast video. She often collaborates with her wonderful husband, dance photographer (and fellow 4dancers contributor) Christopher Duggan on creative projects with dancers in New York City and beyond. They live with their beautiful daughter Gracie in Manhattan.

Most of you know Christopher Duggan from his dance photography column here at 4dancers which runs the last day of the month here and is titled “Finis”. What many of you may not know is that Christopher is part of a team–his wife, Nel Shelby–is a dance videographer. Today we thought we’d share a bit more about what life is like for this talented couple in the dance world…

This is Nel’s tenth season at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival. She spent the summer of 2001 as a videography intern and now serves as Festival Videographer, supervising two interns and an apprentice each season. Christopher has been Festival Photographer at the Pillow since 2006. He acts as mentor for an intern during each summer festival, and this year he will participate on the faculty in a 5-day dance photography workshop led by his esteemed colleague Rose Eichenbaum.

Deeply dedicated to the preservation and promotion of dance through documentation of live performances, Nel and Christopher often team up to provide artists with the complete package for their upcoming productions. They enjoy brainstorming with artists from the inception of a work, creating behind the scenes photographs of rehearsal and generating excitement through promos, to the final production, filming performances and providing photography for press and preservation. Based in New York City, they have worked with countless emerging, established, uptown and downtown choreographers, dance venues and presenting festivals.

Both Nel and Christopher had personal relationships with dance prior to filming and photographing the art form. Nel danced from age 2 through 22 and has a bachelor’s degree in dance. She is also a certified Pilates instructor. Movement is an incredibly important part of her routine, and because she feels kinesthetically connected to the performers she films, she finds that most of her choices are instinctual and gracefully-aligned with the choreography. Christopher has developed an aesthetic that seeks to capture the heart and integrity of each choreographer’s voice within an image. He was first attracted to dance when working on the wardrobe crew for performances in college and has felt a magnetic pull from dancers ever since. He played the doundoun in a West African group Magbana and made several trips to West Africa to study drumming and dance.

Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival offers a bustling season for Christopher and Nel because of its vast variety of dance and large quantity of work – each season, their responsibilities include documenting aspects of festival culture in addition to its 20 mainstage dance performances, filming, photographing and overseeing documentation of more than 100 free performances and events, and educating students about the technical and philosophical aspects of photographing and filming dance. But its the festival’s sense of magic that keeps both artists clamoring for more each year. Situated on the beautiful Berkshires hills, nestled in majestic trees and rooted in the history of founder and modern dance visionary Ted Shawn, the Pillow is steeped in tradition but forward-thinking in its worldly and contemporary curation. It’s a place to grow, learn and find inspiration. And for Nel and Christopher, it’s home. They now own a cabin on the same road as the Pillow and cherish the thought that their daughter is growing up at the festival each summer.

4dancers talked with both of them a bit about their lives and their work with one another… [Read more…]

The Dancing Literate Project

A Different Kind Of Dance Team: Nel Shelby & Christopher Duggan

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