Daniel Gwirtzman Dance Company presents Framing Ménerbes: Film Screening and Reception

from Emily MT

Daniel Gwirtzman Dance Company presents the US premiere of Framing Ménerbes: Film Screening and Reception on June 26, 2025 at 6pm at the Dolby 88 Screening Room in Manhattan, entrance on 55th Street at the corner of 55th/6th Avenue, 1350 Avenue of the Americas, NYC. Tickets for the screening are $25 (plus $3.52 in service fees). For more information and to purchase tickets, visit https://www.eventbrite.com/e/framing-menerbes-film-screening-and-reception-tickets-1242414337729.

Join us for a special evening at the intimate and conveniently located Dolby 88 Screening Room for a film screening and reception celebrating the beauty of Ménerbes and the beauty of dance. Immerse yourself in the picturesque landscapes and charming architecture of this French village. Framing Ménerbes frames a stunning village in Provence, its natural beauty of far-reaching vistas, mountains, vineyards, and the light for which it is known, taken in through the prism of choreographer and dancer Daniel Gwirtzman, celebrating thirty years as a New York City artist in 2025. Daniel took each photograph and shot each frame of the film. Capturing, as he has often said, the dancer who has been with him the longest, himself!

The event promises an unforgettable experience filled with cinematic delights and delicious French refreshments. Don't miss out on this unique, one-night only opportunity to discover Ménerbes through the lens of dance film!

View the Trailer at: https://vimeo.com/1058018111

SAYS DANIEL ABOUT FRAMING MENERBES:
“I was given a huge gift and I ran with it, following the sun’s trajectory and exploiting it to shoot. Days were long because the days were long. I was up before the sun rose and after it sunk late at night. Knowing the time was limited I pushed myself to get out, into some precarious places at times, and create. Most happily, bounding into Provence with this energy and friends I had met the first time I was there in 2016, there was a level of support, which spread out within the village; sixteen participants who were intrigued answered the pied piper’s call. The goal of each day was to highlight a place that could be lit by the sun. A gift to chase it and be so inspired. Framing Ménerbes is the result of this. As a dancer, to be in this shape at this age was a gift as well. I was pushed and I answered my own call as a choreographer. The excitement of this synergy undergirds the film.”

FLOW OF EVENING
6pm: Doors open. Mingle with filmmaker Daniel Gwirtzman informally. Pre-screening refreshments will be available.
6:45pm: Screening begins, followed by a moderated Q and A with a special guest filmmaker.
Followed by a wine and dessert reception.
8:45pm: End of Event.

PRODUCTION CREDITS
Direction, Choreography, Filming, Editing: Daniel Gwirtzman
Cast: Daniel Gwirtzman
Supporting Cast: Philippe Anthoine, Ophélie Brisset, Mireille Cartet, Myris Mouisson, Nancie Piskor, Sven Slazenger, Susanne Turner
Original Score: Jeff Story

Lightning sometimes does strike twice. Daniel Gwirtzman has the sole distinction of being the only dance artist to receive a fellowship from the Dora Maar Cultural Center in Provence, France. This past June he received a second. Since the residency's inception in 2006, more than 300 artists and writers have been awarded 25 National Endowment for the Arts Grants, 18 Fulbright Fellowships, 11 Rockefeller Foundation awards, 19 PEN writing awards, among many other accolades. The Center offers artists’ residencies for “individuals of exceptional vision to produce enduring works of art, literature and scholarship.”

Daniel was in residence for five weeks last June and describes this period as an unusually prolific time, living in a house Picasso acquired for his longtime muse and lover, the famed surrealist painter and photographer Dora Maar. He developed an extensive series of dance photography, all self-portraiture, filmed in situ, in beautiful Provence. The unique setting of this landscape, renowned for centuries to artists, coupled with the choreographic imprint, has yielded a unique trove of vibrant visual imagery.

This photographic imagery has been folded into the larger project he developed, a dance film titled Framing Ménerbes, which will premiere in Provence on June 19, 2025. A call for participants was circulated in the village of Ménerbes, and surrounding villages, asking not for dance experience, only interest. Sixteen people, ranging in age from 30 to 90, worked on individual projects with Daniel, not one of them a professional dancer, and some new to dance completely. Several of these encounters are part of the final film, which showcases Daniel both alone and with these inhabitants of Provence.

DANIEL SHARES MORE ABOUT FRAMING MENERBES:
“It was an incredible and rare experience to live in Dora Maar’s house, a house that has never been made public or turned into a museum. Rather, it continues to function as a site for the contemplation and production of art. The studio I was given was Dora’s actual bedroom. Looking out the windows each day from this space, situated at the top of the village’s ridge, there was a profound mixture of emotions, taking in the unfathomable beauty of the valley and thinking about the depression she fell into and how damaged she was by the break-up of her relationship with Picasso. I considered how for her the Maison was a golden prison. These opposing themes of being within and without, beauty and despair, freedom and containment informed the research of the film, with its use of windows as a motif. At the end of the day how we frame anything is how we see it. The long summer days were bookended by the best lighting available. I had never been more energized or inspired, chasing the sun from before its rise, and finishing the last shoot each day with its setting, exhausted, and eager to wake up the next morning and begin again. Framing Ménerbes captures this compulsive impulse to create, which I was able to spread to the village, earning the nickname by residents as the ‘Mayor of Ménerbes.’”

About Daniel Gwirtzman
Daniel Gwirtzman celebrates thirty years as an NYC company director and choreographer. Since co-founding Artichoke Dance Company in 1995, “a welcome addition to the New York Dance scene” (The New York Times), he has choreographed and performed without pause. Reviews from Artichoke’s debut concert earned him comparisons to Mark Morris, by Elizabeth Zimmer in The Village Voice, whose company he toured internationally with over several years as a guest.

A busy artist/scholar, Daniel Gwirtzman is deeply immersed in multiple arenas: as a producer, dancer, educator, and filmmaker, known for his blend of innovative and charismatic work. Collaborations blend genres and disciplines, take risks, involve community, promote optimism, and celebrate individuality and humanity. The New Yorker and The Village Voice describe him as “a choreographer of high spirits and skill,” and “an abundantly inventive artist with a subtle defiance of gender roles.” The New York Times writes “Mr. Gwirtzman does know that in dance less can be more. He can evoke strong feelings with a few gestures.” He has been awarded commissions, residencies and fellowships nationally and abroad. He is a professor at Ithaca College’s School of Music, Theatre and Dance and contributes nationally to the dance education field through his service as a Board Member of the National Dance Education Organization and as Chair of the University of Michigan’s School of Music, Theatre and Dance Alumni Board, his alma mater. His dance-theater production e-Motion, delving into the concerns of AI, premiered in 2023 and will make its NYC debut this April at La MaMa.

About Daniel Gwirtzman Dance Company
Daniel Gwirtzman Dance Company, known for its optimistic ethos, was formed in 1998. Since its inception, it has demonstrated a commitment to education operating with the philosophy and programming that everyone can join the dance. Incorporating dance and story into the film medium has been a consistent practice along with creating original programming for the stage. His repertory has earned praise for its humor, musicality, stylistic diversity, and accessibility. The Company’s acclaimed recent creation, Dance With Us, a free online educational resource received leadership support from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and is designed to demystify choreography and increase comfort viewing and speaking about dance. The digital resource showcases the Company’s decade-long practice working in the dance for camera genre. Lincoln Center and The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts presented the Company in 2023 during its 25th Anniversary season in a stand-alone program called Everybody Can Dance. In the summer of 2024 DGDC was in residence at the American Dance Festival where it developed its newest evening-length dance Flashpoint. Highlights include performances at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, The Kennedy Center, Battery Dance Festival, Fire Island Dance Festival, Bryant Park, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and Jazz at Lincoln Center. The Company’s AI-themed theater/dance work e-Motion, a collaboration with playwright Saviana Stanescu, will be presented April 18-20, 2025 during the La MaMa Moves Festival.

HISTORY OF MENERBES AND DORA MAAR CULTURAL CENTER
The village of Ménerbes holds the official classification as one of “the prettiest villages of France.” It is part of the regional park of the Luberon, a protected game and wildlife area covering the mountains of the Luberon range and located within Provence, or southern France. Dating back to the Paleolithic age, the village sits on a narrow spine of a hilltop. Nostradamus claimed it looked like a ship in an ocean of vineyards. In the Roman period the village was known as Minerva, after the goddess of crafts, poetry and wisdom as well as the inventor of music.

Maison Dora Maar, an 18th century town house was the property of General-Baron Robert (1772-1831), a native of Ménerbes who received numerous honors during the Napoleonic wars in Spain, and was acquired in 1944 by Dora Maar, surrealist artist and photographer. Companion and muse of Picasso from the late 1930s to the early 1940s, following their breakup Dora spent each summer in solitude in Ménerbes. After her death in 1997, an American arts patron, Nancy Brown Negley, bought and renovated the house to create a residency for writers, academics and artists.

Maar was the ideal surrealist woman: artistic, rebellious, intelligent, beautiful, sophisticated, and a little bit crazy. Before Picasso, Theodora Markovich took a scalpel to her name, instinctively knowing the importance of reinventing herself. She was determined, unafraid, and soon earned the nickname “La cabocharde” (the stubborn one). By age 27, two years before she met Picasso, Maar was a successful commercial photographer, financially independent, in a country where, as a woman, she did not have the right to vote.’ (from )

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