I often begin my work by recording myself improvising dance in my home. I take the movements I create extemporaneously as building blocks to re-choreograph, manipulate, and collage in the editing room. Ultimately, I am a dance filmmaker because I am curious about how the technology of film can multiply and reconfigure the possibilities of dance; editing technology allows the body to be in two places at once, or move in slow motion, or move backwards, and I take up the exploration of such possibilities as my core mission. As a dancer for twenty years and a filmmaker for seven, I speak the languages of modern dance, acro yoga, and Adobe Premiere Pro.
My 2018 film Glamour Baby (Official Selection at ScreenDance Miami, London Experimental Festival, Austin Dance Festival, 40North and more) helped me learn about my process and lead me to look for ways to scale the sustainability of my workflow. After raising money to pay performers and a creative team on Glamour Baby, I decided I wanted to pursue a less expensive, home-based, more longitudinal process, where I could create a wealth of material from which to edit new works. This led me to shoot myself dancing in my apartment every day for a year in 2018.
These improvisations reflect inner thoughts and feelings and subconscious, dream state realities filtered through the corporeal.
House Ghost Series
House Ghost Series is a collection of short videos I performed as part of my long-form video process of shooting myself dancing in my apartment every day in 2018. I have been culling, editing, and forming films from that library of materials in 2019 and 2020. For House Ghost Series, I took movements and motions out of context, manipulating the passage of time or layering and multiplying the image of myself. The videos are accompanied by short descriptions intended for presentation with the text below the video, such as social media or installation. By framing my videos as if they were “security camera footage” and labeling them as if logging paranormal activity, I take a humorous approach to the sometimes strange or abstract or minimal movements I perform on-screen. Projecting myself as a spectral presence lends the series to stand as a pre-memorialization of myself; it is as if the residue of the self is smeared across the home space, acting outside of normal routine and yet seeming to belong. I am exploring a personal relationship to death and dying through this work.
Working in Miniature: Submerge and Honey
“Submerge” is an improvised film-poem Created by Jacobi Alvarez and Danced by Antonia and Willa Brown. Music by Kevin Carey (“Valerian Root” and “Hydrate”) with Art by Rosita Alvarez (“Faith Not Fear”). Submerge is an Official Selection at ATX Summer Dance Film Festival.
Honey is an improvised film-poem Created by Jacobi Alvarez, Danced by Antonia Brown, with Music by Collin Carr, Bach Cello Suite No. 6.
Working in Miniature is a series of Mini Dance Films created in collaboration between Jacobi Alvarez (Director, Shooter, Editor), Antonia Brown (Dancer, Co-choreographer), and Willa Brown (Dancer, Co-choreographer). Each piece centers around a single idea or image communicable in one minute or less.
Recipe for Working On Your Art Alone at Home on a Weekday
Check out this handy guide to getting through your day. Whether you’re suffering from a lack of confidence in your own validity as a human being and artist or you’re immobilized by a self-generated emotional paralysis, this video provides step-by-step instructions for living your fullest life. Spread your wings and fly, little macaroon!
Created, Performed, Edited by Jacobi Alvarez.
Special thanks to Jake Marcks, Nicholas Carroll, and Cole Simon.
Music not owned.
“J’attendrai.” Performed by Tino Rossi.
“Could I Undisillusion You.” Words and music by Emily Kaitz, Pingleblobber Music BMI. Performed by Mary Catherine Reynolds.
“Refuges.” By Rene Aubrey.
Recipe is an official selection at ATX Summer Dance Film Festival, and showed at “A Little Bit Like Life” at SMUSH Gallery.
Pass
An improvised dance film about passes~ passing up, passing through, passing on, passing as. Two white-passing latinx bodies enter a psychological world to examine their place between and among identities.
Directed + Performed by Jacobi Alvarez and Lio Mehiel
Edited by Jacobi Alvarez
Shot by Brandon Powers
Sound by Zach Nicol
Descend
In ten minutes of stolen time, Travis Johnson, Jacobi Alvarez, and Norris Guncheon shot this film during the 2019 Jack Kent Cooke Foundation Scholar’s Weekend & Alumni Summit.
Danced, Edited by: Jacobi Alvarez
Performed by: Travis Johnson
Camera PA: Norris Guncheon
Original Composition: Feelings #1 by Travis Johnson
Empty of Water
This piece is a poem to a lost loved one about the heavy monotony of things. In it, a team of gown-clad goddesses hold each other dear, travel far, scavenge, rush, row, and remember.
Directed, choreographed, and edited by Jacobi, with dancers Amelia Bell, Kaja Burke-Williams, Caroline Henry, Shea Lee, Elisa Meyer, Zining Mok. Northwestern University, 2014.