Globe Trot
By Allegra Angelini and Leisa DeCarlo
Award winning filmmaker and Assistant Professor Mitchell Rose collaborated with fellow faculty member and accomplished choreographer Bebe Miller to create the international crowd-sourced dance film, Globe Trot. Composer William Goodrum and project development assistant Ellie Escosa Carter ( MFA alumna 2013) round out the collaborative team. Fifty filmmakers on all seven continents (including an Ohio State research station in Antarctica) each shot two seconds of Miller’s choreography and sent the footage back to Rose for editing. The film has already won six festival awards since premiering at the prestigious Cinedans in Amsterdam in March 2014.
Miller found unique challenges in this project to generate movement that could be performed by anyone and to create phrases that could be precisely counted. All her efforts were worthwhile though as Rose edited together footage of non-professional dancers into a short film by remote collaboration.
In order to make the film, Rose crafted an involved method for recruiting filmmakers in 23 countries, training them to create precise two-second films of Miller’s choreography. He then compiled the films into one seamless dance. “This technique of Hyper-Matchcutting has the effect of creating equalization. When a new image takes the place of an old image, with the same continuity of action, it says, ‘These things are equal’. And that’s what I hope the message of Globe Trot is—that people, all over the world, are equal.”
WOSU Broad and High article on the Globe Trot video.
