We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
P rivate
D ancer
Choreographer Nuria Olivé-Bellés uses film to play with time and to tap into an unconscious space.
BY LAURI ROSE TANNER
From Alicia Was Fainting
rl uria Olivé-Bellés was born in Barcelona, Spain in 1957. She studied dance at the Institut
del Teatre de Barcelona, where she received a degree in Contemporary Dance in 1984. In 1986,
she was given a grant to study dance and video at the Merce Cunningham School in New York,
where she resided for six years. During this period she was invited to perform and choreograph at
the American Dance Festival as an international choreographer for two consecutive years. She was
also commissioned to perform her work at The Kitchen Dance Theatre Workshop, Performance
Space 122, DIA Center for the Arts and elsewhere.
Later she studied Film Directing at the School of Visual Arts in New York. In 1989 and 1990, Olivé-Bellés was invited by the Sundance Film Institute to participate in the Chorographers Filmmakers Program, sponsored by Robert Redford and directed by Stanley Donen, Michael Kidd and Eliot Caplan. During this time, she was assistant director to Eliot Caplan, and she also studied directing at the Actors Studio with Arthur Penn.
Her 1994 37-minute, 16mm film, Alicia Was Fainting is a coming-of-age story about a 14-year-old girl who questions what society has prepared for her as a woman.
The film won the School of Visual Arts Dusty Awards for Best Film, Best Director and Best Editor. Alicia Was Fainting received
its World Premiere at the 18th San Francisco International Lesbian & Gay Film Festival, and was screened at many other U.S. and international festivals and venues.
Lauri Tanner: Please talk about your background, did you start by studying dance?
Nuria Olivé-Bellés: I started working when I was 14. My family didn't have enough money to send me to school, and at that time, they thought it better if I built up a profession so that I could make some money right away and take care of myself. So I worked at different things—in a butcher shop, selling records, and baking bread. I always was fascinated with gymnastics because people do these incredible things with their bodies. I felt like it
VOLUME 3 NUMBER2 @ 13