Danielle Agami looks deep inside herself in Homesick (photo courtesy Source Material)
HOMESICK
December 20 – January 10, $10-$25 (pay-what-you-can)
www.homesickthefilm.com
www.sourcematerialcollective.com
Israeli-born, LA-based dancer and choreographer Danielle Agami has reimagined her autobiographical solo piece, Framed, which had its world premiere in May 2018 at NYU Tisch School of the Arts, as the fifteen-minute film Homesick, streaming online December 20 to January 10. In the work, she looks deep inside herself as a woman and a creator, asking such questions as “What is expected for me to provide? Will dance be enough? Am I enough?” Directed by Samantha Shay and photographed by Victoria Sendra for Source Material, Homesick follows Agami as she moves from her apartment to a bar (where she is served by real-life Icelandic cocktail bartender Martin Cabejsek) to an indoor flower market (where she is joined by Jordan Klitzke) to a vast outdoor landscape and, as an encore, around Jerry Moss Plaza at the Music Center in LA.
For much of the film, Agami, a former Batsheva dancer and gaga teacher who has run Ate9 Dance Company since 2012, first in Seattle, then in LA, changes between a black negligee, head shaved, to regular clothing and fuller hair, moving in fits and starts on her hands and knees, shaking her head in trancelike gestures, petting a cat, and extending her arms as if searching for freedom and love. “For me, there are two kinds of home,” she narrates. “There is the outer, and the inner. When I feel safe and peaceful in my surroundings and my mind, I feel at home, and everything falls into place.” Agami dances to a pair of haunting songs by Iceland-based Danish musician Sara Flindt, aka ZAAR, “Homesick” and “How Many Hearts.” The film is followed by a Q&A with Agami (Pick a Chair, calling glenn), Shay (In These Uncertain Times, Light), Sendra, and Flindt, moderated by CalArts professor of dance cinema Francesca Penzani.