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Frontiers in Art Research, 2025, 7(8); doi: 10.25236/FAR.2025.070802.

Beyond the Stage: The Construction of Temporality and Spatiality in Screendance

Author(s)

Litong Qin

Corresponding Author:
Litong Qin
Affiliation(s)

University of Roehampton, London, UK

Abstract

Framed explicitly from the choreographer’s standpoint, this article examines how screendance reconfigures movement’s temporality and spatiality through camera language and technical means. First, it defines the screendance by tracing the historical entanglement of dance and film since the late nineteenth century, showing how the coupling of choreographic intention and filmic grammar yields novel expressive modalities. Within this practice-led framework, the analysis of temporality addresses how choreographers deploy overcranking (slow motion), montage, and other editing strategies to recompose on-screen time, interrupt strictly linear displays of action, and intensify affective and psychological articulation. The discussion of spatiality focuses on choreographic decision-making across scales—from micro to macro—through the selection of sites, framings, and camera perspectives that endow movement with renewed spatial meaning. The study further considers screendance-driven innovations such as anti-gravity choreography and underwater performance to demonstrate how screen-based choreography challenges terrestrial constraints and expands the field of embodied spatial experience. The article concludes by positioning screendance, as conceived and authored by choreographers, as a distinctive modality within contemporary art: camera language, spatial design, and temporal control operate as compositional instruments that advance choreographic innovation. By articulating these techniques from the choreographer’s perspective, the study contributes a rigorous practice-led theoretical lens and concrete implications for creative practice, underscoring the expansive possibilities opened by the convergence of dance and film.

Keywords

Screendance; Choreography

Cite This Paper

Litong Qin. Beyond the Stage: The Construction of Temporality and Spatiality in Screendance. Frontiers in Art Research (2025), Vol. 7, Issue 8: 8-12. https://doi.org/10.25236/FAR.2025.070802.

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