Finding ‘joy in the muck’: Celebrate EveryBODY Screendance Film Festival offers free, family friendly short movies highlighting humanity in art

At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, many creatives were forced to innovate, moving what were typically in-person events and collaborations to a digital space.

Concerts, comedy shows, plays and more were livestreamed, with audiences showing their appreciation as best they could while isolated at home.

Around this time, Karla Parbon, a professor of jazz, conditioning, pop culture, choreography and composition at Gonzaga University, was teaching a student choreography class, which tasked students with creating a piece from start to finish.

With in-person performances not in alignment with health and safety rules, Parbon had no choice but to cancel the live performance aspect of the class. Not wanting the students’ hard work going to waste, Parbon switched gears and encouraged the students to embrace technology to showcase their choreography through film.

Using cell phones or video cameras, the students produced short films featuring their choreography. Parbon then compiled the dances into a video collage to showcase on the program’s website.

That summer, Parbon began dabbling with filming and editing software, wanting to get more familiar with the technology.

When in-person events were once again approved, she and her dancers were forced to work only in allocated spaces because of social distancing. Not completely satisfied, Parbon decided technology could once again make things feel a bit more normal.

“I casted a company, and we spent an entire semester outside, and I created my first dance on film,” she said. “I was like ‘Why don’t I create a class, and we start learning how to create films together?’ I found a really great, cool textbook that teaches us all how to do it, and we grew together and learned together.”

Parbon decided to showcase the films through a film festival. After creating an open call for films, and sifting through the more than 350 submissions from around the world, the first iteration of the Celebrate EveryBODY Screendance Film Festival was held.

Now in its fifth year, the festival is scheduled for Wednesday at the Jundt Art Museum. The event is free, though donations for Dance for Parkinson’s, an organization started by Mark Morris Dance Group, will be accepted.

This year’s festival features eight films created by dancers and faculty at Gonzaga and dancers from around the world. The films are no longer than eight minutes and are all family friendly. With the festival, Parbon wants students as well as audience members to consider “How do you look at dance as artwork?”

To help with this consideration, Parbon will invite a group of panelists on stage after the films have been screened to provide a little insight and to discuss their own experience watching the films.

“I think in the performance world, a lot of people look at it and go ‘That was pretty. Let’s go home,’” she said. “We also wanted to remind people that dance is also a great way to analyze and learn and explore and make it educational.”

The festival originally fell within Love Your Body week, which the dance community celebrates to promote body positivity. In more recent years, the festival has been renamed Celebrate EveryBODY Screendance Film Festival in an effort to emphasize appreciating humanity and the human experience.

A desire to connect with humanity led Parbon and the festival team to partner with the Northwest Parkinson’s Foundation. It’s a cause already familiar to Gonzaga’s dance program, as they host dance classes for people with Parkinson’s and their caregivers each week that feature music from eras gone by and dance moves Parbon said are proven to help with coordination and cognitive connection.

“It’s a reminder that Parkinson’s is about being human, but how do you celebrate that? How do you continue to find that joy in the muck as well?,” she said.

Over the years, Parbon has become more comfortable with choreographing for the screen, noting that dance on film requires paying equal attention to the dancers, the camerawork and the setting. But she is proud to admit that she’s still a humble learner.

Getting to work in atypical locations has been a fun learning curve for both her and her students and can lead to what Parbon calls “human moments.” Filming in a river, for example, means someone might slip and stumble in the choreography, but the whole crew has learned to laugh it off and try again.

“Those little mistakes or bloopers or things that are burning your brain, at the same time, they’re the best moments in your life,” she said. “Those human moments when you’re creating art, sometimes you know those are the ones you’re going to remember. Sometimes when you get to be in an environment outside of the classroom, those are the ones you get to treasure. That’s one of these great opportunities in creating films outside or in different site-specific places. That’s a gift.”