ARCHIVAL PROJECTS

INSIDEOUT (Live Performance Activations/Drawings/Gallery Installation/VHS Video). Curatorial selection Dunedin Public Art Gallery Vernacular exhibition 1997. Funders: Creative New Zealand Creative Communities, Community Trust of Otago, Dorothy Daniels Dance Foundation.

HOMING - Hokinga Mai (Live Performance Activations/Gallery Installation/Beta SP Video). Curatorial selection Dunedin Public Art Gallery Vernacular exhibition 1997. Funder: Creative New Zealand toi Aotearoa.

SHOAL DANCE (Beta SP Video). Premiered at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery 1998. Official invitation to Wordstruck Festival and Southern Lights exhibition NZ-UK 1998 in association with Toitū Museum. Funder: Creative New Zealand.

LEAF - of our past (Live Performance Season/Gallery Installation/Prints/DV Video). Dunedin Public Art Gallery Commemorative Collection Commission; Forrester Gallery NZ; Southern Lights exhibition NZ-UK 1998. Funders: Dunedin Public Art Gallery Society, Community Trust of Otago, Creative New Zealand.

MOMENT (Beta SP Video). In association with LURE workshop. Official selection Tūrangawaewae - 3rd New Zealand Jewellery Biennial (national tour) 1998, Dowse Art Museum. Funder: Community Trust of Otago.

CONCERTINA - Whakakopi

(Dunedin Public Art Gallery Performance Season/Exhibition Installation/Book Sculpture/Digital Video) 1999. Hocken Library Uare Taoka o Hākena ongoing installation of commissioned Book Sculpture since 1999. Funders: Creative New Zealand toi Aotearoa, Otago Community Trust, British Council, Montana Wines.

Reviews:

A fragment for three performers danced in a setting that might have been the corner of some vast and possibly infinite library out of a Jorge Luis Borges short story, Concertina was an exquisite miniature, as delicate as a tissue of rice paper printed with a Zen poem. Daniel Belton, Donnine Harrison and Sean Feldman, dressed by designer Tanya Carlson in identical long pleated white dresses, at first resembled whirling dervishes, but, as they spun and delved and plucked at imaginary books and then gave little leg-flicks, they began to seem more like librarians hard at work. Wrapped in their tunics of white and equipped with short feathery haircuts, each had an angelic delicacy, their long pleated skirts rustling like wings. But, when they shed these outer skirts, like discarded wing casings, they began to seem less like priestly librarians and more like fluttering insects, floating delicately, swaddled in filmy filaments of cotton and silk. Moving with waxy flexibility in front of artist Violet Faigan’s screens of books - pages outermost and pleated and shaped to resemble the cylinders of industrial machinery - the three dancers were the spirit of a beehive or wasp nest: tiny flying insects tunnelling with finely calibrated movements through some crumbling autumnal moment, some Proustian recollection of time past. The symbolic resonance was underscored and confirmed by composer Anthony Ritchie’s music, introduced by the murmer of cicadas and a scrap of melody squeezed from a concertina, and then picked up by the mellow timbre of a violin and their crisp notes of a piano. Altogether a thing of scrupulous execution, a calculated register of tremors.

Concertina was publicised as a multi-media performance, involving twelve artists in different media. The dance component was very much where attention was focused, and where attention is focusing increasingly thanks to a string of ambitious dance projects (such as Shoal Dance and Leaf, both 1998), staged at the Art Gallery by Daniel Belton and collaborators. Belton has now consolidated such pursuits in his formation of the charitable trust ‘Daniel Belton and Good Company’, which aims to expand on opportunities for collaborative projects between Dunedin artists of many media. Concertina takes the concept behind the word - usually used in relation to something folding, like the wind box on the instrument, or a paper chain being folded out - and expands it towards its most creative interpretation. The intriguing poster for the show featured Belton as if wearing a huge cone-shaped skirt, a concertina of folded pages. In performance, the three dancers wore a more movement-compatible interpretation of this costume idea, designed by Tanya Carlson. The flowing concertina skirts operated like kinetic sculptures through their use by the dancers. Sculptor Violet Faigan designed the enthrallingly creative set. Large friezes of what first appeared to be carved poles, akin to the undulations of ornate table legs, turned out, on closer inspection, to be many books, covers opened out against the wall. The opened out pages where painstakingly folded into intricate origami concertinas, juxtaposed with each other across the frieze. Lighting by Jamie Nevill accentuated this elaborate construction. Prominent Dunedin composer Anthony Ritchie composed the piece’s score, a chamber piece featuring violinist Paula Smart and pianist Terrence Dennis. Ritchie’s musical landscape was sympathetic to the dance, helping to evoke journey and transformation. Videographer John Irwin was another background presence in the piece, whose graceful slow-motion footage of the performance was projected on the side walls of the gallery. The dance performance itself was a beautiful addition to the body of work created by Daniel Belton and Donnine Harrison since their return from the United Kingdom. With visiting dancer Sean Feldman they created a choreography full of the joy and breath of movement, and the growth of inspiration and flight. Their interpretation of the concertina concept centred on the intake of air between a concertina’s folds, alike to a lung breathing in, and the vitalising embodiment of creative energy. The programme helped make sense of such themes, stating: ‘ In breathing life back into something that had lost its energy, an awakening of the heart occurs. The heart, having its own intelligence, awakens the soul.’ It also quoted writer Ben Okri: ‘...Statures become melodies, melodies become yearnings, yearnings become actions.’ Such quotes are evocative of the feeling which the choreography achieved, incorporating balletic twirlings, the movements of birds in flight, and a sense of the transition from being anchored to finding a dance of hope and belonging. The three dancers excelled in their faultless synchronicity, whirling apart and recombining, akin to the folds of one concertina.

SOUNDINGS - dance theatre making current

(Live Staged Dance Theatre). World Premiere: Otago Festival of the Arts (2000), Opera House, Wellington. Funding Partners: Creative New Zealand toi Aotearoa, Community Trust of Otago, British Council, Montana Wines, Performing Arts Foundation of New Zealand, Perpetual Trust, Good Company Arts.

Reviews:

To say that Daniel Belton has discovered unplumbed depths in this mysterious and magical work would not be entirely true, nor would it do this innovative and daring choreographer justice. He did however need a vessel seaworthy enough for a longer and a stronger, more beautiful one than Soundings would be hard to imagine. Belton and his extremely good company have created a surreal world complete unto itself, one that is so satisfying and multi-layered the longer you watch it the more you discover. Cross-disciplined, it effortlessly bridges dance and theatre, visual art, couture design, music and film. From the moment Simon O’Connor places his fool’s hat upon his head, we embark on a fantastical journey that takes us to the heart of ourselves and back. Are we led by fools and visionaries, or harlequins and jesters? Do we journey logically or with blind faith, and does it really matter? Belton has worked with visionary theatre artist, Lindsay Kemp and his influence is very apparent. Yet there is also a kinder, more optimistic intelligence evident. The closeness and need for family pervades the work, particularly in the powerful dance for the Crippled Man (Kristian Larsen). The choreography is a collaborative effort. Belton has enabled his nine dancer/actors to shine, which they do brilliantly. English visitor Tom Ward’s dance lineage is very apparent. But such is the cohesion of the cast and the work that the ensemble is always paramount. The production values are impeccable. The splendid partnership of of designers Peter Belton and Kim Garrett provides an abstract, yet oddly solid space and the imaginative music and sound design of Belton and Nigel Jenkins perfectly encapsulates it. Images of candle-lit Victorian theatres and Picasso’s Blue Period paintings imbue the dreamscape with a melancholy attachment while Tanya Carlson’s capricious costumes hint at story book archetypes without dictating to the audience’s imagination. Belton has collaborated with his dancers and actors to produce a work that is profoundly affecting. The image of a boat as a metaphor for life’s journey, could in less capable hands, be banal. Here it is given new and shimmering resonance.

Soundings - dance theatre making current |  Directed/Choreographed by Daniel Belton | Regent Theatre Dunedin | Reviewed by James Hadley for Theatre News Magazine (New Zealand) | October 2000

A commedia del'arte Fool appears in the spotlight, his white face an enigmatic Buster Keatonesque mask. A huge coin is produced and dropped through a slot - with a thundering clunk - into the bowels of the theatre, and the curtain slowly rises to mechanical sound effects, revealing figures enshrouded in smoke. Every once upon a time there comes along a piece of it weaves in the actuality of live performance, reminds you of the childhood wonder that inspires most theatre practitioners towards their vocation. 'Soundings' was nothing short of an inspiration. A beautiful dream made real before your very eyes (incomparable to the technical wizardry of film). Director / choreographer Daniel Belton courageously eschewed the self-referential pretensions of post-modernism, and fashionable attitudes of cynical realism, to create a flight of fantasy. In my opinion, this work was far and away the highlight of the Otago Arts Festival. What could be more appropriate for the context than a world-class piece of entertainment which originated right here in Dunedin? I realise I rave. But for this reviewer, 'Soundings' stands out as a personal favourite out of all the live performance I have seen in New Zealand. Both as theatre and as dance, this was a most successful work, blending multi-disciplinary elements into a beautiful unity.

Belton's previous choreographic work has impressed with its lyricism and technical assuredness, but 'Soundings' is an ambitious leap up to a far greater vision. Rather than any sense of his imagination being stretched by this increase in scope, its virtuosic somersaults were a revelation. Here choreography was the foremost part of a surreal theatrical world, populated by entrancing characters who have been likened to Picasso's acrobats, or the more carnivalesque figures in Fellini's films. Peter Belton's set was best described as an Expressionistic advent calendar, mysteriously swathed in drifting smoke. Yet really the Victorian grandeur of the Regent Theatre was as much the setting, turned into a music box with a mellifluous moving painting. Lighting, content, soundscape and characters were all painted with a sfumato touch which evoked but did not define, allowing the audience to collaborate with their own interpretations. The overall effect was like a dream inspired by various children's storybooks, although specific references were wonderfully subtle and allusive. These were broad ranging, and as complex as the subtexts and sublimations of adult dreams. The company wore evocative carnivalesque costumes by Tanya Carlson. These resonated with commedia del'arte or story-book characters; but resisted finite interpretation, and were marvellously complementary to the movement-style and character of each performer. Every one of these had an impressively distinct persona, with their own manner and tone of physicality, influenced by past work and personal styles. Like the different characters with which a child endows their toys, each dancer was a colourful individual, creating movement collages of delightful variety simply by passing across the stage.

The dancers each deserve mention: Donnine Harrison, Tom Ward, Simon Ellis, Bronwyn Judge, Melanie Hamilton, Kristian Larsen, Kelly Nash, and a modestly choreographed Daniel Belton. The standard of dancing was uniformly high, blending an apparently effortless grace with intensely passionate investment in each move. Though Belton was obviously something of a magician behind the scenes, this role was most closely taken up onstage by Simon O'Connor, as the 'Fool' whose sounding out his environment directed much of the performance. Both O'Connor and Richard Huber, playing an equally commedia del'arte-like clown (but no simple stock 'type'), were perfectly cast. Two of Dunedin's finest performers, the simple precision of their work was an asset to the production. The recurring use of a poignant theme by Arvo Part set a tone of heightened reality, complemented by soundscapes by Nigel Jenkins. In my ignorance of the technical details of dance, Belton's choreography stood out for its balance of abstract, aesthetically pleasing moves with those which lent themselves to emotional/narrative readings. Beautiful solos and passionate duets were seamlessly unified with more theatrical interactions, never overburdened with definite narrative, but integrating just enough whimsical incident.

There was a wealth of dance vocabulary and beautiful images in this piece which suggest Belton has the vision of a true artist. The surreal use of props such as an upturned boat and electric cables fitted the fantastical way in which the space was inhabited. Copious use of smoke, subtle lighting (by Kim Garrett) which shifted like cloud-shadows, and gigantically amplified sound effects augmented the sense of mystery. The magical delight of the piece can be exemplified by its ending, when each character walked into a giant book held open by the Fool, who then closes it up and walks off with it. The spell was over, leaving an audience too entranced to believe in trapdoors.

One of the dancers in this show wears a gorgeous patchwork dress which seems by the end of the evening to symbolise the whole of Soundings - exquisite tiny pieces stitched together which we have the pleasure of hunting through to recognise, in the fragments, old loved garments. This is a prismatic kaleidoscope world in which the miniature rules. We glimpse characters in a travelling troupe, with a few clues to their identity. But Belton has deliberately resisted organising them into a single narrative, instead choreographing a dance of small things. We don’t always know where we’re going but we do know we’re all in the same boat. Images float by from the paintings of Breugel and Bosch and Tiepolo. A Venetian Carnival scene gives way to Fellini’s La Strada and Alain-Fournier’s The Lost Domain. From the Grimm Brothers we see the little Match Girl and The Goose girl. There’s a whiff of Sendak, another of Tienniel, all suggesting that the child’s sense of logic and view of the world are at least as valid as adults’ constructed versions. The set, designed by Peter Belton, is a giant peepshow book, with characters in fetching costumes by Tanya Carlson, hiding in little cameo cupboards. The props are enchanting. A violin played like a mortar and pestle, a quill pen that tries to write but can only find moving bodies or flesh as manuscript, crutches for a 16th century cripple and a set of jump leads to spark us into the present. Nigel Jenkins’ soundscape is a seamless marvel of the sea, the wind and bird song, with Arvo Part’s Fratres and catchy Renaissance dances, and always the ticking of passing time. This spirited show, with a cast of nine distinctive dancers, is fresh from success in the Otago Festival of the Arts.

Dunedin-based choreographer Daniel Belton is seeking to establish a new path in New Zealand dance with his work Soundings, a theatrical and visual spectacle where dance creates the ambience. The Good Company is a collection of fine dancers. Dressed in the colourful garb of a commedia troupe without the masks, they perform with idiosyncratic movement that goes a long way to establishing their characters. They are discovered and revealed by a nautical character and his trusty scribe who are conducting depth soundings. There is no narrative to the work as such - it evolves in a meandering series of episodic vignettes linked or dissolved by the soundings couple who orchestrate the action. An imposing set of great height contains nine doors which open to reveal symbolic objects such as stones, an egg and a chalice which are incorporated into the choreography. A gentle humour which is neither mocking nor satirical but merely a sort of understated slapstick underscores the choreographic intent. As a result there are no belly-laughs but a layering of visual gags with just a hint of pathos creates a feel-good atmosphere and endears the characters to the audience. The work goes a long way to forging a new direction in contemporary dance. It is replete with colour, theatrical images and fine dance with strong characterisations by all the performers. Daniel Belton’s voice is one that will no doubt be heard a lot more in the future.

A dance dream, Soundings was commissioned by the Otago Festival of the Arts for performance in Dunedin and then brought to Wellington, being done just twice in each place. Choreographed by Daniel Belton and performed by nine dancers of his Good Company, with actor Simon O’Connor playing the Fool, it is a work of wonder and whimsy, of echo and memory, a twilight dance without a plot, more foreplay than the other. Relying on an atmospheric text rather than a consummated narrative, it invokes such questions as "what does happily ever after mean?", "Which star is Grandad living on now?" and "Where do Hansel and Gretel go when we've finished reading about them? The action revolves around a troupe of commedia dell’arte-like characters on the road, but there is no particular destination, nor does there have to be. The use of several time and depth-sounding devices suggests that time marches on, yet stands still, too. There are echoes here of Lewis Carrol, Mary (The Borrowers) Norton and perhaps M C Escher: it’s the kind of thing that can change into something else before your eyes. Belton and his dancer wife Donnine Harrison clearly have little children and are sharing experiences in a way that suggests that theatre, art and domestic life are plaited. The soundscape, engineered by Nigel Jenkins, is mesmerising, offering further proof that Belton is increasingly a catalyst for other New Zealand artists (he has previously commissioned scores from Anthony Ritchie). Tanya Carlson’s costumes are a delight , the props are stunning and admirably risky, and the final image of each character waving from the three-story-high peepshow book designed by Peter Belton is indelible. The standout performers are Daniel Belton himself as a tumbling clown and Bronwyn Judge in electric red shoes, though any member of the company would stand out if they had the same chance in cameo solos. This is a spider’s web dance - not ours to touch, and certainly not to unravel, just to marvel at the gossamer.

HENGE (16mm Film, Beta SP & DV). World Premiere: NZ International Film Festival 2001; Otago Film Festival 2001; Belladonna Film Festival, NZ 2001. European Premiere: TTV Riccione Performing Arts on Screen International Festival, Italy 2002; VideoDance 2002, Athens, Greece; Canariasmediafest: 10th Canarias International Video and Multimedia Festival, Spain 2002; Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Dunedin, NZ 2003; Festival Castel dei Mondi, Andria, Italy 2004. Funder: Creative New Zealand toi Aotearoa.

WIRELESS (Film Version Beta SP & DV). World Premiere: 2002 NZ International Film Festival 2002, The Body Festival, Christchurch, NZ 2002; The Otago Festival of the Arts, Dunedin, NZ 2002; Belladonna Film Festival, NZ 2003; Dunedin Public Art Gallery, NZ 2003. European Premiere: Napolidanza, International Dance Film Festival, Naples, Italy 2003. Funders: Screen Innovation Production Fund, Creative New Zealand.

LUMIN

(16mm Film, DV & Beta SP). World Premiere: 2002 The Body Festival, Christchurch, New Zealand; The Otago Festival of the Arts, Dunedin, NZ 2002; Dunedin Public Art Gallery NZ, 2003; NZ International Film Festival (national touring 2003). European Premiere: Videodance 2003, Athens, Greece; Napolidanza, International Dance Film Festival, Naples, Italy 2003; Tempo Festival, Auckland, NZ 2004. Funders: Creative New Zealand, The Dunedin City Council, Community Trust of Otago.

Review:

Lumin: a Visual Masterpiece | Reviewed by Sandra Grieg | The Press | Christchurch | October 2002

Opening shots of the windswept hills of Lindis Pass with their muted colours of ochre, brown, clay, and tussock gold, began the beautiful exploration that was Lumin, the new art film from Daniel Belton and Good Company. This visual masterpiece, 2.5 years in the making, was a collaboration of artists of the highest calibre both internationally and nationally. All facets of the production, dance movement, sound, costume, lighting, and film technology were of outstanding quality. Intertwined, they made for an hypnotic and totally absorbing experience. The luminous white light combined with glorious movement and soundscape bombarded the senses in a mysterious and ethereal way. Also presented were two previously released films. Henge first shown in 2001 at the New Zealand International Film Festival, is a surreal and magical film, using film technology and effects, with emphasis on the circle and resonance of stretched plucked strings and ritualistic movement. Manipulation of images created a new dimension for the imagination. This abstract work needed no explanation, just the will to relax and absorb. In complete contrast was Wireless danced by Belton and Donnine Harrison. An accessible and humorous trip down memory lane for two innocent would-be lovers, and the way we were. Complete with a nostalgic musical score, sepia tone flashbacks, and smooth flowing choreography beautifully executed, this dance turned into a film was a winner.

GAME (DV Film & Celluloid Telecine) 2004. Official selections: Vodafone Digital Art Awards Finalist 2005, Auckland, NZ; Finalist in the Roma Independent Film Festival 2005, Rome, Italy; Videodance International Film Festival 2005, Athens, Greece; Kawasaki Digital Short Film Festival 2005, Kawasaki, Japan; The Body Global Festival 2005, Christchurch, NZ; Napolidanza, International Dance Film Festival, Naples, Italy 2005; Dance Screen 2005, Brighton, United Kingdom; VAD Film Festival, Girona, Spain 2005; VideoDiaLoghi Film Festival, Turin, Italy 2005; Commonwealth Film Festival, Manchester, UK 2006; Vdance International Video Dance Festival, Tel-Aviv, Israel 2006; Fuel Festival 2006 Waikato Museum of Art, NZ; Ultima Film - Dance for Camera, Oslo, Norway 2006; The Body Festival of Dance and Physical Theatre 2006, Christchurch Art Gallery, NZ; Otago Festival of the Arts, Dunedin 2006, NZ; Tempo Festival, Auckland 2006; Art Athina 2007 Athens, Greece. Award Winner at Filmaka International Film Competition 2007, Los Angeles, USA. International distributor RIFF TV, Rome, Italy 2008. Funders: The Screen Innovation Production Fund, Dunedin City Council, Community Trust of Otago.

RESET (DV Film & Celluloid Telecine) 2006. World Premiere: Napolidanza, XIV edtion of il Coreografo Elettronico, International Dance Film Festival, Naples, Italy 2006; Fuel Festival 2006 Waikato Museum of Art; NZ International Film Festival 2006; The Body Festival 2006; Otago Festival of the Arts 2006; Tempo Festival 2006, Auckland NZ; VideoDance 2007 International Film Festival, Athens, Greece; MOVES07 Festival, Manchester, UK/international touring with BBC 2007. Finalist in ReelDance Awards 2008 for Best Short Dance Film, Sydney Australia. Official selection CineMoves 2009 curated by ReelDance, Sydney, Australia. Funders: Screen Innovation Production Fund, Perpetual Trust, Unit Film.

SEISMOS (DV Film). World Premiere: The Body Festival 2006, Christchurch, NZ; Otago Festival of the Arts, Dunedin, NZ 2006; Tempo Festival, Auckland 2006, NZ; Finalist in the VideoDansa, Barcelona Prize 2007, IDN Festival, Spain. Tertiary Dance Festival 2010, Dunedin, NZ. Funders: The Screen Innovation Production Fund, Community Trust of Otago, Dunedin City Council, Perpetual Trust.

MATCHBOX

(DV Film & Celluloid Telecine). World Premiere: 2008 New Zealand Film Archive, Wellington NZ, 2008. Otago Festival of the Arts, Dunedin NZ, 2008. European Premiere: VAD 2008, Festival of Video and Digital Arts, Girona, Spain. Official selection Canariasmediafest: 13th Canarias International Video and Multimedia Festival, Spain 2008. Finalist in the VideoDansa, Barcelona Prize 2009, IDN Festival, Barcelona, Spain. Official selection Dance on Camera Festival International Competition 2009, New York, USA. Finalist in the Napolidanza International Festival for Dance Film 2010, Naples, Italy. Finalist in the ReelDance Awards 2010, Sydney, Australia. Funders: The Screen Innovation Production Fund, Otago Community Trust, Creative New Zealand, Perpetual Trust, Good Company Arts.

Reviews:

Matchbox Magic: Dance as Film |  By Jonathan Marshall | Daniel Belton - NZ Choreographer & Filmmaker | Realtime Arts Magazine Issue 92  | DANIEL BELTON IS A FILMMAKER AND CHOREOGRAPHER BASED IN SOUTHERN NEW ZEALAND WHOSE WORKS HAVE BEEN SHOWN AT NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL DANCE AND FILM FESTIVALS IN CHRISTCHURCH, OTAGO (WHERE BELTON RESIDES), EMPAC IN NEW YORK AND ELSEWHERE. BELTON FORMED GOOD COMPANY ARTS IN 1997, PRODUCING FILM, INSTALLATION AND LIVE PERFORMANCE.

Although the company's output is diverse, its film work is pervaded by a sense of aesthetic historicism. Matchbox (2008), for example, draws on the imagery of the Bauhaus, Futurism, vaudeville, the films of Fritz Lang and Buster Keaton. Earlier films allude to Albrecht Durer, Renaissance perspective and Commedia del'arte.

Belton acquired an interest in art history at an early age through his father, painter Peter Belton, who serves as designer on most of Good Company's projects. Indeed, Belton considers the sculptural, painterly aesthetic of many of his films as representing a 'return' in his career. "I left high school with high marks in art", he explains, "and I was heading to Canterbury University to study fine arts, but had auditioned for the New Zealand School of Dance. They called me up and said: 'You're in!' I thought that while my body was young I should do this—and I could come back and go to art school later." Belton graduated in 1990, subsequently dancing with many companies in New Zealand and internationally, including the Douglas Wright Company, Arc Dance and Tanz Gervasi, Austria.

In 1997 Belton settled in Dunedin in the south of New Zealand and founded Good Company. "I wanted to start making my own work, not only for theatre spaces, but to fuse the visual arts with dance, sculpture and kinetic art."Good Company's recent work can be divided into two main series. The most recent triptych culminated in Matchbox, growing out of the companion pieces Game (2004) and Reset (2006). These are the most closely related of Belton's films, shot in misty, halo-infused black-and-white reminiscent of German Expressionist cinematography. Focused around the idea of a kind of combined puppet show and game-playing machine, figures interact by pushing buttons, arranging poles, dancing with each other or animating miniature figures and vaudevillian bands. Belton's earlier trilogy—Soma Songs (2006), Seismos (2006) and After Dürer (2007)—dealt with problems of space and the articulation of line and form through movement within a set of virtual, perspectival frames, or across a multifaceted and effectively multidimensional sculptural object. Dancers crawled over planes and into inverted relationships, as in the upside-down works of MC Escher.

"I was originally drawn in to theatre by puppet shows", Belton observes. "They are a filmic window. It's like looking in the back of an old bellows camera. You open it up, it concertinas out, and it's like there's a little theatre in there, in the viewfinder. It's a miniature proscenium arch." Belton is keen to ensure that these relatively commonplace ideas about the relationship of film to theatre materialise in a complex—albeit still light and playful—mise en scène. The characters of Matchbox climb into and out of a graphed, perspectival space, its digitally added lines (provided by Jac Grenfell) converging on what would be the focal point for any one view. The performers are, in effect, rendered mechanical, inasmuch as they interact with the objects and materials presented to them by the flashing, almost Mondrian-like game device.

"[This machine] is also like the sound box of a musical instrument", adds Belton. A key part of Matchbox's alluring blend of time and reference is to be found in the wound-down score produced by Grenfell's digital decomposition of the music of Django Reinhardt and 1930s vaudeville. The game dings, crackles and pulses with these sounds, just as it produces pillars and squares, or offers spaces and lights with which the characters interact. Not only are several of these sonic and visual motifs coincident within Matchbox, but they perform the same dramaturgical function of rendering a machinic world of performance and of dancing from within an antiquated yet contemporary, partly-digitised format. Belton indeed goes so far as to shoot in digital video and reformat the image in 16 mm analogue film, even though in many cases his films are projected from a DVD dub.

It is this interest in bodies and forms whose motor force and activity seem derived from the logic of film and of the moving image, rather more than human, fleshy or three-dimensionally choreographic logic per se, which places Matchbox and its companion works close to the conceptual ideology of Bauhaus and Futurism. Like many dance film artists, Belton's interest in the form originally derived from his work on archiving his own productions as well as from producing live multimedia pieces like the stage production Soma Songs (2005).

"It was always frustrating because it was never like the live show", Belton admits. "But then there was something in that loss, as well as in the discipline of locking down your reading to one visual frame." Where some of Belton's live performances have multiple points of interest and a circus sense of order tipping into chaos (Fellini-like, notably in Belton's Commedia-influenced Soundings, 2000), his films are by contrast tightly focused on small groups in glowing, misty but well-defined hazes of light, or on crisp figures which stand out before a black background amidst architectural lines and shapes.

Recalling the ideas behind the extraordinary modernist marionettes and sleek, conical, monochromatically painted dolls designed by Sophie Tauber and Oskar Schlemmer, Belton insists that "working with the human body for film is like puppeteering. You craft a choreographic story with the bodies of the dancers you are working with, but in postproduction you revisit that. You can jump cut, speed things up, reverse things, slow them down, or you can layer them." Although Belton generates much of the material which he films by giving tasks to his performers, and sees them as active agents within the process of developing the work, nevertheless the philosophy of his approach explicitly denies agency to the dancer-characters of his films. The figures who dance across his screen are not particularly human, or even necessarily embodied per se. They are formal devices within a larger mise en scène. In Matchbox in particular, the game-play set up by uncertainty over the categories of human versus non-human and agency versus puppetry produces the humour and narrative arc of the work.

In the end though, Belton's preferred metaphor to describe his material is storytelling. "We're storytelling beings", he insists. "I try to make each film have enough layers to have many readings. With the way I choose my performers, I'm not trying to get a group of racehorses together. You've got people from all walks of life, different shapes and sizes. It's about drawing them out and allowing them to offer as much as they can. The theatre is like an engine for telling [many] stories." These narrative threads, forms, sounds and movements are unified through the medium of this machine, which gathers material along its lines of sight and sound, and then beams them out. "It's like the sound box of a musical instrument", observes Belton. "When you project film, you are projecting this information out. The soundbox from a guitar or a lute is also projecting sound out, and the theatre is projecting storytelling."

Matchbox's World Premiere was at the Otago Festival of the Arts, Dunedin NZ, October 2008. It was a finalist in the VideoDansa, Barcelona Prize 2009, IDN Festival, Barcelona, Spain and in the Official selection Dance on Camera Festival International Competition 2009, New York, USA.

Daniel Belton & Good Company, Matchbox, director, performer, designer, editor Daniel Belton, co-producer, performer Donnine Harrison, performers Richard Huber, Caroline Claver, Courtney Poulier, Tim Fletcher, Emmett Hardie, Kilda Northcott, director of photography, animations, sound Jac Grenfell, lighting, animation Nils Stroop, holography Ozras Densky, art department Peter Belton etc; www.goodcompanyarts.com

Into Another Dimension | By David Eggleton | October 2008 | NZ Listener Magazine | Daniel Belton’s mesmerising dance-film choreography is among the world’s best.

In the specialist area of video dance – or dance on film – Daniel Belton and his group of collaborators, known as Good Company, have, over the past six or seven years, established themselves among the world’s best. By the end of 2008, the Dunedin-based dancer, choreographer and director will have had his short films selected for more than 70 festivals, picking up a swag of awards, from Best Video Creation at the 2004 Canariasmediafest in Spain for Figures of Speech to Most Innovative Work at the 2008 International Festival of Video-dance in Naples, Italy, for After Dürer. This year, his films also appeared on the ABC network in Australia and on Channel 4 in the UK.

Belton has always been interested in the wonderful hybrid creations that can result from a cross-pollination of art forms. At high school, he was keen on both sport and dance, as well as drawn to puppetry and painting. When he left school in the late 1980s, he was torn between going to art school and attending the New Zealand School of Dance in Wellington. Dance school won, and Belton danced with the Douglas Wright Dance Company before working with a range of dance companies in Europe. He returned to Dunedin in 1997 – with his partner, Donnine Harrison, and their daughter – and set up Daniel Belton and Good Company as an arts collective devoted to multimedia dance performance. Early dance performances enrolled artists as various as Anthony Ritchie (music), Kathryn Madill (banners), Violet Faigan (sculpture) and Michael O’Brien (bookbinding), while also incorporating moving images by Rachel Rakena and John Irwin.

The dance-theatre work Soundings represented the culmination of these early collaborations, with its magic toy shop and storybook ambience. It was, said Belton, “a big shift in scale … an opportunity to paint on a wide canvas”. Premiering at the 2000 Otago Festival of the Arts, Soundings was also staged later the same month at the Opera House in Wellington. Ambitious in presentation and expensive to produce, it seemed in some ways a small work that had been stretched, and served to confirm what subsequent works have made clear: he is essentially a master of the small scale. Soundings also seemed to revisit a lot of standard dance-theatre tropes: the rebellious harlequin, the moony pierrot, the effervescent Columbine.

Time for a shift in direction. This came with Henge (2001), Belton’s breakthrough digital film. Its severe abstract minimalism, trancelike jumpcuts and dancers who materialise and dematerialise to the urgent crackle of pulsing white noise proved the genesis for an original take on the dance-film genre. The best dance films don’t only record movement, but alter your experience of time and space in the process. So, although in some ways less immediate, less physical than live dance, dance on film can also be more physical, more fantastical, more vertiginous.

Belton’s films are like dreams of dancing, part anxiety, part elation, but they create their effects through unusual means. He has produced a series of nine films now, with the assistance of a talented crew that has included camera operator Jac Grenfell, composer Jan Bas Bollen and set designer Peter Belton (Daniel’s father), as well as a whole ensemble of dancers and actors. They find their inspiration in the foundations of 20th century art cinema: those flickery black and white silent films from Russia, Germany and the United States made by directors such as Sergei Eisenstein, Fritz Lang and Buster Keaton. The result is a sequence of beautiful, intimate, cabaret style chamber works, whose chiaroscuro mise-en-scènes polish the grime off the tarnished ideals of the 1920s and 1930s and restore their gleam, using the energies of dance.

Belton’s mythopoetic treatments take us back to the future as early filmmakers once saw it, only he employs advanced digital technology. Using Dunedin locations (such as the Art Nouveau-era railway station foyer and the Art Deco era former Chief Post Office), his films reboot retro-science fiction utopias and dystopias. Workers in uniforms dance out their struggles against control by a supreme engineer, a dancer in white overalls engages in a reeling Chaplin-esque walk while a glowing tracery of captured dance motion floats about him, or paired lovers leap like performing fleas up and over the kind of tubular scaffolding used in experimental modern dance in the 1960s.

There’s something genuinely revolutionary about the way the Belton dance aesthetic treats the camera itself as a biomechanical dancing machine possessed of an unblinking eye. Enmeshed in the nexus of what might be called a Dunedin arts movement, he’s established himself as a magician of dance, with mesmerising choreographic routines that encapsulate our 21st century predicament.

ATO-MICK (Youth Film HDV). Official selection: New Zealand International Film Festival 2010. Official Competition selection: LINOLEUM 2010 International Festival of Contemporary Animation and Media Art, Moscow, Russia. Finalist in the Roma Independent Film Festival Awards 2011, Rome, Italy; Funders: The Screen Innovation Production Fund, Otago Community Trust, Dunedin City Council, Good Company Arts.

ATO-MISS (Youth Film HDV). World Premiere 7th International Festival of Contemporary Animation & Media-art LINOLEUM, Moscow, Russia. Official selection New Zealand International Film Festival 2012. Official selection SCANZ 2013 Festival, Taranaki, New Zealand. Funders: The Independent Film Makers Fund of New Zealand, Otago Community Trust, Dunedin City Council, Good Company Arts.