The Brooklyn Rail

Michael Trusnovec made an indelible impression performing with the Paul Taylor Dance Company for more than two decades. Creating over twenty-five roles and appearing in more than seventy works, he was a prolific dance artist working with a prolific choreographer. These days Trusnovec co-directs the Metropolitan Opera’s dance company—a full time job, he says—but he also gives considerable energy to a certain passion project. For six seasons, he’s brought his dancer’s perspective to the curatorial team of the Dance on Camera Festival. “Dance on film was my way in as a young dancer. I was quite obsessed with Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly,” he told me when we spoke recently via Zoom. “And all the dance movies of the eighties, like A Chorus Line, just really captured my imagination. Where I grew up, I didn’t have access to live performances, so that really was my way of learning about dance.”

Dance on Camera Festival 2026 will have a selection of thirty-three films from twelve countries, including a special seventy-fifth anniversary screening of An American in Paris.

Karen Hildebrand (Rail): You received nearly 250 submissions for this year’s festival, and somehow you whittled that down to a final thirty-three. How does the curation process work? I have this romantic picture, which I’m sure is very unrealistic, of the three of you (curators Trusnovec, Shawn Bible, and Irishia Romaine) sitting in a screening room, viewing the films together.

Michael Trusnovec: I wish that’s what it was. No, it’s all through an online platform that everybody makes their submissions, and then we view them individually. We’re able to take notes that one another can see and respond to, and we can rate things. Then once we’ve made it through all the films, the three of us gather, usually through Zoom, and we’ll talk through all the films that rose to the top. It’s a lot of give and take, a lot of conversation, and making sure that the selection of films as a whole reflects the advances and power of dance cinema. So we try to cull it down to the ones that strike us the most, whether it be emotionally or technically.

Rail: In light of such an effort, this question may be unfair, but do you have personal favorites? What are you most looking forward to seeing on the big screen?

Trusnovec: I really love them all for different reasons, but of course, there are always ones that maybe touch me a little bit deeper than the others. Like, the opening night film, Through Memory, really resonates with me. But that’s also because having danced for the Paul Taylor Dance Company and understanding this idea of legacy and the evolution of dance companies and how they’re able to continue to flourish and be current. I loved it from the second it started till the second it ended. It was one of those easy yeses for the three of us.

Rail: That film chronicles the residency of Limón Dance Company at 92NY while Aszure Barton created a new work on them for the 2024–25 season, right?

Trusnovec: It does. So the film addresses the history of American modern dance and how it lived at 92NY and flourished and grew. And then you’re seeing it continue. We’re not talking about the past as, like, a dead thing, we’re talking about it as a living thing. The footage is gorgeous, the dancing is beautiful, what they say about art and life is really moving. Jody Gottfried Arnhold, the founder of 92NY Dance Education Laboratory, and the director Tobin Del Cuore will speak, and Dante Puleio from Limón—they’re all going to be on a panel with Norton Owen of Jacob’s Pillow right after the film.

Outside of that, I love the global feature called Rojo Clavel (Red Carnation) by Roser Corella. Manuel Liñán is a flamenco dancer who is pushing the boundaries of traditional flamenco, especially in the way the style and costumes identify male and female. He’s going between those, and it’s stunning. I guess I’m drawn to those stories where I’m learning something. You know, I’m entertained, obviously, and I’m seeing beautiful images of dancers, but I’m also learning something about a dance form, or a choreographer, or a dancer that was not on my radar before.

Rail: I notice there are a lot of global films on the line-up.

Trusnovec: We have twelve countries represented this year. We don’t look at that specifically as curators. We look at the films first, and then we’re happily surprised when we get such a breadth of international showing.

Rail: Many of the global films this year engage with traditional dance forms in a very inviting way. There’s one about a traditional dance of the indigenous Sámi people of Finland and Norway. Coincidentally I saw a performance at Jacob’s Pillow last summer by another artist of that region. Remarkable to see, twice in one year, art about a culture previously unknown to me.

Trusnovec: Oh, yes, Kati Kallio & Laura Feodoroff’s Hidden Steps. It’s lovely when those moments happen, when people walk away feeling like, oh, I just had a window open to another world.

Rail: That’s a great way to put it.

Trusnovec: We think about that a lot as we build the programs. We group films in a way that they make sense together—or in a way that they completely don’t make sense. That they’re so different; we just want there to be an eclectic variety. That happens a lot with the shorts programs. Every time the film ends, before the next one, you have no idea what to expect.

Rail: The shorts are my favorite. They demonstrate so well the many things you can do on film that you can’t onstage. They’re little gems.

Trusnovec: We purposely are looking for dance as a cinematic experience. It’s one thing to record dance, and a lot of people submit recorded performances. And they’re beautiful. But for us, we’re really looking for films where you can get lost in the visuals, and where people are being super creative. It’s not just a three-camera shoot capturing a dance performance.

Speaking of the shorts, Daniel Gurton’s Spoken Movement Family Honour is another of those films that had a unanimous vote with us. There’s a place on the form where you can click award-worthy. We don’t do awards, but we all were clicking that unbeknownst to the others, just because it’s such a powerful film. What the dancers do gesturally, and the way the camera works—it’s a feast for the eyes, that film. I watched it multiple times in a row, because I just was so taken by it.

Rail: That’s a great example of what you can do on film versus onstage—the close-up of that heated conversation that takes place only in hand gestures on the table. The camera brings you eye level with that tabletop. And I noticed that, actually, something similar appears in several of the other films, maybe not that intensely, but with close-ups of the hands and a conversation without words playing out with gesture.

Trusnovec: Keely Song and Robert Machoian’s The Ballad of a Home is probably one of those.

Rail: What I liked about that one is that it starts out in a way that you think is going to be a straight narrative movie—it has dialogue, you see her pull up in the driveway as she’s arriving home to her family, you hear her and the husband bantering with the kids as they prepare for dinner. But when the couple addresses each other, it’s done only in non-verbal abstract movement.

Trusnovec: I haven’t seen anyone do quite exactly what they do. They’ve really created something unique for themselves.

Rail: I notice there are some films on the program that are world premieres, some that are making their US debut, and some for the first time in New York. And then some are not premieres at all.

Trusnovec: We always hope to get as many premieres as possible. We want to be the first stop for a dance film. But we also know there are incredible dance festivals all over the world, and so these films are making their appearances in different places throughout the year. We’re happy to be part of the journey the film is on.

Rail: I was happy to see Drea Cooper’s O R I G I N S about Alonzo King in California. We in New York don’t get to see that company very often.

Trusnovec: And it’s beautifully shot, with so many gorgeous images.

Rail: And we get to hear his philosophy, and how he generates that work in his dancers. That’s always fascinating to me.

Trusnovec: I love being a fly on the wall, but I also like sometimes to get some more verbal information from a choreographer, to hear about what they’re thinking, what their process is—especially having worked for somebody that never spoke about their process at all.

Rail: Really? He didn’t?

Trusnovec: Paul? Never. He barely said anything. You just danced. Which was amazing: that was the conversation.

Did you get to see any of the films on the Portraits program? I’m curious if you got to see Kate Weare and Jack Flame Sorokin’s film, RISA, about Risa Steinberg.

Rail: I was just going to mention her. I was so touched by that one.

Trusnovec: Same here. I found it really emotional, and just so beautifully treated, poetic, the choice to film in black and white. It’s another that is definitely in my top five films of the whole festival. Actually, all four films on that program are gorgeous portraits of artists who ride on the cusp.

Rail: Remind me of the others.

Trusnovec: There is Andrew Margetson’s Carmen. It’s this stunning flamenco dancer in the middle of a plaza, and she’s just dancing. There’s something captivating about it. I could not take my eyes off of her. Another is Xavier Diaz’s We Are Cumbia, We are Family. It’s about, again, a world I didn’t really know of, and it’s right here in New York. The fourth is Sarah Niemann and Dominic Miller’s In Stillness and In Motion, about a New York choreographer, Olga Rabetskaya. She has an injury, and she’s faced with the challenges of moving. That was striking. I think these four portraits are really special together.

Rail: I like the way that you’ve grouped these and other festival offerings so that people can see them at their best and in combination with works that speak to each other. And you’ve also organized panels afterward to meet the artists.

Trusnovec: None of the programs are overly long, which we’re hoping will inspire people to stay for more. You can see a film or a program that’s about an hour—maybe it has a conversation—then take a little break and see another hour. It’s nothing that’s overwhelming. From a three-minute film to a nearly two-hour film, you just get this range.

Rail: Speaking of range, you also give space to certain social issues, right?

Trusnovec: I’m thrilled that we’re showing Jennifer Lin’s About Face: Disrupting Ballet. It focuses on Georgina Pazcoguin and Phil Chan’s Final Bow for Yellowface movement, where they advocate for the end of Asian caricatures in ballets. I love when people can use dance and film to support activism and change.

Rail: And of course there is An American in Paris. You know I can’t help but see you as a modern-day Gene Kelly.

Trusnovec: I always thought of myself as a Fred Astaire, but I’ll take Kelly any day. When I saw it was the seventy-fifth anniversary, I thought, we have to try to show this. I mean, who ends a film with what, a seventeen-minute ballet? Nobody does that anymore, so it’s a unique film. I’ve never seen it on the big screen, either, so I’m really excited.

Rail: Anything else you want to say?

Trusnovec: Something I love about this festival is that it’s all in-person. So it’s people coming together and watching the films in community. It’s kind of how you were asking about the curators. It is the chance for the three of us to actually watch, in the cinema, the films we picked together. We’ll be there for most of the films. I like to stand and watch and hear how the audience responds. And the films look so different when they hit the big screen.