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Angelo Vasta<\/a><\/strong> is an Italian-born, Brooklyn-based videographer who works primarily with the dance community. He came to the US to study filmmaking at The New School in New York, and quickly fell into documenting dancers as a means of reconnecting with his earlier unfulfilled ambitions to pursue \u00a0dance\u00a0himself, that were dashed as a result of his late launch (“I was never good enough to become professional!”) However he parlayed his passion for the medium into an alternate career trajectory, focusing on vidoegraphy instead, to capture the essence of movement as a form of expression. “Film and dance are both motion-based art forms, so for me there was an organic pairing.”<\/p>\n

After migrating to New York and enrolling in his film program, he quickly settled into videography as his preferred medium rather than screenwriting or directing. “I’ve always wanted to be a professional dancer; this is why I’m doing dance films. The camera gives me an opportunity to explore a world that I connect with and that deeply attracts me. This is very important as I always try to express\u00a0this tension through my work.” That tension is palpable in the results, as his work delves into the nexus of dance and film, exploring movement through the lens of a camera. He remarks, “as a dance filmmaker sometimes I need to study the choreography myself to better understand how to put it on screen, and with my camera it feels both like being the choreographer and the dancer.”<\/p>\n

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Of Vasta’s creative process, his methods have evolved over the years as he’s tuned his craftsmanship and aesthetics. Now well into his career, his portfolio has grown into an impressive collection of films that span a wide artistic spectrum, working primarily with dance companies to help capture the ethos of their various culture, choreographic underpinnings as well as hands on with specific dancers. “Each dance company is very different. With some I need to stay out of the dancer’s way. I have to be an invisible presence in the studio, in which case it’s difficult for me to always get the best shots. With others I can ask the choreographer or the dancers to do specific things for the camera, so I actively interact with them and my presence in the studio becomes something that is used to challenge them.”<\/p>\n