When filmmaker–choreographer duo Marlene Millar and Philip Szporer talk about Mouvement Perpétuel turning 25, they still sound slightly surprised. What began as a shared curiosity about how to film dance has grown into a body of work that’s toured festivals worldwide, influenced funding models, and helped define the field of “dance for camera.”
We met in Hong Kong, the first stop on their 25th-anniversary tour, where they’re screening films, giving talks, and leading workshops before heading on to Barcelona and beyond. We traced the path from a 1980s audition studio in Montreal to a global practice that continues to evolve with technology, culture, and new generations of artists.
From Audition room to Long Term Collaboration
Anna: Mouvement Perpétuel officially started in 2001. What was the path that led to founding the company?
Philip: There’s a bit of a backstory. Marlene and I actually met in 1985, auditioning for a dance production in Montreal. A New York choreographer was in town; we both got the job and became friends. We stayed in touch even as our paths split—still in the same city, but working in different worlds.
Marlene: I’d been studying contemporary dance, then switched to film production. Later I moved to the U.S., started a master’s degree at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and my focus became creative documentaries on dance artists. I realised pretty quickly: I don’t want to do this alone.
Philip, by then, was writing and broadcasting about dance for the CBC and other outlets—deeply connected to the Montreal and Canadian scene—so I called him and said, “What do you think about a project, something like dance for camera?”
Philip: I’d done graduate film studies at Concordia and was itching to get back to it. We started working on what became the documentary Moments in Motion, and that partnership just… clicked.
The real turning point, they explain, came when they were accepted into a Dance Media fellowship at UCLA—the only non-American team in a small cohort.
Philip: Los Angeles was this incredible convergence point. Through UCLA’s World Arts and Cultures department and the Center for Intercultural Performance, we met artists from across Asia and the U.S., and mentors like stage director Peter Sellars.
Marlene: Traditional artists wanted to explore contemporary approaches, contemporary artists were drawn to traditional forms, and we were there with cameras, watching people question their practice in real time. It was 1999—well before today’s mainstream talk about intercultural work—and the discourse was already rich and political.
That period led to documentary projects on artists like a contemporary Korean dancer and a Balinese master who later toured with Madonna. More importantly, it cemented a way of working—and a trust—that would become the foundation of their company.
Philip: We were flying back and forth between Montreal and Los Angeles, feeling very supported, and at some point we just said: when we’re both back in Montreal, let’s make this official. That’s when Mouvement Perpétuel was born.
Evolving with technology – and holding onto craft
Twenty-five years of working with moving images means they’ve seen every format come and go.
Anna: How has the medium, or your focus, evolved over those 25 years—especially with all the changes in technology?
Marlene: Oh, in so many ways. Early on, there was real support from the broadcast world. Channels like Bravo in Canada commissioned arts documentaries and short experimental pieces. Their initiative Bravo!FACT funded six-minute works that could slot between popular TV shows.
Philip: Between Sex and the City and Law & Order, you’d suddenly have a dance film. The audience numbers were huge—for the arts, anyway. That support shaped a lot of our early work.
Today the landscape is different. Broadcasters shifted online without budgets for commissioning, so the pair leaned more on arts councils and began exploring installation work—looped pieces in galleries and public spaces where audiences drift in and out on their own terms.
At the same time, technology pushed them into unexpected directions. Their film Lost Action: Trace, featuring the choreography of Crystal Pite, was produced with the National Film Board of Canada as a 3D film—at a time when few cinemas could even show it.
Philip: The Film Board basically said, “We’re exploring 3D. Either you do this in 3D or find another producer.” So we jumped. The irony is that even then, it was hard to screen. Now most people at home have VR headsets instead of 3D TVs. Here at the festival we’re showing the 2D version.
Anna: But the core of what you do—storytelling—has that really changed?
Philip: Not really. Technology shifts, but at heart we’re still asking: who do we want to work with? That’s always the starting point.
Marlene: Exactly. A project can take years to realise. So we look for artists who intrigue both of us—someone whose work inspires us and, we hope, will inspire audiences.
Bhairava: dance, landscape, and cross-cultural collaboration
Anna: One of Mouvement Perpétuel’s most celebrated films is Bhairava, created with dancer Shantala Shivalingappa.Tell me about that project.
Marlene: We were both blown away by her stage work. She’s based in France, trained in Kuchipudi, and deeply rooted in Indian tradition while working in a contemporary way. We wanted to translate that power from stage to screen—not just record it.
Together with Shantala, they chose Hampi, in southern India, as the film’s location—a landscape of ruins, rock, and light that echoed themes in her performance.
Marlene: We worked with natural light and time of day to create similar tensions to her stage work. In the piece, you don’t see her face for the first five minutes; she’s backlit, mysterious. We explored how to evoke that on camera rather than reproduce it.
Philip: Shantala was involved from A to Z—concept, shoot, and edit. Marlene even went to Paris to cut sections with her, because the music’s rhythmic complexity is wild. We didn’t want to casually cut across a 19-beat pattern and change the meaning of the phrase.
The result is a 13-minute film that has toured worldwide, won awards, and found renewed life during the pandemic as festivals streamed it when live performances were cancelled. A companion short, Discussing Bhairava, offers audiences a doorway into Shantala’s creative thinking—something Marlene and Philip see as crucial.
Marlene: With so much short-form content now, people often miss the history and sensitivity behind a work. From the beginning, we’ve wanted to let artists talk about their process, to give audiences entry points rather than just a “that’s nice, but I don’t get it” reaction.
Funding, policy, and the pandemic shift
Anna: Where does your funding and support come from?
Philip: For about 90% of our productions, major support has come from the Canada Council for the Arts and Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, with occasional smaller contributions from elsewhere.
Their experience has also shaped policy. As dance for camera emerged, traditional film juries struggled to evaluate it.
Philip: The Canada Council actually asked us to help imagine what a Dance for Camera fund could look like. They launched a pilot program dedicated to this work, which later influenced how both film and dance streams think about screen-based performance.
The pandemic added another layer. Emergency funding allowed artists to create works on their phones, which exploded the volume of dance content online—while platforms like TikTok normalised straightforward, front-facing documentation of movement.
Marlene: That accessibility is great, but we’re always pushing for an understanding that filmmaking is a craft. It’s not just “point the phone at the dancer.” We’re interested in close-ups, silhouettes, camera movement—how the camera can dance.
Philip: The conversation has shifted. We’re all talking about what it means to work with the moving image now—how to keep developing the form, not just the feed.
A 25th-anniversary world tour
Anna: Which brings us back to why we’re all in Hong Kong. So what is this tour you’re on now?
Philip: Honestly, one day on the phone we just said, “It’s the 25th anniversary. Let’s celebrate.” Not “What’s the next project?” but “How do we honour what we’ve done and the artists we’ve worked with?”
They pulled together a program of films and began contacting presenters around the world. Hong Kong is the launch, followed by Barcelona, with more dates planned into 2026. Each stop includes screenings, artist talks, and workshops.
Back home in Montreal, they’ll mark the anniversary in January with a special event:
Marlene: Our distributor is partnering with a gallery to host an evening of our work alongside three projects by younger artist teams—choreographers and filmmakers we admire, including two young collaborators we’ve mentored. It’s not just about looking back; it’s about ushering in the next generation.
Advice for emerging artists: connect, collaborate, build community
Anna: So for listeners who are emerging filmmakers or dance artists—maybe sitting in their bedrooms thinking, Where do I even start?—what would you say?
Marlene: Often it begins by seeing someone else’s work and thinking, I want to do something like that. For me, working at the Festival du nouveau cinéma in Montreal and watching screenings all day was a huge spark.
From there, she formed a collective with other dancers and learned the practical side—non-profit status, proposals, budgets—mostly by doing. Today, she often visits universities to talk with graduating students about funding applications and the reality that art is also a business.
Philip: My grad-school advisor told me something that stuck: Use your time as a student to connect with the outside world. Start projects, approach people, build relationships while you still have that “student card.”
Those early connections, he says, become the network you work with for years.
Philip: Also, don’t underestimate the importance of everyone on the team. A producer once told me, “Your relationship with the technician is essential—they can make you sound great or not.” That lesson about respect and collaboration has stayed with me. The next job may come from the person at the sound desk, not the person in the spotlight.
Marlene: Two heads really are better than one. Our partnership works because we bring different skills and share the same curiosity. And beyond that, it’s about building community—creating links in a time when everything is telling us we’re isolated.
After 25 years of making films where bodies, landscapes, and cultures meet on screen, Mouvement Perpétuel shows no sign of slowing down. If anything, the shifting media landscape, new technologies, and new generations of artists are giving Marlene and Philip more to respond to—and more stories to tell.
As they pack up for their next stop on the tour, they’re still asking the same core questions that started it all back in that Montreal audition studio:
Who are we working with? What stories can we tell together? And how can the camera help dance reach further into the world?
This post was last modified on November 16, 2025 3:15 am