Cara Hagan Takes the Lead at the Dance on Camera Film Festival

The New York City–based Dance on Camera film festival, heading into its 54th year, recently named Cara Hagan its new executive director. Hagan brings a wealth of experience in the realms of both dance and film, as a filmmaker, curator, scholar, writer, and college educator. In 2010, she became the first Black woman to create a dance film festival in the United States, Movies by Movers, which was made a part of the American Dance Festival in 2016. She published a comprehensive survey of the dance film festival landscape and history, Screendance from Film to Festival: Celebration and Curatorial Practice, in 2022.

“Much of my advocacy work in screendance has been in response to my experience of not feeling represented in the dance film festivals I attended as a young dance filmmaker,” Hagan says. “It’s about doing something that I love and supporting other artists.”

Hagan took a moment to talk about her new leadership role, and why the film festival format remains vital to the broader dance scene—and social fabric.

Congratulations on your new appointment! What does it mean to you to be the first woman of color to be named executive director for Dance on Camera?
Dance on Camera is the longest-running dance film festival in the world, and I’m very excited to influence how it moves forward. I want to continue conversations about what representation means in screendance—who we see, how we see them, in what context—and to think about what we’re celebrating. When I graduated from college, I had my dance films screened in a couple festivals, but I wasn’t finding a lot of community around dance films. The field didn’t feel like a place that represented me; there were a lot of thin, white, conventionally attractive women dancing on screen. Through extensive research as a dance film historian, I’ve found that’s not entirely true, but not everybody making work has been afforded the same visibility.

So much digital content is now available on our phones. Why is a live festival format important and relevant, especially in dance?
There’s something to be said for having experiences with other humans. Increasingly, it’s easier to not have experiences with others. We can do nearly anything we want from the comfort of our own home. But there’s something about being in a space with other people experiencing the same thing, to audibly hear gasps, whispers, and laughter. Festivals allow us to celebrate and give the artists the experience of people seeing their work. I don’t know what to think about people seeing my work on the internet. The best experience with my own work is when I can see how the audiences’ faces and bodies react. I get an idea of how my work is affecting people. I get to speak to people who have seen it, get their feedback and thoughts, and be congratulated by them. One of the reasons I keep doing festivals is because I love providing that opportunity for artists. I love giving people their flowers!

The arts are an ecosystem we participate in. We can show up and support each other and be wowed by the work. Making art on any level is hard. We all can provide the moral support that gives an artist the impetus to move through whatever struggles they have.

How do you plan to further the education-and-development arm of Dance on Camera?
Our most immediate concern right now is funding. Like many organizations, we lost our National Endowment for the Arts funding, which was a good portion of our budget. We also just moved out of Lincoln Center and presented the festival at Symphony Space this past year, so we’re in a place of transition.

How can we use the arts to stay hopeful?
Often people come to a dance film festival and see a dance form they’ve never been exposed to before. Maybe they leave inspired. Maybe they leave thinking about something in a new way. Maybe they leave having learned something new about a culture or person. Maybe they leave deeply identifying with something they saw on screen. Maybe they leave having met somebody in the seat next to them. In these precarious times, that positivity is what we need.