Mitchell Rose is an American director of short films known for comedic work. He began his career as a choreographer and performance artist and became known at "the dance world's Woody Allen

Woody Allen

Woody Allen is an American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, jazz musician, author, and playwright. Allen's films draw heavily on literature, sexuality, philosophy, psychology, Jewish identity, and the history of cinema...

" after being so dubbed by The New York Times

The New York Times

The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

 . He then migrated to film and his works have won numerous awards, notably Elevator World, Modern Daydreams, and Learn to Speak Body. He tours a program called The Mitch Show which features his films and audience participation pieces.

Dance

Rose was born in Boston, Massachusetts. He entered Tufts University

Tufts University

Tufts University is a private research university located in Medford/Somerville, near Boston, Massachusetts. It is organized into ten schools, including two undergraduate programs and eight graduate divisions, on four campuses in Massachusetts and on the eastern border of France...

 in Electrical Engineering

Electrical engineering

Electrical engineering is a field of engineering that generally deals with the study and application of electricity, electronics and electromagnetism. The field first became an identifiable occupation in the late nineteenth century after commercialization of the electric telegraph and electrical...

 but soon discovered Modern Dance

Modern dance

Modern dance is a dance form developed in the early 20th century. Although the term Modern dance has also been applied to a category of 20th Century ballroom dances, Modern dance as a term usually refers to 20th century concert dance.-Intro:...

 and became the college's first dance major. Following graduation in 1973 he moved to New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 where he studied at the studios of Alwin Nikolais

Alwin Nikolais

Alwin Nikolais was an American choreographer.Nikolais studied piano at an early age and began his performing career as an organist accompanying silent films. As a young artist, he gained skills in scenic design, acting, puppetry and music composition...

, Merce Cunningham

Merce Cunningham

Mercier "Merce" Philip Cunningham was an American dancer and choreographer who was at the forefront of the American avant-garde for more than 50 years. Throughout much of his life, Cunningham was considered one of the greatest creative forces in American dance...

, and Viola Farber

Viola Farber

Viola Farber was an American choreographer and dancer.-Biography:Viola Farber was born on February 25, 1931 in Heidelberg, Germany. In Germany, Farber began dancing. However, at the age of six she was told by her parents, “No, you cannot do this anymore”. At the age of seven, Farber and her...

. He formed the Mitchell Rose Dance Company blending movement, acting, comedy, text, and projected images. He received a grant from CETA

Četa

Cheta was an armed band, organized by the Christian population on the territory of the Ottoman Empire, aiming at anti-Turkish activity. The cheta was usually led by a leader, called voivoda. The members of the chetas were called chetnik....

 and from 1978–1980 performed extensively in New York City theaters, schools, universities, museums, hospitals, and prisons.

From 1980–1991 he toured his work internationally in various forms: solo, duet (with Diane Epstein) and group. Places of performance included the Spoleto Festivals in the U.S. and Italy, Jacob's Pillow

Jacob's Pillow

Jacob’s Pillow Dance is a dance center, school and performance space located in Becket, Massachusetts, in the Berkshires. The organization is known for the oldest internationally acclaimed summer dance festival in the United States. The facility also includes a professional school and extensive...

, and Joseph Papp

Joseph Papp

Joseph Papp was an American theatrical producer and director. Papp established The Public Theater in what had been the Astor Library Building in downtown New York . "The Public," as it is known, has many small theatres within it...

’s New York Dance Festival at the Delacorte Theatre in Central Park

Central Park

Central Park is a public park in the center of Manhattan in New York City, United States. The park initially opened in 1857, on of city-owned land. In 1858, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux won a design competition to improve and expand the park with a plan they entitled the Greensward Plan...

.

Rose created several audience participation pieces, including the 1985 work Walkpeople, in which seven audience volunteers received prerecorded choreographic instructions delivered from synchronized Walkman

Walkman

Walkman is a Sony brand tradename originally used for portable audio cassette, and now used to market Sony's portable audio and video players as well as a line of Sony Ericsson mobile phones...

 tape players worn by the performers.

Over the course of his dance career, he created 75 works, set pieces on 20 repertory and university dance companies, and was awarded five Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts

National Endowment for the Arts

The National Endowment for the Arts is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. Its current...

.

Film

In 1991 Rose became a Directing Fellow at the American Film Institute Conservatory

AFI Conservatory

The AFI Conservatory is a division of the American Film Institute founded in 1969, located in Hollywood's Griffith Park. The school is the only existing Master of Fine Arts conservatory in advanced film education...

. His MFA thesis, Helicopter, an urban drama, won seven festival awards including a CINE

CINE

CINE is a consortium formulated to depict American life and thought realistically for a global audience. CINE recognizes and fosters the highest quality of non-theatrical film and video production through its semi-annual film competitions....

 Golden Eagle.

In 2000, his animation Elevator World, a computer-animated essay on the spatial politics of elevating riding, won Grand Prize for Best Short at Slamdance Film Festival

Slamdance Film Festival

As a year-round organization, Slamdance serves as a showcase for the discovery of new and emerging talent in the film industry; it is also the only major film festival fully programmed by filmmakers. Slamdance counts among its alumni many notable writers and directors who first gained notice at the...

 and was called “a computer masterpiece” by the CBS Evening News

CBS Evening News

CBS Evening News is the flagship nightly television news program of the American television network CBS. The network has broadcast this program since 1948, and has used the CBS Evening News title since 1963....

.

Also in 2000, Rose revisited dance when he received a fellowship from the Pew Charitable Trusts to explore ways of filming dance. During that fellowship he created Modern Daydreams, a series of four Chaplinesque films. One of these is Deere John in which a man dances a pas de deux

Pas de deux

In ballet, a pas de deux is a duet in which ballet dancers perform the dance together. It usually consists of an entrée, adagio, two variations , and a coda.-Notable Pas de deux:...

 with a 22-ton John Deere Excavator

Excavator

Excavators are heavy construction equipment consisting of a boom, stick, bucket and cab on a rotating platform . The house sits atop an undercarriage with tracks or wheels. A cable-operated excavator uses winches and steel ropes to accomplish the movements. They are a natural progression from the...

. Modern Daydreams, an example of Dance film

Dance film

Dance Film is the creation of choreography that exists only in the medium of film/video. At its best, DanceFilm uses filming and editing techniques to create twists in the plotline, multiple layers of reality, and emotional/psychological depth....

 (also called Videodance

Videodance

Videodance is the contemporary term for the genre of dance made for the camera. In videodance, movement is the primary expressive element in the work rather than dialogue or music...

), won 19 film festival awards.

Modern Daydreams was made in collaboration with BodyVox

Bodyvox

BodyVox is a dance company based in Portland, Oregon, United States, and was formed in 1997 on commission from the Portland Opera. The company blends contemporary dance with dance theater, and often makes use of other performance art form such as live music. In addition to their performances, the...

 dance company. Since then BodyVox has commissioned him to create six more short films. One of those, Learn to Speak Body, an exploration of body language

Body language

Body language is a form of non-verbal communication, which consists of body posture, gestures, facial expressions, and eye movements. Humans send and interpret such signals almost entirely subconsciously....

 in the form of a language instructional video, has over two million hits on YouTube

YouTube

YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....

.

Rose has made 24 short films that have received 55 festival awards including the 2003 Distinguished Artist Award at the Napa Sonoma Wine Country Film Festival “In Recognition of Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Motion Pictures.”

In 2007 he began presenting The Mitch Show, a collection of his short films together with new audience-participation pieces. One of the latter is Podpeople, a descendant of his dance work, Walkpeople. Podpeople features five audience volunteers who receive dialogue and movement prompting from iPods as they integrate themselves into projected scenery. In June 2007 he presented The Mitch Show in Kosovo as a Cultural Envoy for the U.S. Department of State.

Rose has taught Dance-film at the California Institute of the Arts

California Institute of the Arts

The California Institute of the Arts, commonly referred to as CalArts, is located in Valencia, in Los Angeles County, California. It was incorporated in 1961 as the first degree-granting institution of higher learning in the United States created specifically for students of both the visual and the...

 and Mills College

Mills College

Mills College is an independent liberal arts women's college founded in 1852 that offers bachelor's degrees to women and graduate degrees and certificates to women and men. Located in Oakland, California, Mills was the first women's college west of the Rockies. The institution was initially founded...

 and is currently a professor at The Ohio State University

Ohio State University

The Ohio State University, commonly referred to as Ohio State, is a public research university located in Columbus, Ohio. It was originally founded in 1870 as a land-grant university and is currently the third largest university campus in the United States...

.

Filmography

A World Without Numbers (2010)

Advance (2009)

The Event (2006)

Learn to Phone Phony: Tape 2 (2005)

Metamorfishes (2004)

Name Categories (2004)

Prologue to the Opera Carmina Burana (2003)

Yoga Misinfomercial (2003)

Case Studies from the Groat Center for Sleep Disorders (2002)

Learn to Speak Body: Tape 5 (2002)

Modern Daydreams (2001) a suite of four films:

Treadmill Softly

Islands in the Sky

Unleashed

Deere John

Meredith Monk and Robert Een in the World Festival of Sacred Music (1999)

Elevator World (1999)

Weightless (1997)

Helicopter (1994)

Single White Male (1992)

A Nauseous Nocturne (1993)

The Wayfarer (1991)

External links