Interview with Action Lines

Could you tell us how Action Lines came about and what kind of projects your team produces?

Action Lines grew out of a yearlong collaboration between Joffrey dancers Xavier Nuñez and Dylan Gutierrez and film producer Eric Grant. As new transplants to Chicago, Xavier and Eric met Dylan and became fast friends, combining their passions for dance and filmmaking. Shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic, they filmed their first fully-realized dance film. Dylan and his fiancée Jeraldine Mendoza starred in the project—both of them accomplished Joffrey dancers in their own right—with Xavier helming and Eric producing and assistant directing. A few short months later, with the cabin fever of the pandemic settling in, the trio shifted to guerilla-style films; shot with a limited, distanced crew on the vacant streets of Chicago. Determined to make a splash in the dance and film community, Xavier, Eric, and Dylan decided to make it official and form Action Lines in late 2020. Our goal is to break through the stigma of dance films, creating projects that appeal to a broader audience and to make the medium more accessible. As the team grows, we plan to use Action Lines as a way to help younger dancers and students create their own dream projects, highlighting all areas of the performing arts.

Most of your dance projects exist on stage in a theater setting with a live audience. How does showcasing the work as a hybrid of performance and video art in the context of 150 Media Stream differ from your previous experiences (creatively and technically)?

The 150 Media Stream project presented a particularly unique and exciting challenge. The magnitude of the Media Stream installation offers an opportunity to present a filmed project on the scale of a theatrical stage while simultaneously adhering to strict social distancing guidelines. Each dancer had to be filmed individually, with breaks in between to allow for air circulation. Rather than imitate a live performance, we wanted to take the opportunity with 150 Media Stream to create a unique film, stitching together shots of our dancers in a way no audience has ever seen them.

Typically we shoot and edit one cohesive video, but the Media Stream requires precise framing such that it sometimes felt like we were creating four complete videos that needed to interact with each other. It was as thrilling as it was daunting. In the dance world, choreographers stress the “shapes” dancers make with their bodies on stage. We decided to utilize the scale of the Media Stream to show audiences the delicate nature of these shapes, right down to how a dancer’s muscles must contort and twist to produce something that might be visible for only a moment in a live performance. We set out to create a video that teaches the audience something new, and found ourselves appreciating our own artform in an entirely different light. In a word, the process of Interim Avoidance was divine.