Werewolf Heart
Christian Weber, United States, 2016, 3:59
Credits
Director / Cinematography: Christian Weber
Choreography / Dancer: Dalel Bacre
Music: “Dead Man’s Bones”
Camera: RED Digital Cinema
Format: 16:9, Color
Production Budget: 25,000 USD
Completion Date: April 24, 2016
Country of Origin: United States
Description
Werewolf Heart is a performance that illustrates the inner conflict of the protagonist, Dalel. Her movements reflect her inner voice and the turmoil of battling her own demons. The progression of her dance, both restrained and explosive, symbolizes the human struggle to find balance while being constantly swayed by emotional winds.
A conversation with the choreographer
Dancer Dalel Bacre explains that the choreography was mostly improvised, structured around five key moments designed in collaboration with director Christian Weber. The shoot took place on a real desert road on a cold, windy day, conditions that became an essential part of the film’s atmosphere. The choice of music, “Dead Man’s Bones,” was personal to both artists and guided the emotional tone and pacing of the work.
Director Biography – Christian Weber
Christian Weber is an internationally exhibited filmmaker, photographer, and director of photography whose work challenges conventional notions of beauty and form. His films and photographs have appeared in major publications such as Vogue, Life, The New York Times, Harper’s Bazaar, and Newsweek. His short film Werewolf Heart has been shown at performance and dance-film festivals in nine countries, receiving awards in Berlin, Santiago, and Mexico City.
In 2019, Weber received an Emmy Award for the Nike campaign “Dream Crazy”, directed alongside Lance Acord and Emmanuel Lubezki, confirming his growing presence across both commercial and artistic spheres.
Beyond his film work, Weber’s monographs — including Explosions (2014) and Chaos Leads Our Order (2016) — trace his aesthetic exploration of image, motion, and the poetics of disruption. With a practice that spans editorial, art, and moving-image projects, Weber brings to videodance a refined visual sensibility in which movement, frame, and stillness collide to form a new choreography of image.
Programmer’s notes – Blas Payri
This piece is a striking example of pure videodance, where the cinematic language, the choreography, and the music interact to create a coherent emotional and spatial experience.
The setting is a solitary road in the middle of a desert. The work begins with an empty frame, the camera tracking backwards along the road. The dancer appears from behind and begins her movement toward the camera. From the beginning, the camera establishes itself as an active presence. It moves with intention, framing and reframing the dancer, sometimes leaving her behind, sometimes drawing closer again. The dancer often looks directly into the camera, which turns the viewer into an interlocutor rather than a passive observer. This dynamic between camera and performer defines the piece: the camera becomes another character, one that moves relentlessly and sometimes abandons the dancer in the landscape.
The colors of the image play a major role. The scene is built from the natural palette of the desert: yellows and ochres of the earth, a deep blue sky, and the dancer’s red dress standing out as a vivid accent. Her skin, hair, and shoes are pitch black, giving a sculptural presence to her figure. The cinematography does not need artificial color treatment; the realism of the environment already provides a powerful chromatic composition. The natural light and tones give both realism and emotional intensity to the work.
The sound begins diegetically, with the noise of the wind reinforcing the physical harshness of the environment. Then the song Werewolf Heart by Dead Man’s Bones enters, with acoustic instruments and voice that harmonize with the landscape of the American Southwest. The music’s organic tone blends naturally with the environment, reinforcing the feeling of solitude and openness. As the piece progresses, the rhythm of the music becomes more energetic, which corresponds to a denser montage and a growing intensity in the dancer’s movement. In spite of the importance of the song, this work remains far from a music video. The dance and the dramatic development follow their own expressive logic, maintaining independence from the music and situating the piece fully within the language of screendance.
Technically, Werewolf Heart demonstrates a high level of mastery. Filmed with a RED camera, it achieves a professional image quality that serves the expressive content. The focus, camera movement, and framing reveal careful premeditation and sensitivity to the dancer’s improvisation. Even though much of the movement was improvised, the coordination between performer and camera transforms this into a fully choreographed audiovisual piece.
