Film

Dance For Diversity (2023)

Project Support, Production, Documentarian, Editor

Dance For Diversity (DFD) is an annual screendance project series that is made explicitly for Artists of Color to elevate their unique voices and share their stories through their dance-making and performance work. DFD provides a platform for Artists of Color to create an original solo piece on film that reflects who they are, their story of identity, and expresses personal experiences that address (including but not limited to) racial stereotypes, discrimination, and assumptions. The culmination of these solos on screen will reach multiple audiences at a film premiere and in various site-specific spaces, including high schools and universities local to the Greater Milwaukee Area and nationwide.

Watch Behind the Scenes of DFD

What is Jazz (2023)

“What is Jazz” is a short documentary featuring an interview with Milwaukee dancer, Patrice Nassalang. The film includes footage of vernacular steps such as the Charleston, Shorty George and other partnered stylings of Lindy Hop, as well as performance footage of the Savoy Ballroom. This short work premiered at Danceworks Inc. in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, during the jazz dance-inspired concert titled “Boundless,” this documentary offers a glimpse into the rich history and unique expressions of jazz dance.

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Fight or Flight (2021)

Artistic Director Christal Wagner and Danceworks Performance MKE collectively take a scientific approach to unearthing what happens when the nervous system goes haywire. This concert offers a meditative exploration of movement and visuals that dive into the stress cycle, the nervous system and its various subdivisions. Influenced by the stressors of the Covid-19 Pandemic, the company aims to support our community struggling with mental health and general stress through a year-long mission that exposes how we can overcome these deeply wired roadblocks and reveal a path to a healthier future. We offer an educational and microscopic look into the fight, flight or freeze response by exploring ideas anyone can employ to become more deeply self aware. Composer Sam Mullooly premieres an ambitious work of complimentary sentiment titled “A Balance.”

Featured in this performance is a short video created by Christal Wagner that closeup framing of the dancers as they speak about the nervous system and its nuances.

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Mad Hot Rhythm Virtual Competition (2021)

Direction, Videography, Editing, Interviews

This incredible annual celebration shows off the hard work of fifth and sixth grade students from Milwaukee area schools, as they compete in three dance styles as part of Danceworks Mad Hot Rhythm program (danceworksmke.org/community/mad-hot/).

Vermont Counterpointt (2021)

Cinematography, Editing, Performance

Vermont Counterpoint is a short experimental film that explores the delicate and repetitious nature of minimalist compositions by Steve Reich. Through the lens of a static camera and meticulous video editing, the film becomes a visual counterpart to the musicality inherent in Reich’s work. The camera remains fixed, capturing subtle shifts and nuances within a carefully composed frame, mirroring the repetitive patterns found in Reich’s music.

As the minimalist compositions unfold, the film weaves a mesmerizing dance of images, where each frame is a deliberate echo of the one before. The editing rhythmically plays with time, creating a seamless blend of visuals and sound that either enhances the music or allows the music to enhance the editing. The film invites the audience to immerse themselves in the hypnotic synergy between the static camera, precise editing, and the minimalist score.

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Ode to Space and Memory (2020)

Cinematography + Editing

This work is a meditation on resilience – our ability to be present during unstable circumstances. The dancers reveal the duality of embodiment, at once fragile and durable. As the dancers find agility, power, and vulnerability within courage, they find home in their bodies and conjure memories archived within. As dancers teeter on edges and strain for what is just out of reach, desire to unearth the past is rooted to the ultimate documentation – our bodies in the present.

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Taking Over (2020)

Direction, Cinematography, Editing

Taking over is an improvisatory performative work by the Faculty of UW-Milwaukee Dance. This work was produced on the heels of the 2020 Pandemic and commissioned to be added to Falldances 2020. Leveraging the rooftop of the Zelazo building on UWM’s campus, the choreography introduces visual risk and capitalizes on the concept of elevated perspectives above the cityscape.

Premiere: Falldances, September 2020 | University of Wisconsin Milwaukee

Direction, Cinematography + Editing: Christal Wagner
Performance: University of Wisconsin Milwaukee Faculty: Mair Culbreth, Maria Gillespie, YNOT, Daniel Burkholder, and Simone Ferro.
Music: Andy Miller

The Things I’ve Lost

Film choreographed, directed and edited by Daniel Burkholder for the 2020 Falldances at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee. The work was translated to film and explores ideas around loss and how we connect to loss.

Give It Up (2020)

Direction, Cinematography + Editing

Created for the Beat Street Music Project, Hosted by the Cactus Club, Milwaukee. Beet Street is a collaborative block party celebrating multimedia art in Milwaukee with seasonal foods, drinks, community organizations, artisan vendors, multigenre music, film and more. Give It Up features musician Eliza Hanson

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L’homme Arme (The Armed Man)

Direction + Performance

Examining loss of community and rebirth, alto Jackie Willis sings the sound score, improvising on a popular tune from the early Burgundian school, L’homme armé (“the armed man”). The film explores Madison Wisconsin’s cityscape, touching on themes of minimalism and scarcity. It’s an ode to the beloved Madison Early Music Festival which was unable to meet in-person summer 2020 and later folded in 2021.

One Over Thirty-Five Equals Zero

Concept, Video + Editing

Exploring topics of brain injury, mental health, memory loss and exhaustion. One Over Thirty-Five Equals Zero is an experimental short in response to the pandemic and sentiments of what it felt like to experience the halt of regular life. This film investigates conflicting feelings about rest, recovery and work.

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Evicted

Evicted was developed out of a prompt created by the ongoing project, Draw Write Here, A People’s History of the Pandemic.

This was the 2nd project in the series created by Christal Wagner.

This piece is based on a chalk drawing by Jamal Smith and quoting the writing of Matthew Desmond from the book “Evicted.”

orsa ibernata

Cinematography | Editing

Orsa ibernata, produced by Milwaukee Opera Theatre and directed by Danny Brylow features emotionally charged Elizabeth Blood, the composer and soprano soloist. Elisabeth guides us through the nuanced journey of a woman grappling with the complexities of a deteriorating love affair. Blood’s poignant folk-inspired melodies resonate against the backdrop of the opera’s woodland setting. Orsa ibernata immerses audiences in a raw and evocative tale, where love, passion, and heartbreak converge in a compelling fusion of music and visuals.

Among these, Milwaukee Opera Theatre’s “Orsa Ibernata” stands out. Composed by Elizabeth Blood to a libretto by Danny Brylow, it’s a riveting portrait of a woman in emotional turmoil when a clandestine love affair falters.

Blood is the soprano soloist, too, and the elaborate fioritura of her folk-tinged, haunting music finds an evocative counterpoint in the woodlands where the opera is set, and in Christal Wagner’s imaginative videography.

Terry Blain, Star Tribune

Videographer Christal Wagner has done an absolutely gorgeous job with this one. Elizabeth Blood plays duality on a journey into a beautiful wooded Wisconsin landscape surrounded in a green that had been captured for video just prior to the leaves turning color in recent weeks. It’s a minimalist emotional journey of hauntingly moody simplicity. There’s a piercingly organic feel to MOT’s short, which is bathed in the natural sunlight and shadow in the forest.

Russ Bickerstaff, The Small Stage

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Exquisite Corpse Milwaukee Movers Edition

Project Direction | Editing

40 movement artists and 2 composers from Milwaukee contributed to this stitched movement piece where each artist had to start with the previous movers position in space and continue with their own phrase, building piece after piece. A key element of the project was to help raise funds for the Milwaukee arts community and vulnerable artists during the pandemic.

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Nelken Line

Project Direction | Cinematography | Editing

Milwaukee Dance Theatre Network partners with 2 area gardens in their filming of The NELKEN – Line. These 2 films take place at our community partners’ locations: Alice’s Garden and Lynden Sculpture Garden in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Filmed and edited by Christal Wagner with support and production by Milwaukee Dance Theatre Network.

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Ab Initio

Performance | Improvisation

Ab Initio (“from the beginning”) is a short music-dance film that examines origin myths: personal narratives, our ideas of home, our happy places, the stories we tell ourselves about where we come from, and the ways these stories guide our movements through the world around us. It takes constant devotion and upkeep to believe in something, and like any other deeply-held beliefs, our origin stories can be a source of conflict when they come into dissonance with our surroundings and our experiences. Sometimes we fight them, sometimes we flee from them, but ultimately our personal mythologies are the bridge that connects our pasts with our futures. In between is the present, where we are both the author and the protagonist of our own stories. FilmConvert was used in the coloring process.

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Aviary (2017)

Performance and Casting

Conceived of and Directed by Cinematographer Josh Halverson. Musical Score created by Cadance Collective and edited by Lawton Hall. Aviary is a movement visual study in entrapment on many levels. Source material for this project was also generously edited into a visual collaboration for a stage piece performed by Cadance Collective at the 2017 Milwaukee Fringe Festival. Aviary won 3rd overall and the “Expression Award” at the 2019 Verve Dance Film Festival.

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Moet Film Fest (2018)

Performance and sound score with Cadance Collective

Short film directed by Sitora Takanaev in collaboration with trio Cadance Collective.

St. Yuppie – Sat Nite Duets

Choreography and Dancer Casting

Music video created by Kurt Ravenwood for Musical group Sat Nite Duets.

Studies in Space, 2012

Performance

Directed by Tate Bunker this film features an experimental narrative that explores movement and dance to hopefully see what the eye can not.