Some films are planned. This one was summoned.
Dancing Around the Fire began modestly: a video release of the performance series The All Stars of Performance Art, a live performance art variety show hosted by The Dark Bob, along with accompanying interviews from the Artists. But when you put that many legends in front of a camera, something happens. The stories kept coming —Stories of the Woman's Building, and F Space, of punk clubs, and derelict hotels, of a generation that made art out of its own body because nothing else felt true. It became clear this was no longer performance documentation. It was the movement itself, asking to be remembered.
The road has not been easy. The project has weathered real losses along the way — and carried them forward as reasons to finish, not excuses to stop. The fire has always been kept by the people willing to stay near it.
Dancing Around the Fire is directed by Michael J. Masucci and made in conjunction with The Dark Bob of Bob & Bob — one a chronicler of the scene, the other a pioneer who helped invent it. The production team includes Ryan Zin. The film is produced by EZTV, the artist-run media organization founded in 1979 that grew up alongside the very movement this film documents — making it less an outside account than a story told from inside the circle.