Artistic Director, The Los Angeles Film Festival

I am a big believer in dance films. Not only for the amazing art form that is dance, but as a delivery system for the kinds of ideas, emotions and narratives that can only be conveyed through this medium.

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I spent twenty years as a commercial artist. I worked in a field that put art directors and copywriters in a room together and through that, came to understand the idea of divergent pairing, and how effective it can be working in collaboration with someone who tackles the same problem, alongside you, but through a different lens. In working with dancers and choreographers now, my practice is still about divergent pairing, but more for how the vocabulary of film can be affected and transformed when it intersects with the different vocabulary of dance and movement. It's powerful. It also defies easy categorization. Which I quite like.

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In helping to organize a film festival that celebrates dance films, with Nicole Spring, I wanted to also champion it, somehow. And for me, that means it's not only about reaching the widest audience possible, though I know that amplification is an underlying goal of any festival, but also about elevating just what we believe dance films are.

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The schedule of this year's festival promises to not only entertain, but to thrill, too. This is not about sitting through films that you could go see in social media on your own - it's about the gathering and what can be done in person when we tackle big ideas together, inspire each other and get into it.