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Flatlands Dance Film Festival

The Flatlands Dance Film Festival is dedicated to supporting and presenting Dance Cinema, a medium which explores and innovates the intersections between filmmaking and dance making. The festival builds educational platforms, encourages dialogue and promotes a diverse range of cultural perspectives from around the globe.

potential

FDFF recognizes the vast potential where choreography and the screen reside together. Dance at Illinois supports and presents this medium because the moving image reflects the very nature of motion itself, the meeting point of filmmaking and dance. Dance Cinema provides greater access for audiences and provides more opportunities for visual/movement artists to utilize technology from a choreographic perspective. We deeply appreciate the folks who brought the Flatlands Dance Film Festival to life—Mark Rhodes brought the initial idea to the Dance Partners Advancement Committee (Fran Ansel, Diane Baker, Kathleen Conlin, Mary Perlstein). In 2019, we welcomed Laura Chiaramonte as our new FDFF director.

Mission

Showcase a variety of films and shorts dedicated to dance performance, dance for camera, influential artists in the field, and the social impact of dance across the world.
Host a film competition for aspiring dance/film makers.
Encourage dialogue –
Generate programming that promotes diverse perspectives: Each year, the festival will focus on specific themes and subject matter and showcase international and national artists in dance, performance, visual art, cinema, and media arts.

Flatlands Dance Film Festival

Flatlands Dance Film Festival 2025
Director: Laura Chiaramonte

Feature Films by Endalyn Outlaw (Taylor), Rena Butler, & Irishia Hubbard Romaine

Thursday, September 11, 2025

7pm (Doors open at 6:30pm)
Spurlock Museum, 600 S. Gregory St.
Urbana, IL 61801

$10 general admission
$5 students and seniors

Seating is limited

Bio

Rena Butler hails from Chicago, IL, and received her BFA from SUNY Purchase Conservatory of Dance. Rena performed with companies including Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, AIM by Kyle Abraham, Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company, David Dorfman Dance, The Kevin Wynn Collection, Pasos Con Sabor Salsa Dance Company, and Gibney Company. A Tale of Two – filmed and scored in Chicago and danced by Hubbard Street Dance Chicago is an examination of Chicago’s extreme cultural dichotomy and how it affects the city’s youth in disparate communities.

Dancer, choreographer, and educator Endalyn T. Outlaw (née Taylor) presents I Am A Women, based on the poem by Mikenzi Masiah Barrow. Outlaw is the dean of the School of Dance at UNCSA. She has held the positions of director of Dance Theatre of Harlem (DTH) School in New York — a company she joined in 1984, becoming a principal dancer in 1993 — and director of the Cambridge Summer Art Institute in Massachusetts.

Irishia Hubbard Romaine is a choreographer, filmmaker, and educator from South Carolina. She is an Assistant Professor in the School of Dance at Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania and a 2024 Mellon Arts & Practitioner Fellow at Yale University’s Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration (RITM). Romaine’s research examines the unwritten history of Black moving image arts through the lens of Africanist Aesthetics in dance, photography, and film. F3VER follows the journey of Andrew “3D Dance Fever” Jones, a native of Bakersfield, who defies societal expectations as a professional street dancer, high school substance abuse counselor, and globally recognized dance fitness instructor.