Rapt is honored to partner with acclaimed set designer Erik Flatmo on the production of the Moss Hart and George Kaufman classic Once in a Lifetime. Directed by American Conservatory Theater Associate Artistic Director Mark Rucker, the production is set to premier in January 2012 at the Asolo Repertory Theater in Sarasota, Florida. Video will integrate with sets in this production and serve to amplify the topsy-turvey nature of this comic masterpiece.

Rapt’s second feature-length documentary, Stage Left: A Story of Theater in the Bay Area, will have it’s Northern California premier at the upcoming 2011 Mill Valley Film Festival. Screenings will take place on Monday Oct 10th, 7:00 PM @ the Sequoia Theatre in Mill Valley and on Wednesday October 12th, 9:15 PM @ the Rafael Film Center in San Rafael. Please see the MVFF website for ticketing information and further details. Listed by Screen International as one of the ‘top 10’ Festivals in the United States, this is the 34th annual festival; Rapt is honored to have our documentary shown among an outstanding selection of the best in independent and world cinema.

We are delighted to announce the newest addition to our team, Photographer Kitfox Valentín. With a background in beauty, fashion, and underwater advertising photography, Kitfox brings a unique creative skill set. Compelled to do more than just make a statement, the attraction of advertising photography for Kitfox came from a desire to communicate ideas and to connect with people on multiple levels. From the initial concept through to the finished work of art, his polished style is a blend of carefully constructed photographic capture, digital enhancement, and manipulation.

Rapt is pleased to unveil our new still photography department, offering high-end photographic services in studio and on location. We look forward to creative integrations of dance, theater, fashion, and photography. Check out Kitfox’s work at photovalentin.com, and visit our photography pages in the coming months as we build out our portfolio!

We’ve finally wrapped post-production on Sins Invalid: An Ashamed Claim to Beauty in the Face of Invisibility, a three-year documentary in the making. Sins Invalid is a performance project exploring themes of sexuality, embodiment, and the disabled body, bringing together artists who have been historically marginalized from social discourse. Our documentary incorporates interviews and performance and event footage from the past four years in an effort to showcase and celebrate this groundbreaking work. The film is set to premiere in 2012.

Company C has commissioned Rapt to produce a 30-minute documentary film in honor of their 10th anniversary. The film will portray the creation and artistic works of the company; while exploring the ways in which dance is passed from choreographer to dancer, and from generation to generation. We launched production this month, having conducted interviews with past dancers, choreographers, and board members both here in the Bay Area and in New York, directed the company in a full day creative studio shoot, and shot a number of rehearsals. The film is set to premiere at the company’s ten year anniversary celebration in February of 2012.

For a quarter century, the Isadora Duncan Dance Awards have celebrated the unique richness, diversity, and excellence of Bay Area dance. Rapt was honored this year to have been selected by the Izzie Committee to produce a special 25th Anniversary dance video collage which was presented at yesterday’s awards ceremony at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts forum. Representing a wide diversity of dance from the Bay Area, the twenty-three minute edit was a spectacular celebration of local dance, showcasing excerpts from Anna Halprin, Charya Burt, Contraband, Wan-Chao Chang, Scott Wells, San Francisco Ballet, and many more. We are excited to have been able to pull such a diverse collection of dance from our archives. If you didn’t get a chance to see the 25th Anniversary edit this year, we hope you’ll have the opportunity at next year’s awards ceremony!

Rapt has been working closely with chamber opera company Ensemble Parallèle over the past six months to design a mixed-media production of Philip Glass’ Orphée, which premiered to sold-out audiences last weekend at the Herbst Theater. Our elaborate video montages recreated elements of Jean Cocteau’s 1950 avant-garde film Orphée for the stage: highlights included the Princess Death passing by windows watching the sleeping Orphée, the Chase scene in which Orphée attempts to catch the Princess Death, and the Journey to the Underworld where falling numbers rained onto the stage. As always, we were honored to work alongside Stage Director Brian Staufenbiel and Artistic Director Nicole Paiement, and look forward to collaborating once again on their upcoming production of The Great Gatsby (2012).