Help us create "Drenched" -- A Dance Film
We are Wilder Project, an award-winning, internationally acclaimed dance film company, and we are so excited to be co-producing a new dance film this summer on the shores of Lake Michigan with local non-profit, Exit Left Theatre Company.
A little about us… filmmaking duo Holly and Duncan Wilder are New York City-based Wilder Project. Named by Dance Magazine as one of “nine screendance artists you should know about”, we are siblings that set the body and camera into motion to explore the relationship between our inner and outer landscapes. Our 20 films have screened at over 50 film festivals on 5 continents winning 13 awards.
The journey of this film began during a quarantined residency in 2020 in Maine. Originally affectionately called “Lake Shake”, we explored the concepts of pretense and social anxiety with wine glasses and formalwear in Echo Lake, and the vision for this film was born. It has grown dramatically in aesthetic and concept since then, and we can’t wait to finally bring this dark yet deeply hopeful comedy to fruition. You’ll see some clips here from our early experiments with the film.
Experiments for "Drenched" in 2020.
In July 2025, we will be in a 10 day residency on the shores of Lake Michigan with 5 dancers to create and film "Drenched".
OUR GOAL is to raise a minimum of $10,000 between May 15 and June 15 to fund artist payment, travel, costuming, set, music commission, rehearsal space, and so much more. All donations are 100% tax deductible through Exit Left, a Michigan registered non-profit theater company. We are looking forward to our collaboration with them allowing us to include several local artists in a scene in the film.
Experiments for "Drenched" in 2020.
Let us give you a glimpse into the vision for "Drenched".
It’s dusk. A dining table fully set, half submerged in the lake. The candles lit. We cheers wine glasses full of lake water and slowly sit down.
It’s a formal evening. You must pretend you’re not breathing or displeased or anxious or alive. The formalities grow into a clownish dance. The cracks start to appear. Slowly the party devolves into an animalistic soirée where we see everything the guests had meant to hide. The table moves farther and farther under water.
The dancers, in formal attire, carve down mile high sand dunes with a reckless hunger. They breathe together in unison, ankle deep at the shore line, connected in a web of movement.
Experiments for "Drenched" in 2020.
“Drenched” explores pretense, class, and all the ways society asks us to be less alive than we are. It is a reckoning with our human connection to earth and the rawness required of that relationship. This radical film emerges from the buttoned up shackles of isolation into the real and beautiful mess of our aliveness. It is a stripping away, a fighting for, and a coming home.
Take a look at the wonderful rewards offered for your donations, including behind the scenes access, early access to the completed film, and personalized improvisations from the cast. In this specific moment in history we are excited to birth a film about mental health, human connection with earth, and the way class society forces us to deny our own humanity. We need brave art now more than ever. We can’t wait to bring this reckoning of a film to life with your generous support.