dust
- Knowbox dance
- Jul 30
- 3 min read
kNOwBOX dance Film Festival 2025
Official Selection Film Spotlight
dust (2025)
Directed by Noelle Kayser
📍 USA ⏱ 9 minutes 47 seconds
dust is a meditative tribute to intergenerational caregiving, exploring legacy, mortality, and love through movement inspired by the filmmaker’s experience caring for her dying father.
Film Description
“dust” is a meditation on legacy, mortality, and the quiet power of intergenerational caregiving. Through movement, it honors the compassion, reciprocity, and unconditional love exchanged as we usher one another into—and out of—this life. Inspired by the experience of caring for my father as he died of cancer, the film is both a tribute and a release.
Meet The Makers
What do you hope to communicate with our audience through your work?
I hope "A certain number of times" touches the hearts of the audience, inviting them to reflect on the relativity of time and their family origins.
Our theme this year is "Bodies in Motion: A Dance Film Celebration" to move beyond borders and dance through time. Telling stories only the body can speak. How do you think your film relates to this theme?
A certain number of times embodies the theme by celebrating the fragility and strength of an aging body as a living archive of memories. "Bodies in motion" as in the changing of the body through time and the inheritance of gestures and motions, passed down from generation to generation.
Biographies
Noelle Kayser is an award-winning choreographer, director, and multi-disciplinary performer based in Chicago. She is the inaugural resident choreographer for Open Space, a Whim W’him Choreographic Shindig winner, the 2025 BalletX Choreographic Fellow, and a 2026 Ballet Collective Commission for Developing Choreographers recipient. Noelle has created work for companies including Dance Aspen, DanceWorks Chicago, MADCO, Visceral Dance Chicago, and SALT II among many others. She served as a guest Ballet Mistress at the Lyric Opera, was the founding rehearsal director and administrator for PARA.MAR Dance Theatre (2022 Dance Magazine Top 25 to Watch), and named one of NewCity Magazines, “The 50 People Who Really Perform for Chicago”. Noelle’s short dance film “dust”—produced by Open Space—was awarded Best Dance Film at both the Athens International Monthly Art Film Festival and the Mannheim Arts and Film Festival, and is an Official Selection at the Swedish International Film Festival, ARTSinTANK Dance Festival in Korea, and kNOwBOX dance Film Festival.
In addition to her choreographic work, Noelle has performed works by Gustavo Ramírez Sansano, Ihsan Rustem, Wen Wei Wang, Danielle Agami, Robyn Mineko Williams, Kevin O’Day, and Alice Klock, among others. She has had the privilege of dancing with companies such as NW Dance Project, LED Boise, Open Space, and Visceral Dance Chicago among others. She has taught for organizations such as Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, the Goodman Theatre, and Visceral Dance Chicago. As an actor, Noelle has narrated 16 audiobooks for Audible, appeared in advertising campaigns, and performed in stage productions at The Goodman Theatre, Chicago Shakespeare Theater, and The Alliance Theatre among others. Most recently, she won the 2024 Jeff Award for Best Ensemble for her performance as Selene in The Penelopiad at The Goodman Theatre, and starred in Anna Long’s short film Death in the Desert (Best Actress in a Short at the Idyllwild Film Festival & Best Short Drama at the Breckenridge Film Festival).
Film Credits
Director + Choreographer: Noelle Kayser; Director of Photography + Editor: Matthew Tomac; Dancers: Bree Kostelnik, Audrey Wells; Costume Designer: Amanda Gladu; Production Assistant: Sophia Mladineo; Music: Andrew Bird, Julianna Barwick; Producers: Open Space, Portland Regional Arts & Culture Council, Noelle Kayser, Teresa Kayser
Festival Screenings/Awards
Mannheim Arts and Film Festival (Best Dance Film); Athens Greece International Monthly Art Film Festival (Best Dance Film); Swedish International Film Festival (Official Selection); ARTSinTank Dance Festival (Official Selection); kNOwBOX dance Film Festival (Official Selection)
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