Logline
During a technical warm-up, a Black dancer dances through painful memories trapped in his body in order to reckon with the traumas.
Synopsis
In a sunlit studio that overlooks an urban city, a dancer's warm-up becomes a reckoning. As he moves through balance, improvisation, and technical practice, memories surface — a body on the floor, hands raised, a history older than his own. In the Studio with Chase follows a Black man dancing through what training alone cannot dissolve. Towards the end of dusk he finishes, because it’s time to rest.
Artist statement
In the Studio with Chase follows a dancer whose technical practice becomes a site of reckoning. Drawing on the choreographic tradition of processing what cannot be spoken through movement, the film imagines a Black man whose body carries not one memory but several at once.Chase's improvisation moves through three registers of the same violence: the immediate — a specific act done to him; the collective — a raised-arm gesture shared with everyone who has made it before him; and the inherited — a physical strength shaped by a history that predates his own life. The film does not resolve these.Towards the end of dusk, Chase ends his practice not because the problem is solved, but because it s time to rest. He carries it out of the studio with him, the way training alone cannot dissolve what a body holds.
Credits
Chase: Claude ‘CJ’ JohnsonWriter/Director: Malene Schjønning
Choreographer: Claude ‘CJ’ Johnson
Director of Photography: Gregory Fitton
Composer: Lumi Luo
Assistant Director: Julia Zanin de Paula
Assistant Camera: Thomas Heban
Grip and much more: Alex Podolyanchuk
Make Up: Kayla Shepherd
Set Photography: Vicente de Paulo
Sound Recordist and Sound Design: Evan Gemmel
Editor: Malene Schjønning
Trailer editor: Alena Chang
Bios
Malene Schjønning:Malene Schjønning is a Danish filmmaker working between Copenhagen and New York City. Her work focuses on narrative, rhythm, and performance with particular attention to how meaning emerges between images and through the relationship between image and sound.Malene holds an MFA in Post-Production from Feirstein Graduate School of Cinema, CUNY, Brooklyn College. She is the recipient of the NY Women in Film & Television Emerging Female Filmmaker Award. Her work has been screened internationally, including at the New York Short Film Festival, the 40 NORTH International Dance Film Festival, and the Al Jazeera International Documentary Film Festival. Excerpts from her short documentary “Contra Shock” were on exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York’s “Urban Stomp: Dreams & Defiance on the Dance Floor”, April 2025 to February 2026.Before transitioning to filmmaking, she had an extensive career as a dancer, performing at the Royal Danish Theater and on Danish National Television. She studied at LABAN in London, the Merce Cunningham Dance Studio in New York, and formed her own dance troop which performed at many New York venues, including Arts-On-The-Hudson.Claude 'CJ' Johnson:A Chicago native, Claude “CJ” Johnson is a dancer, choreographer, and movement director based in Brooklyn NY. After completing his studies at The Chicago Academy for the Arts and SUNY Purchase College, where he was awarded the Adopt-A-Dancer Scholarship, Cj has had the opportunity to perform works by Merce Cunningham, Trisha Brown, Twyla Tharp, Mark Morris, Aszure Barton, Zoe|Juniper, Johannes Weiland, Kevin Wynn, Princess Madoki, and many more. From 2017 to 2021 he was a full-time company dancer with A.I.M. by Kyle Abraham during which, he became a 2021 Princess Grace nominee.Cj is currently a guest dancer for companies and choreographers such as Trisha Brown Dance Company, AIM By Kyle Abraham, NVA & Guess, Rashaun and Silas, Keerati Jinakunwiphat, and many others. He has also participated in his own choreographic residencies through the Baryshnikov Arts Center, The Joyce Theater, Motive Brooklyn, CUNY Dance Initiative, and many more.As a performer, choreographer, and Black queer artist, Cj dances to translate the human experience for audiences, recognizing dance as the most powerful catalyst for self-expression and social change. In any artistic space, he believes his responsibility is to expand the knowledge and perspective of his community’s vast experiences.
Contact: [email protected]
© 2026 All Rights Reserved