The word "moving" does not even begin to characterize Only When I Dance, a new narrative feature directed by Beadie Finzi and presented at the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival in the World Documentary Competition. A real-life character drama of two aspiring teenage dancers from the poor favelas of Rio de Janeiro, Isabela Coracy and Irlan Santos da Silva, the film follows their journey through the pressures, expenses, and prejudices of the professional dance world. While the goal is the same for both dancers - to show their talent in international competition in order to launch a professional career, the conditions of their color, class, gender, and the persistence of culturally constructed ideal body types affect the perceptions of their potential in different ways. Fierce aspirations, self-imposed discipline and supportive families, while powerful, do not guarantee success. Director Finzi shows us the emotional weight of these heavy journeys. "Heartbreaking" comes closer to the film's true description.

Movies can serve as a great window into the geography of the world's diverse cultures, a way to visit parts of the world previously underrepresented or under-explored. Only When I Dance, while smartly downplaying the city's glamorous side and only then to prove a point of contrast, takes us into the claustrophobic confines of the dancers' neighborhoods. Dancing becomes the metaphor for transcendence, a way to float above the densely packed crush of precarious human dwellings that spill down the Rio hillsides. The filmmaker documents the crowded public transportation, the comforts of the Centro De Dança Rio, the wide shots of the dancers' respective neighborhoods - Irlan's Complexo do Alemão and Isabela's Cachambi, and the small spaces the dancers call home.

After exploring the context of the dancers' environment in Rio, portrayed most often in brilliant sunshine (and some smog), the film shifts to New York, symbolized by Manhattan at night. Upon seeing the exterior night shot of NYU's Skirball Center just south of Washington Square Park, I may have gone into shock for a moment, as I live near the center and walk by it every day. Too much depends on what happens here for these beautiful dancers, I thought. New York, a world center for the arts, is already overly determined as a symbolic benchmark for talented actors, artists, writers and dancers. Implicit in its own mythical culture of "If I can make it here," etc., with gatekeepers setting their own standards, rests the potential for heartbreak. Sitting in the movie theater, I felt that I had travelled far with Irlan and Isabella, working so hard and with so much courage to get here, and I wasn't sure if I could take it.    
 
A Selection of Dance Films on Reframe

Descriptions below are from our pages on the films. Many of the films explore world dance traditions.
Many more dance titles will be added soon.

Subtango, The Spirit of Tango (2000)
DIR.: Sofia Vaccaro   
TRT: 59 min
From Reframe partner, Documentary Educational Resources
Even after a century of history, after enshrinement as the national music, after rampant commercialization and packaging for export, the tango still speaks to the Argentine soul. Subtango shows how tango music, dance, art and poetry are an essential part of the emotional expression of all Argentinians.

Last Dance (2002)
DIR.: Mirra Bank   
TRT: 84 min
Ferocious. Funny. In your face. Last Dance goes behind the scenes on a stormy collaboration between the iconoclastic dance company, Pilobolus, and the legendary author/illustrator Maurice Sendak.

African Dance (2002)
DIR.: Ken Glazebrook Alla Kovgan   
TRT: 70 min
From Reframe partner, Documentary Educational Resources
This documentary explores African contemporary dance through eight modern dance companies from Africa, Europe and Canada that participated in the Festival International de Nouvelle Danse in Montreal, Canada in 1999.

N/um Tchai: The Ceremonial Dance of the !Kung Bushmen (1969)
DIR.: John Marshall   
TRT:  20 min
In the 1950's, when this film was shot, Ju/'hoansi gathered for "medicine dances" often, usually at night, and sometimes such dances lasted until dawn. In this film, women sit on the ground, clapping and singing and occasionally dancing a round or two, while men circle around them, singing and stamping rhythms with their feet.

Dances of the Kwakiutl (1951)
DIR.: Robert Gardner   
TRT: 9 min
From Reframe partner, Documentary Educational Resources
Dances of the Kwakiutl is composed of fragments filmed in 1950 in Fort Rupert, British Columbia. They were made during a performance by those still familiar with the tradition of 'Hamatsa' or cannibal dancing.

FREEDOM: Louise Bédard Danse (2006)
DIR.: Bob Barrett   
TRT: 24 min

Available for sale soon.
When Louise Bédard is not dancing and choreographing, she spends time creating collage artwork.  She finds that the two artistic disciplines help bring a multilayered sense of depth to her staged dance pieces, creating a 'human collage.’
From Reframe Collection: Sound Venture

Mad Hot Ballroom (2005)
DIR.: Marilyn Agrelo   
TRT: 105 min
Eleven-year-old New York City public school kids journey into the world of ballroom dancing and reveal pieces of themselves and their world along the way. Told from their candid, sometimes hilarious perspectives, these kids are transformed from reluctant participants to determined competitors.

Rhythms of Earth (1974)
DIR.: Alan Lomax Forrestine Paulay   
TRT: 255 min
The four original Choreometrics films--Dance & Human History (1974), Palm Play (1977), Step Style (1977),and The Longest Trail (1984) plus additional video and PDF text files--more than 4 hours of video.

Rize (2004)
DIR.: David LaChapelle   
TRT: 84 min
Rize is an intimate, completely fresh portrayal of inner city youth who have created art and often family where before there was none. Surrounded by drug addiction, gangs, and impoverishment they have developed a completely unique style of dance that evolves on a daily basis.

Or, for something a little out of the ordinary on the subject of ballet:

Suspiria (1977)
DIR.: Dario Argento   
TRT: 92 min
A newcomer to a fancy ballet academy gradually comes to realize that the staff of the school are actually a coven of witches bent on chaos and destruction

Images: Only When I Dance. Irlan Santos da Silva in Complexo do Alemao, Rio de Janeiro. Photographer: Christina Daniels and Only When I Dance, Isabela Coracy. Photographer: Mercedes Barros

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