Dance!
...schools...

Films are packed with dancing. Fred Astair tapping his way around Ginger Rogers, Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey wiping the fake sweat from their brows, Busby Berkeley and Dein Perry sculpting geometric shapes from gyrating hordes. Admittedly, lovely pictures, but is that all? Dancing at the movies, is that all there is to it? Somehow, you get the feeling there has to be more than massed ranks of fixed grins highstepping their way through paperthin storylines or couples scrumptiously bobbing and weaving their way around one another until their orbits, gazes and lips finally meet.

Nothing presents filmmakers with more of a challenge than trying to capture this fascination (dance) on film or record, it has been said. But is that what it is about? Is it simply a matter of recording a moment of dance on celluloid? And can only people dance in front of the camera, what about other things? Film, especially short films, offer opportunities above and beyond any dance school’s programme, which would leave the Bolshoi in knots and drain the colour from even Hollywood greats such as Bob Fosse: a pas de deux with a construction crane, Fred Astaire discovering punk and a host of other (im)possibilities will have you leaping out of your seat – let the dance begin!

DANCE FILM PROGRAMME 1