i went to see 'five dances' last night.

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it's an interesting film. very quiet -- lots of time spent on the face of the lead actor/dancer.


Need to Know: 'Five Dances'
http://www.out.com/entertainment/popnography/2013/01/18/ryan-steele-five-dances-alan-brown


Alan Brown's gay-themed dance film stars Ryan Steele, premieres during Dance on Camera fest
When most of us non-dancers observe men and women flinging themselves across a stage it's typically an aspirational experience. We wish our bodies could do that. We wish our bodies looked like that. We wished our bodies felt like that. So when a filmmaker decides to record dance and dancers, it can turn into a problematic situation: how to avoid the simple fetishisism of the human form, the virtuosity of supple movement.

In Alan Brown's new film, simply titled Five Dances—whose last film, Private Romeo (and introduced us to Seth Numrich and Matt Doyle), subverted the Romeo & Juliet story by placing it in an all-boys' military school—we follow five dancers rehearsing five dances in a Soho loft rehearsal space. The star of the production is Ryan Steele, a young dancer who is currently a magnetic on stage in Disney's Newsies, performing nightly as one of the chorus boys (and is the dance captain). As Brown explains, he had an open casting, looking for professional dancers who could also act. After meeting Steele, he hired him on the spot. "I had never done that before," Brown explains. "Afterward, I went away and started refashioning the script. If we did not have Ryan, it would have been a completely different movie. He became the center of the story."

The dancers perform the work choroegraphed by contemporary dance's latest sweetheart, Jonah Bokaer, someone Brown has known since he was a dancer with the Merce Cunningham company. Although Brown has never danced, he's been an ardent fan of dance for years, which inspired the idea to do this indie film. "I always wanted to go back to dance in some way," Brown explains. "When I used to see it, I was an observer. I’ve never been a dancer, I’m not a choreographer. But this took to a place that I'm not allowed to go."