Last Dance
In 2001, author and artist Maurice Sendak entered into an unusual collaboration with the Pilobolus Dance Company to create +A Selection, a contemporary ballet inspired by true stories of the Holocaust. As Sendak and the Pilobolus creative team construct the piece from the ground up, they find themselves clashing over creative issues as they also juggle the weighty issues of how to honestly deal with the issues of the Holocaust within the context of a dance piece without trivializing them in the process. Filmmaker Mirra Bank was on hand to document both the ballet and its creation, and Last Dance offers an intimate look at the creative process in action, as well as the striking ballet they produced.
Director: Mirra Bank
One of the thrills of the movie is watching the improvisatory trial-and-error process as the dancers explore psychological themes, contorting their graceful, amazingly limber bodies into visual representations of relationships and emotional states.
While it's not a blistering look behind the scenes, Last Dance gives a fuller picture of the creative process than most others of its ilk.
Bank's discursive but oddly riveting documentary, Last Dance, offers a glimpse of what was probably the most important, and conceivably the most bitterly contested, collaboration in Pilobolean history.
An illuminating glimpse into what goes on in the dance studio.
Rehearsals are frequently more fascinating than the results. Last Dance, whatever its flaws, fulfills one facet of its mission in making me want to find out whether, in this case, that's true.
Film & Video - The Arts
San Francisco International Film Festival (2002)
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