Dance
see all genres ›Ethnic, fanciful, formal or pop, dance is one art form that filmmakers recognized was ideal for their medium from cinema’s earliest days.
Watch Dance Films
Genres / Documentary / Art / Performing Arts / Dance
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Ballets Russes
Unearthing a treasure trove of archival footage, filmmakers Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine have fashioned a dazzling and entrancing ode to the revolutionary 20th-century dance troupes that performed under the Ballets Russes banner. BALLETS RUSSES maps the Diaghilev-era beginnings in...Watch Movie
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Fonteyn and Nureyev
Peter Batty's famous film covers the most sensational story in Ballet which is stranger than fiction (an establishment English ballerina's unlikely teaming with a young Russian defector, half her age, to become the most glamorous ballet coupling of the glamorous sixties and...Watch Movie
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A Study in Choreography for Camera
"If I did not live in a time when film was accessible to me as a medium, I would have been a dancer, perhaps, or a singer," the filmmaker Maya Deren once said. "But this is a much more marvelous dance. In film, I can make the world dance!" After college, Deren landed her first...Watch Movie
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The Prodigy
Olga Smirnova's talent and drive are taking her to new heights in the ultra-competitive arena of world-class ballet at the Bolshoi in Moscow. This film shows what that extreme sacrifice looks like behind the curtain, through images and the words of Olga and her demanding, but sensitive coach, who...Watch Movie
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Ballet Boys
BILLY ELLIOT meets FIRST POSITION in BALLET BOYS, a documentary that follows, over four years, the struggles, set-backs and accomplishments of three friends and hopeful future dance stars: Lukas, Syvert, and Torgeir. The boys sacrifice a normal high school experience (including parties and...Watch Movie
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Ballerina
In the grand tradition of the Ballets Russes comes Bertrand Normand's portrait of five Russian ballerinas from the Mariinski Theatre, formerly known as the Kirov. Behind any great ballerina lies the discipline and rigour that comes from decades of training and practice; and Russia's pre-eminent...Watch Movie
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Samba Ladies
SAMBA LADIES presents women as the driving force that propels the samba and contributes to making it the greatest and most representative Brazilian Popular rhythm. It honors anonymous as well as well known ladies that have marked their names on this cultural pantheon, a major Brazilian cultural...Watch Movie
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Satan's Angel
Angel Walker is a legend in the world of burlesque who travels the globe with her partner Vic entertaining her legions of devoted fans. This riveting documentary explores Angel and Vic's private and public life, and enlists a collection of today's hottest burlesque stars sharing their insight on...Watch Movie
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Orange Trill
Technology sees our corporeal existence as burdensome, resulting in the body's dissolution and disconnect from the very ground beneath our feet. Hand-processed sixteen millimeter film and the electronic flicker of an old CT computer monitor create degrees of purity, traversed by the dancer's...Watch Movie
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Isadora Duncan: Movement from the Soul
This unsentimental portrait of the complex and charismatic "Mother of Modern Dance" traces the life and artistic development of San Francisco-born Isadora Duncan (1877-1927). Duncan raised dance from mere vaudeville entertainment to a legitimate art form, laying the foundation...Watch Movie
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Place
PLACE is a sensational dance film, especially created for world-famous dancers Mikhail Baryshnikov and Ana Laguna by an outstanding team of international artists. Staged by Mats Ek, considered to be one of the world's best choreographers, and directed by Grammy, MTV and Cannes Grand Prix...Watch Movie
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Dickson Experimental Sound Film
This short film is the world's first known experiment in producing a motion picture with a recorded synchronized soundtrack. Although the kinetophone combined recorded sound with moving pictures, even approximate synchronization was elusive. Still, William K.L. Dickson and his...Watch Movie
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Imperial Japanese Dance
With the continued popularity of Gilbert and Sullivan's THE MIKADO (which debuted in 1885), Japanese dancing girls enjoyed a certain caché in New York's theatrical world. This film featuring the Sarashe Sisters was shown in Japan as NIPPON MAIKO NUNO SARASHI (JAPANESE DANCING...Watch Movie
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Sioux Ghost Dance
"Buffalo Bill" Cody and members of his Wild West traveled from Ambrose Park in Brooklyn to appear before Thomas Edison's camera. In this short, the Sioux Indians performed "in full war paint and war costumes," according to Edison catalogs. These films were taken for Franck...Watch Movie
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Annabelle Butterfly Dance
Annabelle Whitford, known as Peerless Annabelle, had her debut at the Columbia Exposition in Chicago. Although hardly a stage star on the order of Carmencita, films of her performances proved popular and the negatives wore out quickly (meaning that she appeared frequently...Watch Movie
