The Dancer from the Dance (2013)

The Dancer from the Dance is an innovative documentary that tells a story of lives entwined and lived in dance. Part memoir, part investigation, it asks: is being a dancer an identity? A culture? A waste of time? Director Karen Pearlman interviews dozens of contemporary Australian dancers and choreographers to find out what they mean when they say I am a dancer and who they would be if they stopped dancing - bringing out the poignant, sometimes funny and always moving stories of people who live a life in dance. She also turns the camera on herself, ten years after quitting dancing, to find out what is left - what is left in her and what has left her? The cumulative stories reveal the art of movement as a force, passing through us, for a time, and then transforming into the next dancer, the next dance. The Dancer from the Dance tells the story of dance as an ephemeral, body to body art form. Its words and movement allow the accrued wisdom of all of its participants to be captured, preserved and passed on before it disappears. The documentary subtly changes the nature of dance itself, by giving it a living history that can be built upon. It aims to make the short recorded history of dance more robust and to innovate in documentary form: to create a new form of screendance that is dance at the same time it is about dance. Featured artists: Kate Champion, Martin Del Amo, Miranda Wheen, Katerina Rajch, Naomi Hibberd, Thea Xanthopoulos, Vicki Van Hout, Richard James Allen, Frances Rings, Emma Saunders, Graeme Watson, Eva Fernandez Adan, Julie-Anne Long, Paul Cordeiro, Tammi Gissell, Samuel Lucas Allen, Nikki Heywood, Imogen Cranna, Jadzea Allen, Kay Armstrong, Jodie McNeilly, Garry Lester, Solon Ulbrich, Karen Kerkhoven, and Karen Pearlman.