It took nine years for Rosalynde LeBlanc (formerly a dancer with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company, in charge of passing Jones’ pieces on to US universities) and Tom Hurwitz to make this immersive documentary showing the re-staging of D-Man in the Waters, first performed in 1989 and presented in 2013 at the Festival de Marseille. Reminding us of the extent to which the personal and the political shed light on all artistic creation, the film testifies to the emotional intensity of the original piece while finding an unsettling echo in today’s world, afflicted by Covid and other pandemics, virulent racism and armed violence.

In a clever, rhythmically constructed combination of interviews, archive material and often poignant film excerpts, the film shows that dance, an ephemeral art form, can bridge generations. We see Bill T. Jones and Rosalynde LeBlanc at work on a piece that is physically demanding and whose rage remains intact. The young dancers are challenged to explore the issues affecting their own lives to engage with this “physical manifestation in response to the fear, grief and the hope for salvation” felt by the artistic community in the AIDS era. The film received the prestigious Peabody Award in May 2024.

In partnership with the Association des habitant·es de l’unité d’habitation de Le Corbusier

The cinema program for the 2024 edition :

If, as the dancer Cal Hunt states, “dance is the most beautiful and silent of all revolts,” in other words a space of struggle for the emancipation of body and mind, it is also a tool for restoring joy and energy to activist endeavours. Interactions between art, political engagement and emancipation are at the heart of our film programme. The Festival offers a range of fiction films and documentaries anchored in reality and in art, exploring the boundary between dancing to fight and fighting through dance.