MQFF REVIEW: Five Dances (2013, Dir. Alan Brown)

Cut loose from his crippling family, eighteen year old Chip (Ryan Steele) is adrift in New York City, anchored only by his desire to exist as a dancer. To live out his passion, he exists hand to mouth as he rehearses for an upcoming recital.

Dodging the usual blandness of American queer cinema, writer/director Alan Brown is one of the few directors continually turning out compelling films that move to their own beat. In the case of Five Dances, the movement is even more pronounced, taking the form of five extended modern dance pieces choreographed by world-renowned American choreographer Jonah Bokaer. The dances form an abstract core to the lives of the dancers in studio, with Chip as Brown's primary focus.

Casting actual dancers to perform and act in the film has not only given the film's dance sequences a commanding authenticity but has imbued its dramatic moments with an absorbingly tentative naturalism. Steele, especially, convinces as a boy who's out of his depth. He has the physique of a man but the awkward, emotional shyness of an adolescent. Brown has already proved himself an exceptional director of young, non-film actors and with Steele he's outdone himself. There's a palpable shift in confidence when Steele lets his physicality speak for him, both in the absorbing choreography and during the film's touching romance with fellow dancer, Theo (played by Australian dancer, Reed Luplau). It's a stark contrast that extends to the entire ensemble, and it is one of Five Dances' key strengths.

On the dramatic front, Brown finds a way to work in some short-hand stories for the other dancers at the narrative periphery, though with varying degrees of success. It is an approach that is almost certainly borne out of the production's amorphous genesis. Five Dances feels as if it has been assembled from a brace of workshops, with the drama constructed after the fact. It never feels entirely complete. Still, the film's quiet, delicate truthfulness and the remarkable central performance cushions its narrative weakness.

Five Dances is a brave experiment. It may not have come off entirely but it certainly justifies keeping eyes on Brown, as a director and as an artistic collaborator. It is refreshing to see some new blood taking risks in queer cinema today.

★★★☆

Trailer:

Five Dances screened as part of the 2014 Melbourne Queer Film Festival.