Plot
Renowned ball-room dancer Pierre Dulaine takes his program, Dancing Classrooms, back to his city of birth, Jaffa, to teach Jewish and Palestinian Israelis to dance and compete together.
Release Year: 2013
Rating: 6.6/10 (59 voted)
Critic's Score: /100
Director: Hilla Medalia
Stars: Pierre Dulaine, Yvonne Marceau, Alaa Bubali
Storyline
Renowned ball-room dancer Pierre Dulaine takes his program, Dancing Classrooms, back to his city of birth, Jaffa, to teach Jewish and Palestinian Israelis to dance and compete together.
Writers: Philip Shane, Hilla Medalia
Cast: Pierre Dulaine -
Himself
Yvonne Marceau -
Herself
Alaa Bubali -
Himself
Lois Dana -
Herself
Noor Gabai -
Herself
Rachel Gueta -
Herself
Oren Halaly -
Himself - Judge
Ajyal School -
School
Al-Ukhuwa School -
School
Hashmonaim School -
School
Open Democratic School -
School
Weizmann School -
School
Tal Talmon -
Herself - Judge
Lana Zreik -
Herself - Judge
Taglines:
Religion tore the city apart, can dance bring it together?
Hilla Medalia is an award-winning 36-year-old Israeli documentary
filmmaker whose 2007 To Die in Jerusalem brought together in dialogue
(by satellite) the mothers of two teenage girls paired on a 'Newsweek'
cover, a Palestinian suicide bomber and an Israeli girl killed by her
bomb. Her new film is about a less grim effort by famous ballroom
teacher Pierre Dulaine to bring Jewissh and Palestinian kids together
on the dance floor, and we see some little friendships and
personalities bloom in his modest "peace process."
Jaffa, once a Palestinian town, is now a poor, mixed suburb of Tel
Aviv. The intense 2009 joint Israeli- Arab feature film 'Ajami' focused
on a rough part of Jaffa. In 'Dancing in Jaffa,' Hilla Medalia follows
Pierre Dulaine as he goes back to Jaffa, where he was born in 1944, son
of an Irish father and Palestinian mother. (In the film he never
mentions that his mother was also half French, which explains
"Pierre.") He has not been back since his family was driven out when he
was a child. He comes to introduce to Palestinian-Israeli,
Jewish-Israeli, and mixed schools in Jaffa his Dancing Classrooms, a
social development program for fifth- graders that uses ballroom
dancing "as a vehicle to change the lives of the children and their
families" (Wikipedia). This time the primary "change" is the somewhat
radical one of pairing Jewish and Arab girls and boys as dance
partners.
In teaching gawky eleven-year-olds to dance, the pixieish Dulaine
emphasizes etiquette, dignity, and respect from the get-go. He has to
give up on one school because they boys won't dance. The more extreme
Muslim males won't touch girls, or at first refuse. Things don't go
that well at first, and for a while Pierre brings over from the States
his (dancing, not life) partner of 35 years, Yvonne Marceau. Their
dancing together for the kids inspires them: you can see the boys' eyes
light up; they are charmed.
Medalia follows several of the kids more closely, notably Noor, a
plump, dark Palestinian girl whose grief over the death of her father
makes her sullen, depressed, and sometimes violent. Alaa is a small boy
who lives in a shack with his poor fisherman father. Alaa, dark and all
smiles, and Brenda, a curly-haired Jewish girl fathered out of a sperm
bank, become partners for the upcoming dance contest, and their jaunt
on Alaa's father's little rowboat heralds a budding friendship. But the
real miracle is Noor, who shows rhythm and grace from the start, and
whose selection for the competition is part of a reawakening and new
happiness that you can't help being a little amazed by. Ah, fifth
graders: this is the age when kids are most open and malleable.
The film shows other things, like Dulaine approaching his family's
original residence and beating a hasty retreat when the current
occupants are not just unfriendly but apparently downright hostile.
Dulaine mostly speaks English, but he also speaks Arabic to the kids
who understand Arabic. For Hebrew, he has an interpreter or the
teachers translate for him. The schools he visits are
Israeli-Palestinian, Israeli-Jewish, and mixed Palestinian-Jewish.
There are seven different dances in the lessons and final contest,
though merengue and rumba seem to predominate. At the final contest,
all the parents are as excited as you'd expect. Each dance couple pairs
a Palestinian and a Jew. And nobody seems to mind. At least for the
moment, Dulaine has achieved reconciliation and crossed barriers that
earlier, seemed uncrossable.
All this will be vaguely familiar, because you've probably seen a
couple of other movies Pierre Dulaine inspired, the 2006 musical drama
'Take the Lead,' starring Antonio Banderas as Dulaine, and 'Mad Hot
Ballroom,' a heartwarming and popular 2005 documentary about New York
fifth graders who learn dance and take part in a dance contest.
However, Dancing in Jaffa prefers not to mention these, and alludes
only vaguely to Pierre Dulaine's fame as a ballroom dancer when he
partnered with Yvonne Marceau at Jacob's Pillow, on Broadway, and in
London, or his having been on the faculties of the School of American
Ballet, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, and the Juilliard School.
This movie isn't about that. It's about little Jewish and Palestinian
Israeli kids being polite and friendly and wiggling their hips
gracefully together. 'Dancing in Jaffa,' a fairly simple and minimal
film, isn't as priceless and cute or as proficiently made as Mad Hot
Ballroom. But the gaps it bridges are, of course, more significant.
'Dancing in Jaffa,' 84 mins., in Arabic, English, and Hebrew with
English subtitles debuted in NYC in January 2013, and was included in
the Tribeca and Sydney festivals. It has been picked up by Sundance
Selects. Screened for this review as part of the San Francisco Jewish
Film Festival (July 26-Aug. 10, 2013).
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