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Culture Dance

Living well

MoPix picks ‘n’ pans
Moving Pictures Festival of dance unreels in style this weekend

moving pictures festival of dance on film and video opening tonight (November 4) and running to November 7, various times and locations. Free-$10. 416-961-5624, www.movingpicturesfestival.com.

Call it lucky 13. The 13th annual Moving Pictures fest is one of the strongest yet. The best directors realize you can’t just plunk a camera in front of dancers and call it a film. Here are some of the best (and, yes, worst) of the fest.

The Cost of Living part of the Global Moves program, at the NFB Cinema (150 John), Friday (November 5) at 9 pm. $10. Rating: NNNN

Moving Pictures Festival of dance unreels in style
this weekend

moving pictures festival of dance on
film and video opening tonight (November 4) and running to November 7,
various times and locations. Free-$10. 416-961-5624,
www.movingpicturesfestival.com.

Call it lucky 13. The 13th annual Moving Pictures fest is one of
the strongest yet. The best directors realize you can’t just plunk a
camera in front of dancers and call it a film. Here are some of the
best (and, yes, worst) of the fest.

Rating: NNNN

This entertaining look at what happens after a group of street performers give up their clown work in a British seaside town makes it clear that live or on celluloid, DV8 are one of the sharpest dance troupes around.

Drawing liberally from his live show, director/choreographer Lloyd Newson captures our interest without any music video hijinks. The movement arises out of character and situation, whether it’s a guy in a nightclub whose nervous tics take over his body, or a woman fighting off a group of boys with a hoola hoop. The troupe’s unabashedly queer sensibility (consider their name) comes out in a couple of places, notably a scene where a mute and immobile man begins moving uncontrollably to Cher’s Believe, and a sad, brief little minuet about washroom sex.

It’s an ensemble piece, but the film’s most memorable moments involve David Toole , a legless dancer who seduces us in a bar, fights off a bigot, gets to dance with a ballerina and shares the film’s extraordinary final image.

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