Some of us are born into pain. Broken homes, abusive families, war-torn communities, poverty and want. But we’re born with music, too. Music moves you, literally; you are compelled into motion. Humans don’t have to be taught to dance. To dance well, maybe, but the act itself is pure instinct.
For the next subject of our new Big Picture series, Tampa Theatre offers Dancing, Through Life: a selection of films that center the experience of dance as a method of escape — escape from a difficult life, escape from an adversarial world, even transcendent escape from the mundane into ecstatic beauty. All of these films propose (in their own way) that dance elevates, propels the dancer up and out of the world and into an entirely new possibility space. But also that once elevated, it’s harder than ever before to keep from falling.
• Saturday Night Fever – 8:00 pm Wednesday, March 26……….1977 / R
• Paris is Burning – 8:00pm Wednesday, April 9………………………..1990 / R
• The Red Shoes – 8:00pm Wednesday, April 16………………………1948 / Not Rated
• Showgirls – 8:00pm Wednesday, April 23……………………………….1995 / NC-17
• Rize – 8:00pm Wednesday, April 30………………………………………….2005 / PG-13