AND THEN WE DANCED

Merab is a young and ambitious dancer in modern day Tbilisi. He is training to be part of the National Georgian Ensemble while waiting tables at night and bringing home leftovers from the restaurant. The Georgian national dance is conservative in its machismo; there is little room for sensuality. Which changes when a newcomer joins the troupe and Merab starts falling for him.

The physicality on the screen is arresting. The dancer’s reverence for movement and the ecstasy of rhythm completely overwhelm your senses. Throughout the film you watch the main characters dance in different settings and with different partners and realize that context changes meaning, that movements could turn on a dime, their intention mutable.

The film captures the magic of young love with such authenticity that at times you’re struck with the guilty feeling of watching something you are not supposed to. Stealing glances across the room, sharing conspiratorial smiles, luxuriating in fleeting touches. But like in the plays of Euripides, virtue cannot undo the workings of fate; life will happen regardless.

The premiere of the film in Tbilisi, although sold-out, was met with violent protests encouraged by the Church and nationalist groups. Hostility toward queer people in Georgia is commonplace, despite LGBTQ+ legal protections. While you watch the two main characters fall in love with each other, you can also imagine their separate futures: those of conformity, marriage and children, of never being truly happy. More than one heart will be broken by the end of the film, yours included. But there is healing in dancing.

And Then We Danced is so much more than a queer romance film. It’s a story of aspiration, self-discovery, family and friendship. It’s a story of identity and movement, too fluid to be constrained by rigid social norms of tradition.