In one of the standout films of the Indy Dance Film Fest, “Am I Still Dreaming?” a ballet dancer finds herself looking at old videotapes of herself performing as a child. In the dizzying pirouettes that follow, it is not entirely clear whether she is dancing for an audience or for herself.
But it is clear she is still chasing a dream.
The film festival, taking place at Kan-Kan Cinema on Tuesday, Jan. 27, will highlight nine short dance films from across the country, including four from the Indianapolis area.
The festival is sponsored by the Indy Dance Council, an organization founded by Mariel Greenlee three and a half years ago to support local dancers and strengthen the visibility of dance in Central Indiana. It grew out of Greenlee’s transition from a career as a dancer with Dance Kaleidoscope, where she performed from 2005 to 2019.
During its first iteration in 2024, the event was known as Indy Dance Film Night.
“We just showed a bunch of locally produced dance films that I knew about just being a dancer,” Greenlee said.
This year, it was rebranded as Indy Dance Film Festival and opened to submissions nationally — but preference was still given to local dancers and filmmakers, Greenlee said.
There will be a short community conversation after the screening, led by local choreographer and filmmaker Amanda Hoover, focused on advice for aspiring filmmakers.
Dream or reality?
“Am I Still Dreaming” was directed by Jonathan Bryan, one of the principals in Revenir Films, which specializes in wedding photography.
“I wasn’t planning on ballet being kind of the main medium for telling the story,” Bryan said. “I just had this idea about … pursuing something that you love doing, and then it becomes hard work.”
His film follows a dancer (Hanna Manka), contending with reams of paper her supervisor dumps on her desk. The story is open-ended: Does she escape the drudgery into a daydream reverie of pirouettes or into a professional ballet career?
The story felt personal to Manka, 30, who grew up in Indianapolis. She briefly found a place as a professional dancer with the American National Ballet in Charleston, South Carolina, before the company let go most of their dancers in 2017 — including her.
Manka is still pursuing a place in a professional ballet company, whether in Indy or elsewhere.
“I had a lot to pull from in terms of experience in my own life, and it was very easy to jump right in,” she said. “It almost felt like it was something that was really written for me.”
Contrasting styles
“Unlikely Pairings” highlights the intersection of classical and contemporary dance, directed by Sophie Wang and featuring dancers Grace Mullins and Luis Hernandez.
Wang and Mullins met through the Jacobs pre-college ballet program at IU Bloomington. “That’s where I was most exposed to the arts and really found a love for dance as a creative outlet,” Wang said. “After I graduated, I started exploring things like hip hop, reggaeton, salsa, and that’s where I met Luis through the Indianapolis Latin hip-hop dance community.”
Creating a work that melded the forms of ballet and hip-hop was a fun challenge for Mullins, who is a 25-year-old professional dancer with the Indianapolis Ballet. She and Hernandez collaborated on the choreography, with Wang’s help.
“I’ve only choreographed one other time, and it was with another ballet dancer,” Mullins said. “With Luis, it was a little bit different, because he was obviously doing the hip-hop and I was doing the ballet, and we, neither of us really knew the terminology that the other person was using.”
Grit and sand
“Rock On” is a dance film choreographed by Meghan McGillicuddy, the owner of Strive Dance Company. McGillicuddy is a fan of horror films, including “The House of 1,000 Corpses” by Rob Zombie.
“Trying to mix the grit from the movie with the stylization of Bob Fosse, that was kind of my inspiration,” she said.
It was filmed in the IF Theatre and has a dreamlike aspect. A woman wanders in alone and sees a performance, after which the performers vanish, leaving an empty stage.
Another equally atmospheric production in the festival is “Enough” by Amanda Parsons Browning. She shot the film using an iPhone on a Lake Michigan beach near Milwaukee. At times the dancer, Elizabeth Roskopf, had to contend with the unstable sand of the beach.
“I think it was challenging for her, but it was fun,” said Browning, who owns the Indianapolis-based PULSE Dance Theater.
“We created the movement in the studio and then took it to the beach,” she said. “I told her, ‘Just lean into the falls so when you are naturally falling on the sand, when you’ve lost your balance, just lean into that sensation and let’s see what happens.’”
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Dan Grossman is a Mirror Indy freelance contributor. You can reach him at dan@indycorrespondent.org.
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