Levan Akin | და ჩვენ ვიცეკვეთ (Da chven vitsek'vet) (And Then We Danced) / 2019

dancing for joy

by Douglas Messerli

 

Levan Akin (screenwriter and director) და ჩვენ ვიცეკვეთ (Da chven vitsek'vet) (And Then We Danced) / 2019

 

The Swedish/French production of the Georgian-language and Georgia-located film And Then We Danced was perhaps one my most delightful of recent film discoveries. I have to admit I am sucker for gay love films in which the characters encounter nearly impossible adversity and still manage to love, forget, and move on. It might be said to represent the melodramatic pattern of gay behavior that is bred into our bones through having to face a youth of just those difficulties, of coming to terms with ourselves, falling in love—sometimes with a straight guy or a gay man who is not yet ready to fully accept his sexuality—and then stumbling on nonetheless.

  

   I have always loved dance and even struggled for a year or more to become a dancer, so it is easy for me to see this pattern, metaphorically speaking, as a kind of inevitable dance that comes with the territory: a painful battle with the body to seduce, embrace, and make love to another only to discover him pulling away.

     It is even more compelling, accordingly, to see that metaphor played out in terms of one of the most traditionally conservative of forms, the National Georgian Ensemble which in the past few years has “cleansed” itself of all seemingly individualistic gestures, and reintroduced a notion that perhaps never even existed before in traditional Georgian dance, a “masculinization” of the entire series of movements.

     Young Merab (the marvelous dancer/actor Levan Gelbakhiani) is beautiful, but in his slight stature and still-adolescent movements, he is everything but the notion of pure masculine form, however one might attempt to describe that ephemeral concept. Both his mother and father were involved with the company in the “old” days, both having been left empty with no financial futures after their inevitable ouster from the dance company for the sin of having become old and dancing in an outdated style.

      Both Merab and his brother David (Giorgi Tsereteli) have studied with the company since childhood, David evidently having demonstrated the superior talent, at least according to the smugly imperious and always disapproving choreographer Aleko (Kakha Gogidze).

      As David later in the film makes clear, Aleko and the company’s director are not at all impressed with their parents, who, after all, were part of the old, now banned school of Georgian dancing. And David, of the age in which he prefers to spend his drunken nights with women and his close male friends, has become delinquent, purposely working to get himself expelled from the company despite Merab’s attempts to wake him up in time for the daily rehearsals.

      This family’s father has moved off from Tbilisi to a larger city where he works in the market, while Merab and David’s mother and grandmother live in a small Tblisi apartment, making do with the leftovers Merab takes home from the restaurant in which he works and, particularly, when their power goes off for non-payment, the “special gifts” provided by David’s good friends—which we only later discover involves his selling them drugs.

      Merab has hooked up with a fellow student in the second company with which he rehearses, Mary (Ana Javakhishvili), with whom he is featured in an important company dance. Despite his years of study, however, and his studied performances of the dances he has long agon learned, Aleko, it is clear, is not at all happy with the boy’s demeanor, asking him again and again to be more masculine, aloof, and rigid instead of putting his all into the often clumsy-looking complexities of the footwork of traditional Georgian dances.

     The boy would be happy just to continue as he has been—despite the intensive days of painful muscles and the late nights he spends in the restaurant—were it not that, seemingly out of nowhere, somewhat like a Kafka story, a “replacement dancer,” Irakli (Bachi Valishvili) suddenly appears out of nowhere. Nobody know who he is a replacement for—rumor has it that one of the major dancers in the primary company has been found having sex with another man, has been beaten up by his fellow dancers, and sent away by his parents to a monastery for the Georgian method of “curing homosexuality.” We later learn that a monk has taken sexual advantage of the dancer, who has been forced also to leave the monastery and now has no choice but to work as a male prostitute.

 

     At first, Aleko is wary of the newcomer, demanding he immediately remove his earring. But Irakli is tall, lean, and highly masculine, representing just the look in demand, and besides that proves to be an excellent and skilled dancer. Merab’s role is quickly assigned to the newcomer and it appears that the rest of the film might be a resentful battle between the two handsome young men.

     For a short while, it is precisely that, as Merab comes in even earlier to rehearse, hoping to keep his other roles. But word has also gotten out, since a major dancer has left the company (clearly the rumored gay boy) that the director will be auditioning members of the second company. And soon after, the list is announced which includes both Merab and Irakli, as well as a mean-spirited competitor, Luka (Levan Gabrava).

      Although Irakli immediately claims to have a girlfriend back in Batumi, he soon befriends Merab, the two learning from one another and quickly growing close as friends. With Mary and Irakli, Merab visits his father, who argues that his son should give up dancing since it will leave him, like them, with nothing. But that familial visit and Irakli’s own befriending of David, begins to draw the two even closer.

      One night, when several dancers find themselves together in a downtown bar, they observe some locals entertaining tourists with “traditional Georgian dancers,” and recognizing their total inabilities to make the proper movers, Irakli suggests they provide the tourists a true vision of Georgian dance. What begins as a simple performance soon becomes a personal sense of simply celebration in their youth and ability to express that through their bodies, Merab and Irakli dancing together in an almost frenetic expression of the traditional and personal, eccentric joy of their lives.

      For Merab, suddenly, it opens up a new world as he realizes, through his nightly dreams and daily obsessions that he is, in fact, is not only in love with his competitor, but—without any of the attendant fears which even we, as outsiders of the Georgian culture, now know about which Merab should be highly circumspect—is the recognition that he is gay.

       Ah, the beauty of fearless youth! At home, his silly and playful embracement of his grandmother and mother betray a young man madly in love. And every moment that he is with Irakli the obsession grows, the boys finally, on a kind of country outing, masturbating each other in the nearby woods. Soon after, they share a bed.

     Although they have been careful, Mary has noticed where her former boyfriend’s eyes are now almost aways focused on his fellow dance, and angrily realizes what has happened, although she remains quiet, knowing that any mention of the relationship would destroy both of her friends.

      Almost as suddenly as the two boys fall in love, however, David is kicked out of the company for his absences. Without any source of income, he begs his brother to help him get a job at the restaurant where he and Mary work. David is hired on provision, but on the very first evening is ordered out, along with Merab, for having been observed selling drugs to a customer. Mary joins them.

      Even more devastating for Merab is the sudden disappearance of Irakli, whom he can no longer even reach by cellphone. Despondent and in anger for no longer being able to share the sexuality into which he has just jubilantly opened himself up to, Merab picks up a young male prostitute who he has already spotted on the bus. The boy takes him to a gay bar and later even introduces him to his prostitute friends, all opening up the new work which he’s now accepted to the beautiful dancer.

      But Luca has seen him leaving the bar and in no time at all has revealed Merab to the rest of the company as a queer. Hungover and furious about the situation, Merab performs badly at rehearsal and seriously injures his angle. Aleko attempts to discourage him from the audition, but Merab continues to believe he can rehearse and perform.

      While Mary tries to nurse him back to health, he finally receives a call from Irakli reporting that he is back in Batumi caring for his ailing father, and will probably not be there for the audition.

       Leaving practice, Merab is now heckled by Luka and others, Mary warning him to be careful so that he too doesn’t end up like the rumored ensemble dancer.

       As if things could not get worse, Merab returns home to discover that his brother David has gotten a local girl pregnant, infuriating his mother and grandmother, even though the girl’s father, desperate to cover up his daughter’s condition, has already arranged a wedding with plans to take David into his employment.

 

      At the wedding, Merab suddenly spots Irakli, just returned to town. And after a traditional religious ceremony which incorporates an entire segment about God’s first couple, Adam being and Even being a female—the church reiterating the importance of gender in all such situations—Merab goes on search of his beloved dancer friend, finally finding him alone in a back bedroom. There Irakli tells him the devastating news that he intends to marry his girlfriend and return to Batumi, leaving dance forever behind.

      There is no proper expression of Merab’s reaction; he can only had back Irakli’s earring which he has stolen, offering it up like a marriage ring for the relationship between the two of them that can never happen in Georgian culture and symbolizes the endless series of future disappointments he will have to face.

      Returning home to cower in bed, he is surprised to find David returning to his old bedroom after himself being beaten, having defended his brother’s “honor” when several males at the wedding called his brother a queer.

     In a remarkably loving scene, Merab makes it clear that the honor fight was meaningless, that he, in fact, is gay; and David admits that he realizes that his own future entails growing into a fat old Georgian man unhappy with the way his life as gone, yet is nonetheless able to accept his fate. In perhaps the most touching scenes in the film, however, the brother argues that such a life is not for Merab, that his beautiful brother deserves so much more, including happiness that he will never find by remaining in Georgia. Merab can only shake his head in agreement, well knowing that given his new sexual identity, he cannot stay at home.

      Nonetheless, he surprisingly shows up at the audition, Mary being there, despite what has happened, just to support him.

 

     Despite his passionate dancing, his ankle has not yet healed and he falls. The director is clearly unimpressed. Yet despite his dismissal, Merab continues, gradually turns the traditional forms into what the Wikipedia entry on this film nicely describes as “his own unbridled, androgynous style.” Surely, both men have to realize that Merab has just expressed that his dance was for joy rather than coming from a statement of a nationalistic toxic representation of male sexuality.

        Outraged, the director stands and leaves, while Aleko remains to see Merab play out his defiant expression before he bows and departs.

      The homophobia talked about in the film exists in perhaps even worse than the movie in reality.

      In July 2019, the film won the Grand Prix Award at the 10th Odessa International Film Festival. The next month the major actor, Levan Gelbakhiani won the Best Actor Award at the 25th Sarajevo Film Festival. In October of that year And Then We Danced won the Best Feature Film Award at the prestigious British LGBT Iris Prize Festival. And in January 2020 it played in the Spotlight section of the famed Sundance Film Festival.

      Swedish born director Levin Akin, whose parents were born in and left Georgia when it was under Soviet rule, has put a great deal of love and passion into the film about his parents’ homeland, and was insistent that it appear in Geogia as well. But when the premiere was announced in Tbilsi and Batumi, ultra-conservative groups threatened to cancel it. The head of the Children Protection Public Movement, Levan Palavandishvili, as well as the leader of the ultra-nationalist movement in Georgia, March Sandro Bregadze insisted that they would picket the venues to protest the film’s showing which they argued was “against Georgian and Christian traditions and values, popularizing the sin of sodomy.” The Georgian Orthodox Church also came out against the film, while trying to distance itself from any potential acts of violence.

     In November 2019, the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Georgia mobilized police troops, putting them around the Amirani Cinema where the premiere was to take place, and in nearby streets, which itself might be perceived as a way to delimit audiences. When the rightist protesters, however, tried to break through the police cordon, they were restrained, and although one civil activist, Ana Subeliani was severely injured by protestors, the screenings took place as planned, while nonetheless revealing that Georgia is indeed probably not a place for young open gay men such as the character in this film to seek out their futures.

     All of this should remind us, moreover, of another Tbilsi born artist, the great filmmaker Sergei Paradjanov, born into an Armenian family, arrested and imprisoned by Soviet Union authorities who controlled Georgia at the time, because of his bisexual activities.

 

Los Angeles, November 25, 2023

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (November 2023).