But First...

A pair of short ballets, written for the screen, filmed and performed by artists of the Georgian SSR. In color, with narration.

A child is born. We see underwater swimmers representing this. He is young, in a jungle setting, with two fanciful "instincts" guiding him as swooping bird-like acrobats initially menace, then delight. As an adolescent, he enters a desert, where a man spins a large cube of metal tubing. He leaves his instinct-guides behind, and enters a garden where two statues dance in a pond. As he watches their sensual acrobatics of love, he becomes a man. He is offered wealth (represented by a golden hat) by a devil figure. In a richly decorated room, a scruffy troupe of a dozen acrobats and a little girl reawaken the old man's youthful nature and love.

A spirit emerges from icy cold water to explore the beautiful snow covered garden she finds herself trapped within.

A young Caribbean immigrant mother struggling to make ends meet at her dye factory job finds a release through her abandoned dream of dance.

Five friends take a getaway trip and stay at Wonder Villa. But, the haunted villa's supernatural powers suck them in and their only chance to survive is by dancing.

Boisterous nightclub entertainer Buzzy Bellew was the witness to a murder committed by gangster Ten Grand Jackson. One night, two of Jackson's thugs kill Buzzy and dump his body in the lake at Prospect Park in Brooklyn. Buzzy comes back as a ghost and summons his bookworm twin, Edwin Dingle, to Prospect Park so that he can help the police nail Jackson.

Live from the Bolshoi Theatre, this 1978 remake of the two-act classical Christmas ballet blends Tchaikovsky's beloved melodies with superb dancing. Famed Bolshoi duo Yekaterina Maximova and Vladimir Vasiliev star in this production of Tchaikovsky's beloved ballet, The Nutcracker. Maximova dances the role of Maria, the young girl whose mysterious uncle Drosselmeyer gives her a wooden nutcracker (Vasiliev) for Christmas. When he comes to life, she rescues him from marauding mice and is taken to the Kingdom of Sweets.

Part of the larger filmic Four Journeys Into Mystic Time, in this work director Shirley Clarke makes use of a dancer’s body not only as the primary performer, but also as a canvas on which to paint projected images. Further enhanced by editing and effective use of shadows, the film is a transformative experience.

During an interview, Tadashi, a young Spanish-Japanese actor who plays female characters in a theatrical practice similar to kabuki, will return to the past to relive his most intimate memories.

Throughout a night out in downtown Tijuana, Laura waits for her destiny to arrive.

When everyone in town falls under the spell of charismatic cosmetic surgeon Doctor Coppelius, feisty Swan must act to save her sweetheart Franz, before his heart is used to spark life into Coppelia – the ‘perfect’ robot-woman the Doctor has created.

At the Factory, laughter is produced, canned and shipped into the world in precisely measured, temperate doses. It lacks something, though: freedom and authenticity. One woman is unable to laugh according to the norms. She accidentally releases a reckless laughter breaking all the Factory rules. Soon realizes she is leading a revolution for freedom and joy, against pomposity.

Johnny Riggs, a con man on the lam, finds himself in a Latin-American country named Patria. There, he overhears a convent-bred rich girl praying to her guardian angel for help in managing her tangled business affairs. Riggs decides to materialize as the girl's "angel", gains her unquestioning confidence, and helps himself to the deluded girl's millions. Just as he and his partner are about to flee Patria with their booty, Riggs realizes he has fallen in love with the girl and returns the money, together with a note that is part confession and part love letter. But the larcenous duo's escape from Patria turns out to be more difficult than they could ever have imagined.

A Japanese fairy tale meets commedia dell'Arte. All in white, the naïf Pierrot lies in a wood. Doo-wop music plays as he rises, stares about, and reaches for the moon. Although music abounds and the children of the wood are there at play, Pierrot is melancholy and alone. Harlequin appears, brimming with confidence and energy. He conjures the lovely Colombina. Pierrot is dazzled. But can the course of true love run smooth?

Three completely different stories are told through dance.

With the loss of Patroclus (his undeclared male lover), Greek warrior Achilles returns to the Trojan War.

An abstract work featuring three dancers, the performers interact with large screens as well as each other. Included in Shirley Clarke’s Four Journeys Into Mystic Time, costuming and color play an integral role in this piece.

This athletically vibrant and sensual experience explores love across a lifetime. Using dance to inhabit a common mortal story of love born, lived, lost, burned, and seemingly gone forever, THROUGH YOU is a live-action VR richly infused with an atmosphere of passion. Dancers Joanna Kotze and Marni Thomas Wood, along with actor Amari Cheatom, take us through the coursing periods of time, from the 1970s to 2046 and beyond, where the question is harbored, “Can love be found again?

A feisty 18-year-old Italian-American New Yorker named Cindy is sent off to Rome with her irascible stepmother and vain stepsisters. On the way, she meets and falls in love with, globetrotting bagpacker Mizio, who eventually turns out to be of Italian nobility. There's a fairy stand-in in the form of a spaced-out astrologer, a dance, and she even loses a shoe at one point. Care to venture a guess how it all turns out?

Cinematic magician, legendary provocateur, and author of Hollywood Babylon, Kenneth Anger was a unique figure in post-war American culture. His iconic short films are characterised by a mystical-symbolic visual language and phantasmagorical-sensual opulence that underscores the medium’s transgressive potential. Anger’s work fundamentally shaped the aesthetics of 1960s and 1970s subcultures, the visual lexicon of pop and music videos and queer iconography. These nine films form the basis of Anger’s reputation as one of the most influential pioneers of avant-garde film and video art. Fireworks, 1947, 14 min Puce Moment, 1949, 6 min Rabbit's Moon, 1950/1971, 16 min Eaux d'Artifice, 1953, 13 min Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome, 1954, 37 min Scorpio Rising, 1964, 28 min Kustom Kar Kommandos, 1965, 3 min Invocation of My Demon Brother, 1969, 11 min Lucifer Rising, 1981, 27 min