Five Dances

I danced for 10 years when I was much younger so this movie was a huge treat. Brought back memories. Loved all the modern dance choreography that was shown throughout. It was quirky and inventive...and used much ballet line. It was very effective in showing a small dance company with only 4 dancers....two females and two gay males. This made it much more intimate. Chip was the best dancer of the group. He showed much strength, attack and good line. Theo was good too as well as quite cute. As a gay male dancer myself, I especially loved the choreography between the two males. I got a little teary eyed watching the end where the two male dancers were clowning around dancing in front of the studio mirror. They were having fun and bonding in a way that only dancers can.

Being a dancer myself, I loved the fact that the film was centred around that theme, without needing to build a deep plot line. It told a story within itself. At times, it conveyed the characters' emotions possibly more than words could, it just fit, especially the piece nearer the end between Chip and Theo. I found it beautiful and emotional.

I also really empathised for Cynthia when she's crying in her bathroom and we can hear her husband's voice in the background.

I'm not sure what Chip's mum added to the storyline, perhaps it could have been replaced with more of a story line between the two men.

The music was evocative at times, some I didn't like completely, I liked it when we just heard the dancers' breath and even when it was silent.

Overall, it was a really enjoyable film, really emotional and it was brilliant when Chip started to connect with everyone else.

Five Dances (2013) was written and directed by Alan Brown. This is a movie you see for the dancing, not the plot. Ryan Steele plays Chip Daniel, an extraordinarily gifted dancer, who has just arrived in NYC from Kansas.

He's ready for the professional demands of dancing, but nothing else is working out for him. He has no money, no place to live, and no friends. His mother calls him endlessly demanding that he return, and telling him, "I know what you're doing there."

Returning to Kansas is out of the question. However, Chip is going to need help to survive in New York so that he can do what he does better than anyone else--dance.

Chip's encounters with the company choreographer and with the other dancers make up the plot. However, in a sense, the plot gets in the way of the dance sequences. My suggestion--don't worry about the plot; see this film for the dancing.

We saw this movie at the Little Theatre as part of Image Out--the Rochester LGBT Film Festival. It probably works better on a large screen, but it's worth seeking out and watching on video if that's the only available option.

A shy 18 year old moves from Kansas to The Big Apple and starts learning five dances hence the title. Every piece of the film's dances will be seared into your brain by the end of the film, but it is how it gets there that is the best part

Katie, Theo, Anthony, Cynthia and Chip are the main cast and most of this movie takes place in the dance studio. It's pretty much life for these dancers.

Always in the back of his mind is his Mom, his mother wants him to return to Kansas and she suspects Chip's doing a lot more than dancing in NYC

It is indeed a slow burn, but worth it. There's lots of silence in the film and some of it is filled with music. All the cast I feel help it shine but one subplot in the film must have had more time but may have been cut.

If you like an artsy slow burn that has good pay off, I would venture this as a good flick. I like how it does have LGBT themes but it is about opening up and being who you're supposed to be

Five Dances is the beautiful story of a naive but very gifted 18-year-old dancer named Chip. He came to New York from his troubled home in Kansas for a summer dance workshop and managed to stay on into the new year, when the story takes place.

The movie begins as he joins four older dancers (two each, male and female) rehearsing for an upcoming performance. He slowly gets past his social awkwardness and begins to develop relationships with the others - especially with Katie, who becomes like an older sister to him, and later with Theo.

His opening up is the key theme of the movie, which takes place almost entirely in the studio as the dancers rehearse. It has no other cast but the five dancers. (All of them are professional dancers, not actors, but they do both jobs brilliantly in this movie.)

The movie itself is like a dance, gracefully and deliberately paced and choreographed, the characters weaving in and out of each other's lives as they do in the dance they're rehearsing. Anyone who hates classical modern dance, or who hates slow character development with very little irrelevant action or drama, will not enjoy this movie.

However, it does not require any particular knowledge of or interest in dance. Indifference to dance should not be a handicap, but the viewer must be able to watch dancers without irritation.

And it definitely is a gay movie. It's a sort of coming-out story - really more an opening-out story, because Chip is coming out of his shell as a person even more than as a gay man. It's also a sexy and tender and gratifying love story.

Although it has those conventional gay-movie elements, the grace and discipline of dance permeate everything and make this an entirely original and unique - and unusually beautiful - gay movie. Alan Brown's earlier movie Private Romeo (also highly original) was my favorite gay movie for a long time, but Five Dances is even better.