Tuesday Club Film Night
January 24, 2012 at 7 pm
at the Loring Greenough House
12 South St, Jamaica Plain
presents
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN OVER 65
Rarely screened in the U.S., this charming documentary follows a group of seniors as they learn to perform modern dance. Uplifting and candid, we watch non-professionals as they struggle with the rigors of training, reflect on the realities of aging, and courageously take on new challenges.
They could all have been sitting at home enjoying their pensions, but instead they answered a small ad: “Wanted: Ladies and Gentlemen over 65”. The renowned Wuppertal choreographer, Pina Bausch, was putting on a new production of her dance piece “Kontakthof”. This time with elderly amateurs. The film accompanies these people with a full professional life behind them. They must use their energy and life experience to cross boundaries and break conventions.
German Film Critics award for “Best Documentary” in 2004
Directed by Lilo Mangelsdorff
Germany 2002, 70 min, English subtitles
Cinetrix GmbH/NDR/ARTE production
A review by RONNIE SCHEIB (Variety 3/1/2004):
In 1998, an ad appeared in the Wuppertal, Germany, newspaper inviting seniors with no previous acting or dancing experience to audition for parts in Pina Bausch’s revival of her 1978 performance-piece “Contact Zone.” What happened to the 26 people who responded to the ad and were ultimately chosen to participate is the subject of “Ladies and Gentlemen Over 65,” Lilo Mangelsdorff’s expertly crafted docu. (…)
Although Mangelsdorff and her crew arrived on the scene some two years after the play had been mounted, she deftly retraces the process of putting the production together. Bausch’s avant-garde choreography, involving sequences of oddball calisthenics, creates a jolt of surprise when the parts finally come together, the tramp of feet and adjustment of camera-angle transforming the simple gestures into an arcane and somehow provocative language.
Bausch has directed several of her pieces on video, and her Wuppertal Dance Theater (which nearly obliterates the line between “dance” and “theater”) is the subject of numerous documentaries, including one by Chantal Akerman (“One Day, Pina Asked for…”).
Her most famous appearance is undoubtedly in Pedro Almodovar’s “Talk to Me” which opens and closes on two of her works (Bausch herself dancing in the “Cafe Muller” curtain-raiser).Bausch never appears in “Ladies and Gentlemen,” as members of her original 1978 troupe preside over the rehearsals, putting the newly inducted senior citizens through their paces.
Though the fictional story of “Contact Zone” features old men and women enacting childish, primitive male/female behavior patterns in an old ballroom, it was first performed by relatively young professionals, and the choreography makes no allowances for 60-plus- and 70-plus-year-old bodies. There is something both sinister and liberating in the presence of the age appropriate.
Septuagenarian actor/dancers recount being suddenly thrust into a wholly unfamiliar discipline, learning complicated, physically demanding dance routines on top of a lot of truly strenuous structured running around (the play clocks in at three hours).
At first, the work jeopardizes people’s self-images: Ex-heads of companies are forced to swallow non-stop criticism.
But relatively quickly, interviewees speak of the empowerment they feel as they start to inhabit their roles. All kinds of permutations on the male/female dance are simultaneously emotionally validated and savagely parodied.
The sense of accomplishment and camaraderie among the 26 members of the troupe is extraordinary, as they articulately tell of reinventing themselves in undreamt-of ways, the variously passive or aggressive, peaceful or angry movements of the dance providing an unexpectedly creative outlet for lifetimes of experience.
Tech credits are uniformly excellent, particularly Sophie Maintigneux’s lensing which works brilliantly with Bausch’s choreography.
Camera (color, DV), Sophie Maintigneux; editors, Eva Voosen, Mangelsdorff; sound, Annegret Fricke. Reviewed at Dance on Camera Festival, New York, Jan. 16, 2004.
