Challenging AIDS through Dance
"There's a rock in my shoe. It's small, but it changes everything. It's hard now to remember when the earth welcomed my feet. There's a rock in my shoe - there's a virus in my blood." – Alan Stinson, from film
This powerful documentary follows a unique HIV/AIDS dance group in San Francisco led by pioneering dancer Anna Halprin. It shows a group of men with AIDS or HIV-infection using their condition as a resource for creative expression. The video is a collage of seven months of the group's emotionally-charged workshops, culminating in a poignant performance of a work titled "Carry Me Home."
This is a film about creativity and community as healing forces. It captures the brotherhood, the hope, the laughter and the tears of the dancers as they gather weekly to shape a dance of their stories. POSITIVE MOTION shows how dance can be therapeutic to the dancer, whose body becomes a storyteller conveying a new-found expression of health. It demonstrates how this form of theatre and therapy enables individuals alienated from themselves and their community to rediscover both their bodies and their brotherhood.
(1991, 37 min.)
Other Open Eye Pictures films about Anna Halprin:
» Returning Home
» Embracing Earth
“Skilled and poetic... a sensitive and fresh portrayal.”