Last Dance

Duration: 84

Year Published: 2002

Creator: First Run/Icarus

Format: 16mm

Color: Color

Description: Goes behind the scenes of a collaboration between the Pilobolus Dance Theatre and Maurice Sendak's production company, The Night Kitchen, to produce "The Selection," a dance performance about the Holocaust. Shows the rewards and difficulties of collaboration between the two different genres of dance and storytelling. Points out that everyone from both groups worked together to produce the basic storyline, the dance movements, and the costumes, and shows initial group improvisations, rehearsals, and scenes from a performance. Explains Sendak's life as a first generation Jewish-American and shows footage of the Holocaust. Includes performance by the Hawthorne String Quartet of music composed for the production by Hans Krasa. Interviews Maurice Sendak; Pilobolus artistic directors Michael Tracy, Jonathan Wolken and Robby Barnett; Night Kitchen artistic director Arthur Yorinks; Terry Teachout, a music and dance critic; dancers Otis Cook and Benjamin Pring; and Mark Stanley, lighting designer. Contains full frontal nudity.