Summerdance Film Festival

The San Francisco Public Library partners with San Francisco Ballet School to present a three-part series of dance films in the Koret Auditorium this summer. While the Koret stage is not an ideal one to dance on, its screening capacities and direct sightlines allow us to turn it into a premiere film venue. The films and dates are listed below:

Billy Elliot: The setting is 1984 in Northern England coal mining village during a bitter strike. The local gym offers boxing and ballet instruction in studios at opposite ends of the structure. Billy Elliott, an 11-year-old miner's son, discovers that he prefers ballet to boxing. He must keep his growing interest a secret from his widowed father and domineering elder brother, but it comes to light when his ballet teacher arranges an audition for acceptance into the prestigious, if elite, Royal Ballet School in London (110 min. 2000).
One showing: Saturday, June 28, 2008, 4 p.m.

Alicia: Made by a Chicago film collective led by choreographer Frank Boehm about 22 years ago, this documentary profiles the life and career of Cuban Ballerina Assoluta, Alicia Alonso. Alonso began her dance career at [American] Ballet Theatre in New York, and with the brothers Fernando and Alberto Alonso, founded the Cuban National Ballet and built it into a world class company against the backdrop of the 1959 Cuban Revolution. (55 min.)
Two Showings: Wednesday, July 2, 2008, 4-5:30 p.m. and 6:15-7:30 p.m.

Cathedrale Engloutie is a selection from "Four by Kylian." To music by Claude Debussy, Czech choreographer Jiri Kylian uses the image of a cathedral braced against a rising tide to underscore the interrelationships between dancers as they respond to the resulting naturalrtic crescendo of sound. (20 min. 2000/1983) Swansong was created by British choreographer Christopher Bruce to capture the implied power relationships and overlay of violence in the detainment and interrogation of a victim by military guards. (37 min. 2006).
Two Showings: Wednesday, July 16, 2008, 4-5:30 and 6:15-7:30 p.m.

All programs at the library are free.
Supported by the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library