Nine Easy Dances

“Nine Easy Dances” is a 19-minute docufictional film about a filmmaker’s attempt to stage an elaborate dance film with her parents. However, when her parents fail to live up to unrealistic expectations, she hires professional dancers to play them. A collaborative dance unfolds within her family home, as captured through behind-the-scenes and 16mm footage, all of which becomes gradually overshadowed by her mother’s metastasizing cancer. The hybrid film that emerges is a loving tribute to one family’s way of facing mortality and a darkly funny meditation on that impossible urge to hold onto the past; on what family archives can come to mean on the eve of loss.