By Daryl Bär

Returning to his home city for the first time since his childhood, world-renowned ballroom dancer Pierre Dulaine sets about teaching dance to the children of Jaffa. Just getting prepubescent girls and boys dancing together is a challenge on its own, Pierre sets about partnering up kids from different schools in an effort to remove boundaries and bring together Israeli-Palestinian and Israeli-Jewish children, a task undertaken during times of great religious and political tension.

The patience and fortitude captured in this documentary go a long way toward warming the viewer to Dulaine. His methods and his motives for tackling such difficult and personal issues make him an endearing character to behold. It boggles the mind that he has to first warm these children to the idea of dancing, then dancing with the opposite sex, then dancing with the opposite sex from another school before finally revealing that their dance partners will be from an entirely opposite caste.

As events unfold and the children develop, several distinct personalities and partners are viewed. From the quiet child coming out of her shell, to the young Israeli Palestinian girl who pragmatically asks her partner, “Do you want us to move a little closer so we can move around without bumping into things”? This is a warm and optimistic documentary that never crosses into the ultra-saccharine or contrary. The politics and religious white elephants are ushered from the dance floor and for the briefest of moments these tiny dancers are allowed the freedom to be children.

Dancing in Jaffa may not be stylish or hard hitting in its approach but the purity of narrative and the efforts of Pierre Dulaine are to be applauded.

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