AND THEN WE DANCED

rom drag performances to ballroom extravaganzas, booming club sequences to solitary swaying, queer cinema has often depicted moments of yearning or self-actualization through dance: think, for instance, of the erotic and essayistic function it serves in Isaac Julien’s (1989), Edward and Gaveston’s spotlit slow dancing in Derek Jarman’s (1991), the adolescent hero’s furious romp through back allies and rooftops in Stephen Daldry’s (2000), or the sublime hotel dance party to Rihanna’s “Diamonds” in Céline Sciamma’s (2014). Set in the traditional world of Tbilisi’s Georgian National Dance Ensemble, , the third feature by writer-director Levan Akin, modifies this motif of dance as a liberating mode of self-expression or pleasure for an