T MAGAZINE: The Movies That Get Dancers on Their Feet

The New York Times Magazine asked 10 people working in performance, including our Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, to share the movies that replay in their minds and have even colored their own work.

By Laura Regensdorf | The New York Times Style Magazine

While live dance is inherently ephemeral, in the same way that “you can’t catch the wind,” as the art historian and curator RoseLee Goldberg says, film does just that, preserving steps in time. In search of a dance-inspired watch list for summer, the New York Times Magazine asked 10 people working in performance, including our Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, to share the movies that replay in their minds and have even colored their own work.

An excerpt of Jawole’s response:

‘Nora Chipaumire was a member of my company at the time that she was making “Nora,” which portrays a series of fictionalized events in her life through movement.’

‘At first I thought it was going to be more of a documentary, but it’s so poetic. There’s no speaking, only occasional lines of text shown onscreen, so the story leaves a lot of room for interpretation. In the opening scene, Nora is in red against this blue sky, running along the brown earth. She’s from Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, and they filmed nearby in South Africa.’