Secundaria

Dance On Film ~ Secundaria

Monday, October 20, 2014 - 6:30pm to 8:00pm
  • Library Hall

A film by Mary Jane Doherty

Secundaria  quietly follows one high school class on its journey through Cuba’s world famous National Ballet School.  Our teenage dancers love to dance but many of them must dance as their sole way out of poverty and the constraints – visible, and not so visible – that is life in Cuba.

At least, that’s how the movie begins. In their third year, shy and inscrutable Mayara, the class star, takes charge of her destiny by committing  an unprecedented act of willfulness.Cinematic storytelling without a script, staging, or interviews, our gentle stream of a story turns out to have a waterfall hidden around that last bend…

Watch the trailer here.

Run time: 96 min..

The Dance on Film series is presented by the Bud Werner Memorial Library, Perry-Mansfield and Steamboat Dance Theatre.

The free screening includes an introduction by dance history professor and Perry-Mansfield Executive Director Joan Lazarus.

About the film's commentator

Joan Lazarus


Joan Lazarus served as Executive Director of Oakland Ballet, General Manger of Cowell Theater at Fort Mason Center, and Executive Director of WestWave Dance, an annual festival of new choreography presented in San Francisco. Joan has performed with or in the works of Alonzo King, Cliff Keuter, Ellen Bromberg, Victoria Morgan, Krissy Keefer, Frank Shawl, Bill DeYoung, Toni Pimble, Richard Colton and Alan Ptashek. She taught at the University of Oregon, Mills College, San Francisco Ballet, Dance Circle of Boston, The Princeton Ballet, RoCo Dance & Fitness, and Shawl-Anderson Dance Center, and co-authored the Dance Curriculum Guide adopted by the San Francisco Unified School District. She received Bay Area National Dance Week’s Contribution to the Field of Dance Award in 2006, and in 2012 she received an Isadora Duncan Dance Award for Sustained Achievement. Lazarus was named 2011 Dance MVP by the San Francisco Chronicle. Joan joined the staff at Perry-Mansfield in June 2012.

About Dance On Film

This Dance On Film series is presented by Bud Werner Memorial Library, Perry-Mansfield and Steamboat Dance Theatre. Perry-Mansfield celebrates its 101st anniversary as the oldest continuously operating arts camp in the United States this year. Steamboat Dance Theatre is a community dance organization presents its 43nd annual concert Feb. 26-28, 2015, in addition to year-round dance scholarships and education programs in Yampa Valley schools and throughout the community. This collaborative and educational dance film series features free screenings of the hottest new dance documentaries along with the finest classic dance films from a variety of genres filmed throughout the ages.