During his 25 years at the helm of indigenous contemporary dance company Bangara Dance Theatre, artistic director Stephen Page has dipped his agile toes into the cinematic realm on numerous occasions, notably choreographing both The Sapphires and Bran Nue Dae as well as directing the mesmeric Sand section of Tim Winton’s The Turning.
His first feature, Spear, which debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) before its Australian premiere at last year’s Adelaide Film Festival, is a similarly hypnotic fusion of traditional and contemporary dance, starring Page’s son Hunter Page-Lochard and Mystery Road’s Aaron Pedersen.
Page’s love of dance was sparked at an early age, while attending Brisbane’s Cavendish Road State High School. He’d sneak off to choreograph a large group of girlfriends, but when this after-school activity was discovered by two of his male friends, Page panicked.
“I thought they were gonna bash me, but they asked ‘how did you get 30 girls to be in front of you?’” Page says. “They wanted to come along, so I actually started doing partnering work with all of these sporty boys with great bodies but two left feet. All I wanted them to do was just lift the girls.”
Having nurtured a lifelong love of the art form, we asked Page to name his top five dance movies of all time:
Singin’ in the Rain
Co-directed by Gene Kelly and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers’ Stanley Donen, this 1952 classic starring Kelly, Debbie Reynolds and Donald O’Connor, depicted a 1920s Hollywood struggling with the transition to talkies. Kelly’s physicality transfixed Page.
“I grew up on him. I was brought up in an urban environment. We’d go country and fish and hunt on the holidays, but then we’d come home and I remember once dad found a working TV in the dump, which we took home. My mum was into musical theatre, so I was brought up on Singin’ in the Rain and a lot of Elvis Presley, like Blue Hawaii.”
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Saturday Night Fever
Sparking countless imitations, John Travolta positively glowed as 19-year-old Tony Manero, dancing his cares away in a white flare suit, stark against the iconic light-up dance floor at Brooklyn’s sadly-departed 2001 Odyssey club.
“What do I love about Saturday Night Fever? John Travolta’s tight pants,” laughs Page. “At the time, I used to watch my sisters dress up and they would wear scarves and flares and go to their version of Saturday Night Fever in Brisbane. They would imitate that American culture and practice the disco ballroom styles with each other. Travolta was amazing. He was almost the Gene Kelly figure of that time.”
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Grease
One year later Travolta also stared as the starring leather jacket-wearing T-Bird leader Danny in everyone’s favourite high school musical Grease, alongside Australia’s Olivia Newton-John as sweet, square Sandy, captivating a young Page.
“I think Grease was my first cinema experience. That time, that music, and the energy. I was fixated on [American musical variety TV program] Soul Train and another one called Dance Fever. We didn’t have YouTube back in those days, and this movie really captured that spirit.”
Source: YouTube
West Side Story
Variety critic Eddie Cockrell noted that Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise’s West Side Story was, “a useful comparison to describe Spear in broad strokes,” after catching it at TIFF, though Page admits he never reads his reviews. He does see the similarities though.
“I loved it because it was the first sort of great cross-racial confrontation and as a young boy I really understood it. Everyone saw this as a love story, but it’s really about race.”
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Ten Canoes
Okay, you might be asking yourself why this Rolf de Heer and Peter Djigirr masterpiece is on the list, when it’s not actually a dance movie, but we’ll let Page explain.
“I always look at aboriginal filmmaking, especially Ten Canoes. I thought that, to me, was like a dance, just the bodies and the way it moved. Some films play out like dance to me, like Terrance Malick and Tree of Life. When I first saw The Thin Red Line in New York, I remember sitting there and just loving the meditation of it.”
Source: YouTube
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