“DANCING STILL”

Jeez! Where has the time gone? Well, let’s see…in the fall of last year, my friend and teacher Eric Matheny at The Acting Center, gave me an assignment to start writing. I thought he was crazy! Writing to me seemed impossible. I had lots of ideas but the thought of putting them on paper and shaping them into dialogue was inconceivable. Besides, my husband is the writer in our family and he’d been encouraging me to write for years but I always said, “Nah…I’m an actress”. Anyway, I forced myself to sit at the computer and start…and it was fun and frustrating but there is was…ideas flowing to paper and being shaped into dialogue. It may sound mystical but I was being inspired by life in a whole new way. I started thinking about how choices, even those from an early age, inform the course of our lives. And I’ve always been intrigued by the ‘messiness’ of relationships and the concept of unrequited love.

One of my favorite plays is Harold Pinter’s Betrayal. And so out of all of this came a short called Dancing Still. It’s the story about Natalie and Shane, former lovers who reunite after fifteen years and discover that their lives haven’t gone as they’d expected. I showed it to my husband and he thought it was really good and he said, “Let’s shoot it. I’ll direct it.” And I said “Really?…Ok!” I’d been bursting for some time to act in something that really inspired me; something that I could really stand behind and sink my teeth into. And the fact that my husband wanted to lend his talent was just so awesome. After three or four or maybe eight re-writes we pulled together some money and some talented actor friends and a crew and shot it. We told a beautiful and heartfelt story in 16 minutes. It was honestly some of the most rewarding work I’ve ever done and so many of us who worked on it, for the love of making movies, felt the same way. We had a screening of it in March at the William Morris Endeavor Screening Room for about 180 people and it was really well received. Since then, we’ve been officially selected to screen it at the LA Shorts Film Festival, the LA Femme International Film Festival and the Off International Film Festival in British Columbia. We also received nominations from Maverick Movie Awards…Best Director: Robert Munic; Best Actor: Louis Ferreira; Best Actress: Me.

We’re thrilled to be getting some recognition for our efforts but truly the most satisfaction came from taking the initiative to do it ourselves. Indie musician, Eleanor Friedberger gave a great quote in a magazine article I read….I’m paraphrasing but it was something like, “Everything seems impossible until you actually do it”. So I’m going to keep doing…keep writing down my ideas and pushing forward. XO Here’s a link to the trailer \’Dancing Still Trailer\’ on YouTube