Then Comes The Body is a great short documentary from Jacob Krupnick about a Nigerian man who taught himself how to dance ballet from watching YouTube tutorials, the ballet school he started in Lagos, and the students who are branching out into the rest of the world.
There’s no ballet here in Nigeria. There’s no one to look up to. There are no theaters. There are no productions. There are no ballet schools at all. The only thing you have is yourself and the internet.
From a piece in Dance Magazine:
The founder of Leap of Dance Academy, Daniel Ajala, was inspired to learn ballet after watching the 2001 American film Save the Last Dance. As there weren’t any ballet schools in Nigeria, he taught himself by watching YouTube videos. Determined to provide his community with opportunities he hadn’t had, Ajala established the Academy in 2017 and offers classes for free, explaining that he doesn’t want anyone “to have an excuse for not following your passion.”
Leap of Dance Academy came to worldwide attention in 2020 via a viral video of student Anthony Madu dancing in the rain, which Krupnick watched and resulted in Then Comes The Body. Madu got a scholarship to a ballet school in the UK and there’s a feature length documentary about him that’s available to watch on Disney+.
High above the streets of NYC, Brazilian ballet dancer Ingrid Silva performs wearing a custom paper sculpture.
Revealing the rooftop of Renzo Piano’s New York Times Building for the first time, director Jacob Krupnick captures Brazilian ballet dancer Ingrid Silva against the Manhattan skyline at sunrise for short film Above. Dancing to music by Nils Frahm and wearing a custom paper sculpture by French artist Pauline Loctin, Silva moves between HVAC utilities humming 800 feet above the city, in an unseen space with an unexpected elegance.
Young Explorers is a wonderful series of short films by Jacob Krupnick that follow toddlers who have recently mastered walking as they explore the wide world on their own. Fair warning: as a parent, the solo NYC street crossing scene gave me a heart attack!
Kids do not want to be contained — they are built for adventure. As a culture, we are wildly protective of our little ones, often to the point of protecting them from happy accidents and mistakes they might learn from. “Young Explorers” is a series of short films about what happens when you allow kids who are very young — who have just learned to walk by themselves — to explore the world completely on their own.
There are ten films in all so far, two of which are available on Vimeo (embedded above). They are on display outside the ICP Museum in NYC until July 23.
Update: Krupnik just added a new video to Young Explorers of his own daughter, Ada.
It must have been difficult to film her picking up random drinking straws and cups from the street without intervening.
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