The Georgian folk dancer is an image of masculine stereotype. His movements are martial, virile; they simulate war, hunting, and the courtship of his beloved. Often accoutered with a double-edged dagger, he personifies the small, proud nation’s history and traditions. So when the Swedish-Georgian director Levan Akin arrived in Tbilisi to shoot the country’s first explicitly queer feature film, a coming-of-age story about a traditional dancer, he was met with not a little hostility. The Sukhishvili Georgian National Ballet, the country’s principal dance ensemble, wanted nothing to do with the project. The rights holders to a number of old folk-song recordings refused to coöperate with the film; Akin rerecorded the songs with new artists, many of whom, along with the lead choreographer, declined to be named in the credits. The casting manager received death threats, and the production company retained bodyguards for the crew. Securing locations was so challenging that some scenes had to be shot on the fly, with many roles filled by non-professional actors, lending the film a neorealist aspect. If anyone asked, Akin resorted to lying about the plot: it was, he’d say, about a French tourist who comes to Georgia and falls in love with the culture.
In truth, “And Then We Danced,” which was released this week on iTunes, centers around a fledgling member of the national dance ensemble, Merab (Levan Gelbakhiani), who is auditioning for a spot in the main troupe. His oppressive trainer reproaches him for being too soft, too feminine. “You should be like a nail,” he growls. “This isn’t the lambada.” Offstage, Merab’s life is a grind. To survive, he waits tables, bringing leftovers home for his mother, grandmother, and feckless older brother. He stays up studying grainy videos of Vakhtang Chabukiani, a legendary Georgian dancer, until the electricity cuts out. His entire future, it seems, rides on the upcoming audition, and on the appearance of normalcy the profession demands. “This life is not for everyone,” his trainer tells him in private. “There is no room for weakness.” Outside the dance studio, the first time we see Merab smile is on an early-morning bus ride to rehearsal, when his rival and crush, Irakli (Bachi Valishvili), falls asleep on his shoulder.
In 1934, Joseph Stalin passed Article 154-a, which made “sexual relations between men” punishable by up to five years of hard labor. (Such proclivities in women were treated as a mental-health issue, which, according to one Soviet psychiatrist, could be cured with “pregnancy and child-bearing . . . even after lasting perverted forms of cohabitation with women.”) In 2000, nine years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Georgian parliament decriminalized homosexuality, but the state does not recognize same-sex marriage and, as in the United States, restricts blood donations from sexually active gay men. In one recent survey, fifty-nine per cent of Georgians said that they would object to having a gay neighbor (down from eighty-seven per cent a decade ago). Earlier this year, “And Then We Danced” had the curious honor of being mentioned in Human Rights Watch’s 2020 World Report. At the film’s Georgian première, both in Tbilisi and in the port city of Batumi, the report reads, “ultranationalist hate groups and their supporters organized protests against the screening.” (Its world première was at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, where it received a fifteen-minute standing ovation; three months later, Sweden submitted the film to the Academy Awards as its entry for the Best International Feature Film category.) One of the protest organizers, Levan Vasadze, a neonationalist millionaire with close ties to the Georgian Orthodox Church, called the film “a moral threat to the fabric of our society.” Many of the demonstrators were parishioners, grandmothers in headscarves carrying prayer candles and wooden icons of the Madonna and Child. “Georgian national dance is the pinnacle of the beauty of our tradition of manhood, warrior spirit, and purity,” Vasadze told the Times. “To pick that very sanctuary and create something as heartbreaking and offensive to our culture as this is ten times more hurtful than if it was just an anti-traditional movie.” In other words, had the film’s protagonist been a gay tax attorney or software developer, it would not have stoked such controversy. After three days of sold-out screenings and rioting, twenty-seven arrests, and one hospitalization, Akin called off the remainder of the film’s run in Georgia.
Considering this backstory, it may seem odd to view “And Then We Danced” as a love letter to the country in which it’s set, but that is what it is. The film scintillates with the colors, sounds, and textures of Georgia: magisterial vistas of the Caucasus; precise displays of folk dance and dress; a-capella polyphonic singing; delectable shots of freshly baked shoti bread and big plates of khinkali soup dumplings; and the custom of the supra, the hours-long ritual of communal eating, drinking, and toasting. An enormous earthenware jar (kvevri), used for fermenting wine, serves as a backdrop for a love scene. In another scene, Merab dances by the dawning light for Irakli; apart from his boxers, he wears only an old-fashioned sheepherder’s hat (papakhi) and an Orthodox cross. Akin commandeers these traditional elements not to provoke but to raise the questions at the heart of the film: Who counts as authentically Georgian? And who decides?
“And Then We Danced” celebrates Georgia’s rich cultural heritage while reclaiming it for a broader demographic—for Georgians like Merab, who have been a part of it all along. One particular scene in the film is executed with such understatement that, on my first viewing, I completely missed its import. Merab is rehearsing in front of a mirror. In another room, offscreen but within earshot, a conversation is unfolding on the subject of a young couple who, following an accidental pregnancy, have agreed to marry—in two days’ time, to “save the girl’s honor.” An older woman’s voice is heard evincing disapproval of an ethnically mixed marriage. “I heard she’s Armenian,” she says. “It could be true.” “Jesus Christ,” a younger voice retorts. “Who cares if it is?”
