Only When I Dance was begun as a hopeful documentary about social projects in Rio’s favelas, the aim being simply to show another side to the Brazilian image of violence and hopelessness, with kids achieving real things in their appallingly blighted neighbourhoods. Director Beadie Finzi and producer Giorgia Lo Savio could never have imagined just what they would end up filming. Having decided that capoeira was overdone as a Brazilian theme, Beadie was drawn to the idea of ballet - she’d been told about a remarkable teacher, Mariza Estrella, who runs Rio’s Centro de Dança, where she gives free lessons to kids she talent-scouts in the favelas. In her top two classes Beadie found two outstanding children: Irlan Santos da Silva, a boy set apart from all others by the intensity of his love of dance, his beautiful physique and his evidently unusual talent, and Isabela Coracy, who faced the biggest barrier possible in her dream of becoming a ballerina: she is black. Even out in the world there are few black classical ballerinas - in Brazil, there are none. (The Arts Desk.com)
