Australian Original docu-series Dance Life is a five-part series, which will release exclusively on Prime Video globally on January 19, that follows a select group of students throughout their final make-or-break year at Australia’s elite dance Studio, Brent Street.
Bringing with them a lifetime of dance, students arrive at Brent Street are single-minded in their ambition to become working dancers and stars. It won’t be easy. To make it through the year, they will need stamina and tenacity as they work tirelessly towards the year-end Grad performance. It’s there they hope to secure that all-important agent who could make their dreams of becoming a professional dancer come true. From perfectionists to prodigies, and underdogs to the entitled, each has their own inner voice of doubt battling against an insatiable drive to make it.
Leading up to the release of Dance Life, Nick L’Barrow had the chance to talk with the series creator and director, documentary filmmaker Luke Cornish about how he chooses the students to follow in Dance Life, and how a simple shot of a chair became an iconic moment in the show!
Nick: Luke, it’s a pleasure to talk to you today! Something I’m really curious to find out about is regarding shooting the students dance scenes, and then the fly-on-the-wall moments in that more traditional documentary style. The dance numbers you’ve shot in this are so energetic and cinematic! What was the process of turning up on those rehearsal days, not exactly knowing what dances were going to be performed, and capturing them in such an energetic way?
Luke Cornish: It’s so interesting that you’re asking that because my process to everything that I have done is to basically take your very observational, authentic, natural approach to most of the footage, and then try and bring a sort of editorial style to it as well.
The word I always use is cinematic. I want to elevate the vision, and for us there was a few different dance routines that we felt we could do that for! But to be honest, like, all that actually was involved was having more cameras. So, we weren’t actually setting things up specifically for the show, but we were learning a routine as the students did it, and then realising that we were coming closer to those final rehearsals, we would just get more cameras in the room and capture it from multiple angles. And that gave us more options when we were editing it so everything that you see is like what was happening in the room.
Nick: That’s incredible, because the energy that you capture does feel so deliberate. And for full context, I’m not a dancer, nor do I know much about the technicalities of dance, but there was something about the energy and passion in Max’s dance during the first episode that really moved me. Having now done this series, and even with your previous documentary [Keep Stepping] what have you learnt about dance as an art form that can help describe those feelings that come out of performances like that?
Luke Cornish: I think in its best manifestation, dance is an escape. And I think it’s an escape for the people performing. That’s really what I learnt. But it also offers the chance for escape for the audience as well, if they are connecting to what the performers are putting out there. It’s genuinely cathartic for those who take it super seriously, right?
And Max performed that piece… he is one of those people who connects to what is going on in the room. And like, as you watch the documentary, and this was a discovery that we all went through, Max is one of the most happy, bubbly kind of personalities. And when I first met him, I thought, “Oh wow, this guy’s got it pretty sorted!” As we progressed, I learned so much more about what was going on with him in the background, and that made me understand what set him apart from so many other performers, because he has an emotional kind of world that he’s actually expressing and trying to get rid of when he’s dancing to be honest.
Nick: It was so powerful and moving to watch his story. And it leads into my next question to because I’m interested in how you as a documentarian pick out the subject’s you’re going to follow out of this giant ensemble. And I kind of made the comparison as I was watching the ‘Light The Way’ performances, and how there are agents sitting in that crowd, looking at this giant group of dancers on the stage, and trying to select the ones who stand out. As a filmmaker, did you find that at all similar to that when you were picking the subjects to follow in Dance Life?
Luke Cornish: That’s such an interesting comparison you’re making! Because as you’re asking me, I’m realising how similar it actually is! I would ask the same thing of the agents and the choreographers, and they would say ‘It’s just really clear.’ And I’m thinking, “Really?” I can’t tell a huge difference between everybody from someone at an advanced level because I don’t have an expert eye.
But originally when, you know, we asked everybody to send us videos to get to know them, maybe ask them a few questions, the people that we then chose just really stood out. It was pretty clear. It’s an unusual space because so many performers are great on camera already, so there was a big pool to pick from because a lot of people stood out for very different reasons! That is what took me aback because I sat there with this like cast, for want of a better description, of people. And they’ve all got different reasons for being there, but they’re all on the exact same mission. They all have the same dream. That is honestly so rare to find for a documentary, people living these different lives all in the same environment.
So, to answer your question in a corny way, they kind of find you. There’s a young woman in the school called Arabella, who you know, we didn’t find her first, it took a little while. And she made her presence felt in the most performing arts kind of a way! I thought, “You’re a hustler!” She was always kind of having a moment, and I was like, “You actually deserve to be here!”
Nick: That’s so fascinating! I want to wrap up on this question, because it might be my favourite shot of the series! It’s in the second episode, and it’s a simple shot of a chair that has a sign on it that says, ‘I AM BROKEN’. But the timing of where that shot is placed is so profound because of the conversation we can hear during that moment! Can you talk to me about not just getting that shot, but how you worked that scene together in the edit? Because it’s brilliant!
Luke Cornish: I’m already excited that you’re asking this question! I love you for that! I can already see that you’re a filmmaker [laughs]. You have to have your eye out. As a documentarian, you still have the same education or understanding like any filmmaker. The biggest thing we’re told is ‘show, don’t tell’. So, you’re look for visual representations always for what’s going on. A look on someone’s face conveying fear is better than saying just saying, “I’m afraid”.
The crew we’re like so tired. We had been there for such a long time, and they [the students] had been rehearsing in this very, kind of, full on audition space. And we got in the next day, and someone had drawn that on the chair! [laughs] And it was actually just like a perfect expression of everyone’s feelings. And I had it in my head as soon as I saw it that I was going to put it in an episode somewhere! I was just thinking about how I could have applied it to so many different things to be completely honest.
I guess that’s the process, is that you’re always keeping your eye out for something like that. You have an alertness which is kind of a heightened and pleasing state be in because you’re paying more attention to your environment than you would ordinarily. You get to see more detail in the space than you would if you just breeze past it.
Thank you so much to Luke Cornish for his time, and to Kit Communications and Prime Video for organising our chat! Dance Life is streaming on Prime Video from January 19.
