Teach me how to dance
Teach Me to Dance (Short 1978)
- 19781978
- 29m
IMDb RATING
6.7/10
15
YOUR RATING
ShortDramaFamily
IMDb RATING
6.7/10
15
YOUR RATING
- Director
- Anne Wheeler
- Writer
- Myrna Kostash(original story and screenplay)
- Stars
- Nadia Ostashewski
- Christine Lilge
- Ivan Horsky
- Director
- Anne Wheeler
- Writer
- Myrna Kostash(original story and screenplay)
- Stars
- Nadia Ostashewski
- Christine Lilge
- Ivan Horsky
Photos
Top cast
Nadia Ostashewski
Christine Lilge
Ivan Horsky
- Mr.
Ewasiuk
Lilea Wolansky
- Mrs. Ewasiuk
John Pichlyk
Ace Irwin
Heather Lea MacCallum
- Miss Jamieson
- (as Heather MacCallum)
Bill Mielen
- Mr. Evans
- Director
- Anne Wheeler
- Writer
- Myrna Kostash(original story and screenplay)
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
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User reviews
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Details
- Release date
- October 1978 (United States)
- Country of origin
- Canada
- Languages
- English
- Ukrainian
- Production companies
- National Film Board of Canada (NFB)
- Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC)
- ATEC of Canada
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
Technical specs
- Runtime
29 minutes
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“Teach Me How to Dance”, Alexis Zorba
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I wrote this movie critical review & article in 2006, 15 years ago, after watching Zorba the Greek movie in DC.
I am re-publishing it, as the world bid a farewell to the music composer of Zorba the Greek at the age of 96 years last week, Mikis Theodorakis. A Greek music legend that was described by Greek president “a universal artist, an invaluable asset of our musical culture” & the Greek prime minister declared a three day mourning period.🇬🇷
I am so happy to re-publish it, as it celebrates part of writing journey & my passion for art in all forms in general . RIP #Theodorakis
Enjoy the article!
“Teach Me How to Dance”, Alexis Zorba
"Teach Me How to Dance", that’s the concluding sentence of the goldie oldie movie starring Anthony Quinn, Alexis Zorba or "Zorba, the Greek". I have seen this movie long time ago, when I was a child or teenager in Cairo. I had the chance to watch it one more time recently. I did not know that I will fall in love with this movie to that extent.
At certain moments, I had the feeling I was watching an Egyptian movie not because of the resemblance of the scenery between Egypt and Greece but for the cultural part. There were so many brilliant scenes in the movie that you can mute while seeing it and make believe that they are happening or happened in so many parts in Egypt. I will start with the closing scenes of the movie.
“Teach me how to dance” or teach me how to live. If one cannot dance, it translates to one cannot live or co-exist. Most of the peoples of the world dance as a sign of liveliness. Dancing is a sign of a liberal unshackled soul that can fly to embrace the life’s splendor at anytime and at any place. It does not take sophisticated people to dance or in other words to live.
Dancing is a body language for free people. If the soul is imprisoned inside a tied body that cannot express itself, this soul will never be free.
The movie depicts two main characters; Zorba (Anthony Quinn) and the English man or Boss who went to Greece to claim his father’s property.
The inability to express yourself physically even when you are capable is yet another sign of social inhibition, according to the movie. It is like living in a retro society when you are a progressive liberal creature. You can tell how the peoples’ of the world are doing or performing in their lives from their dances.
The final dance in “Zorba, the Greek” is a union between Zorba and the Boss. It is an acknowledgement to the need for a common human dance where everyone can learn and teach how to dance or live with freedom. Though it is widely known as the Zorba dance, but I believe it is the freedom dance. The Boss realizes after some failures his need to learn how to dance to be a free person and that freedom will be his only way to claim any property in the world not only in Greece. It is the common language understood between the peoples of the world who can dance.
The movie ends with Quinn teaching the Boss how to dance. No one can start dancing except when he realizes that the level of interaction with his needs and the surroundings is so weak that inhibits him from reaching the goals in life.
Most of the scenes take place in a little tiny village in Greece in 1964. It is a very small community of people, but this is where Zorba and Boss start some mining activities.
Aside from the dancing scene, another two climax scenes in the movie that struck me like lightning were the death of the two women characters; the widow and Madame Hortense. In societies of oppression, the weak and the most vulnerable become the most targeted by the values of violence and hatred. Automatically, women with no doubt in so many communities fall prey to the culture of violence.
Greece in 1964 surprises me to be Egypt in 2006 in some parts. However it is worth mentioning, that in the early years of last century the Greeks took Alexandria and Cairo as refuge for their modernity.
Greece in today’s world is branded as a European western country. It is an EU country, according to all European standards. In 1964, that was not the case in Greece according to the movie. Women there were treated as in some parts of the Middle East countries today.
They were treated as properties and inferior creatures with no right for self-determination or freedoms to decide for themselves. In other words, women did not own their lives. A death sentence could be imposed suddenly with no chance for appeal.
In the movie, the widow is intimidated by the entire village to be with a man. She is pretty and young. From the people of the village’s point of view, she has to be with a man or she has to sleep with a man to win her protection. She chose not. Apparently because she wants love not just a male. A choice the village cannot understand. That was felt in her attraction to the Boss. But the Boss is not capable of protecting her. He does speak the language and he is stranger to the village. In this small village in Greece, all men have nothing to do except sitting on a café watching her moves all day. There was one man from the village who was obsessed by the widow and was so madly in love, but he cannot defend her against the society’s backward values that criminalize her for being a widow.
She is not interested in him, so she made him the laughing stock of the village for not being able to prove his manhood. In return, the men and women of the village intimidated her for the slightest reason, knowing that she has no man to defend her. The women saw her as an outcast for not being subjected by a man, especially in bed. Free women at that time in Greece were regarded as whores. The idea was stressed in the beautiful Greek movie “Never on a Sunday” starring the talented Melina Mercouri. She was the most attractive charming free woman character in the entire movie, but she was a whore. The movie was produced in 1960.
The scene of the death of the widow in “Zorba” was the cruelest ever and most moving. It is a climax scene. It happens on a Sunday in front of the village’s church building. At the background, the church’s prayers are heard. The amazing part is that her killers were going for prayers. They trapped her before going to church and did not allow her to enter the church.
The entire village started stoning her and cornered her in a square. The man who was deeply in love with her committed suicide after his friends told him that the widow slept with another man. He was too weak to take it as he was too weak to defend her or acknowledge that she was never in love with him. So he committed suicide. His friends made the widow responsible for his death, though responsibility lies on the friends who reported to him in a teasing way. In the square in front of the church, the friends and the father of the dead lover took their knives to slaughter her like a goat. Quinn (Zorba) interferes to save her. He tells her to follow him. The moment he turns his back to move on, the father attacks the widow from the back and cuts the widows neck. She paid her life for being attracted to someone who is a stranger to the village or for not being with a man from the village. The community of the village acted as if responsible for guarding her chastity, not giving her the choice of love.
The second female character in the movie is Madame Hortense. She is the French woman who owns an hotel that is considered a fancy place in comparison to the rest of the shabby houses of the village.
She was a woman of the world in her own definition. She is proud of her love affairs with foreign officers until somehow she ended in this little tiny village in Greece where the world became so small. The values of love and human relationships are different from where she came from.
She is another outcast or free female character. But despite her isolation that is whether imposed by her style of life or by the people of the village, when she died, people of the village did not deny themselves the right to raid her hotel to rob and steal all her properties upon her death news. It was permissible to steal her house. The only two who were able to say a human goodbye before her death without stealing anything were Zorba and the Boss.
It was not a surprise to see that the character linking Zorba, the widow and Madame Hortense was a lunatic guy, living in his world.
In one’s personal crazy world, conventional set of beliefs are broken and defragmented. The selection process for the new beliefs starts with freedom.
More than 30 years ago, Greece embraced values that Egypt abides by in 2006 when Egypt 50 years was the refuge to many Greeks for the modern progressive social values it provided.
Greece at this time was not a Muslim country and still it is not, however many Muslim countries in the Middle East still following Greece’s pursuit in the 60s’. They want to regard women as properties and judging their style of lives according to morality standards. Greece was able to liberate itself from the grips of the backward social values. The Muslim countries are not capable of escaping the backwardness of the social values because they are heavily tying them to words of God. Greece in 30 years became a modern western country with civilized values despite the strong Orthodox Church institution. In the movie, the church was depicted as weak and isolated and still people can do what they want.
Despite being in the premises of the church, the people of the village were able to kill the widow. Monks were a group of people living in a secluded monastery on the mountains leading their own style of life without trying to impose it on the rest of the village. It was Zorba’s decision to include them to use the monastery’s trees for his mining project. It is very difficult in the Middle East to unshackle the backward social values from the strong grip of the any religious institution. In Egypt, they are still discussing whether to issue a religious Fatwa to ban female genital mutilation or not… May in 100 years, they would realize that it has nothing to do with religion…
One reason I prefer to dance…
#zorbathegreek #Zorba #Greece #AnthonyQuinn #Michael_Cacoyannis #MichaelCacoyannis #alanbates #20thcenturyfox #England #unitedstates #Greece 20th Century Studios
Read online Teach Me to Dance (SI) by Jeddy N. - RuLit
Teach me to dance
Jeddy N
How cold.
.. It's always so dark and cold in here, and the horror cuts through to the bone stronger than the pain, and the pain... well, I've almost gotten used to it in all these days, which I've long since lost count of. An unrepentant heretic is a worse accusation than a thief or a murderer. What did you have to do to deserve all this? Just get in the way of a wicked priest?
I wince when something quickly touches my bare leg. Rat! The skin from the ankles is torn off, the exposed flesh attracts vile creatures that scurry through the darkness among the rotten straw and sewage. They get under my clothes, and every time I'm afraid to fall asleep, because there will be no one to drive them away. Two crazy old women, a thin girl, and a gloomy overgrown man in the corner, who, in my memory, did not utter a word - that's all the company that I have to be content with. But they are better than jailers and executioners... On the first day, when they grabbed me and dragged me to prison, three people raped me, casting lots on the queue.
I have never been considered a beauty in my village, but here it seems that the attractiveness of a woman does not matter. My parents and younger sister died of the plague, I was left alone and did not expect gifts from life, but it turned out to be too hard, much harder than I was ready to accept ...
I prayed, and these rascals only laughed, offering to comfort me. My torment continued for another three days, until finally they got a new victim: the fair-haired Sophia was thrown into prison on charges of witchcraft. To her misfortune, she turned out to be attractive, and every time I thought with horror how much longer she could stand before death took pity on her. It seems to me that she went crazy from torture and humiliation ... It was ridiculous to assume that this girl could practice witchcraft! I have seen sorceresses, but at least two old witches who sat with me in the cell - their muttering could make anyone shudder. Even the jailers crossed themselves in fear when the old women simply looked at them.
When I was little, my father once took my sister and me to Piacenza, where witches were executed. "Cleansing by fire," that's what they called it. Yes, only it was an ordinary death, they were roasted alive, worse than pigs, because pigs are still slaughtered before roasting. For a long time I still dreamed at night of their white hoodies, twisting and blackening in the fire, their terrible screams, bursting skin on their faces turned to the sky ... These were my first nightmares, and it was they that turned me to God, for the first time making me think about what happens to souls after death. I firmly decided that I would live in such a way as to avoid torment.
There was only one church in our city, which stood in the central square, with a cracked copper bell and an eternally drunk ringer, but the priest, Monsignor Roscoe, was a modest and pious man, and besides, he loved children. He told me about God and taught me how to pray, and then gave me a small book of psalms.
My father asked him to teach me how to read and write, so by the age of ten I was already literate and could even read some Latin. Monsignor Roscoe praised me and said that if I had been born not in the family of a furrier, but in a palace, then in a few years I would have become the abbess of some monastery. I knew too little about the monks, and it was enough for me that Padre Roscoe allowed me to borrow books from his library from time to time, and it was possible to pray in the church as well as in the abbey.
Once I was taking a book to the padre and found him, as often happened, at the altar, immersed in thought. He did not turn around at the sound of my steps, and I had to call out to him:
- Monsignor...
He shuddered and raised his head, and then I saw tears running down his bristly cheeks.
- Laura, my child...
“I brought you a book,” I whispered timidly. I desperately wanted to touch his face to see if he really was crying.
- Yes, leave her here on the bench. If you want, pray with me.
I knelt down beside him.
- What are you asking the Lord, padre?
- I have nothing more to ask from Him, baby, except perhaps the strength to pass the tests that He sends. He was silent for a moment, then spoke very softly. - And a pure heart to keep faith in Him...
Later I learned that his wife had been killed the day before when she was returning home from her mother. She was a good woman who did no harm to anyone, beautiful and smart, and yet she was killed, taking away a purse with three ducats, which she had with her. Padre Rosco was beside himself with grief, and less than a year later he died, unable to bear the separation from the one he truly loved.
He was replaced by a new priest, Padre Ostellati, who arrived from Rome with the blessing of His Holiness the Pope. He was said to be a learned and energetic man, able to prosper the affairs of the church in our parish.
It was difficult for me to judge this, but very soon the padre really began to act. First of all, he obliged all merchants to pay church tax, increased the payment for the sacraments and began to sell absolution, which Monsignor Roscoe had never done before. My father, laughing, said that all the rich would definitely go to heaven, if they were willing to pay, but the poor would have to not sin during their lifetime.
Padre Ostellati was a busy man, and one look at his stern face was enough to understand that he would not bother with a stupid girl, wasting his time teaching her Latin! Coming to church, I prayed, confessed and took communion, as if fulfilling a joyless duty. The Padre constantly spoke about the danger of sin and persistently asked what I would like to repent of. I was twelve years old, I considered myself far from an angel, so I repented of everything that seemed to me unworthy deeds. It seems that my confessions irritated him: once again listening that I had fallen into the sin of gluttony, having eaten a whole bowl of candied nuts, or the sin of envy, looking at my sister’s new shoes, or the sin of pride, thinking that I could read better than my neighbor boys, Padre Ostellati abruptly said that the main virtues of a young girl are modesty, chastity and humility, and sins are atoned for by prayer and repentance.
From time to time he asked me if I was guilty of carnal sin, but I did not understand him very well.
Considering myself an ugly girl, I spent a lot of time reading and doing household chores, or simply went out of town to sit alone on the river bank, watching stems and branches lazily floating on the water, or, lying in thick grass, looking at light fluffy clouds in high azure. My parents did not approve of my love of solitude, and my father said that sooner or later someone would take advantage of this, but I grew up a savage. All the efforts of my mother to marry me were unsuccessful: intimacy with a man frightened me, for me this was the sin that Padre Ostellati warned about above all others. Most of the guys in my circle thought I was either too smart or too ugly, so they didn't bother me too much.
Once the son of a potter, my age, once again laughed at my gait and said that people like me are burned at the stake. From his words, goosebumps ran down my spine: I knew very well that even one false denunciation is enough for the witch to be in prison, on the rack and at the stake.
Of course, for a witch, I was still small, but the threat seemed quite real to me.
I started going to church more often. Prayers brought me comfort, but soon I began to understand that I did not want to confess to Padre Ostellati. He looked little like a servant of God; everything that concerned faith, he did hastily and as if reluctantly, but he knew how to count money perfectly, loved to eat and kept four servants and two thoroughbred horses. In addition, he liked to talk with beautiful ladies, here he showed care, piety and compassion for any of their sorrows, and if a lady, in addition to beauty, also possessed wealth, Padre Ostellati was simply a model of virtue and participation.
Text of the song Tamara Miansarova - Teach to dance the Charleston translation, lyrics, video, clip
- T
- Tamara Miansarova
- Learn to dance the Charleston
Performer
Tamara Miansarova
Song title
Teach the Charleston
Date added
02/21/2018 | 08:20:33
Views 770
3 people believe the lyrics are correct
0 people consider the text of the song to be incorrect
For your review, the text of the song Tamara Miansarova - Teach the Charleston to dance, and also the translation of the song with a video or clip is provided.
- Lyrics
- lyrics
Grandma, put off your knitting,
Get your old gramophone
And you fulfill my desire -
Learn to dance the Charleston.
Come on, come on!
You don't have to fight me for a long time,
I can do it myself, just explain.
You'll see, I'll be a diligent student,
Come on, grandma, come on!
I tell you over and over,
I repeat again and again -
I am ready to do everything for you:
Sew, wash, make jam,
All day socks knit
And look for glasses for you.
Charleston me for it
Teach you to dance.
Come on, come on!
You don't have to fight me for a long time,
I can do it myself, you just fix it.
You'll see, I'll be a diligent student,
Come on, grandma, come on, come on!
I tell you over and over,
And I ask again and again -
I am ready to do everything for you:
Sew, wash, make jam,
All day knit socks,
Run to the store for you.
Charleston me for it
Teach you to dance.
Grandmother, put off your knitting,
Get your old gramophone
And my you fulfill the desire -
Learn to dance Charleston.
Well, come on, well!
With me do not have to fight hard,
I can do it myself, just explain.
You'll see, I'll be a diligent student,
Come on, Grandma, come on!
I tell you again and again,
I repeat again and again -
For you I'm ready to do everything:
Sew, wash, cook jam,
All day knitting socks
And look for your glasses.
Charleston me for it
Teach you to dance.
Well, come on, well!
With me do not have to fight hard,
I can do it myself, you just correct.
You'll see, I'll be a diligent student,
Come on, Grandma, come on, come on!
I tell you again and again,
And I ask again and again -
For you I'm ready to do everything:
Sew, wash, cook jam,
The whole day to knit socks,
In the store for you to escape.
