LEADING LADIES
The feature film, Leading Ladies (102 mins), for which I was co-writer, co-director, co-producer, co-casting director, and co-choreographer, was shot on location in Champaign, Illinois, summer 2009, and has screened at over 65 national and international festivals since premiering in 2010. (See CV for full peer-reviewed festival listings and awards.)
“It may seem quite an impossibility, but the film Leading Ladies is, simply put, a quietly revolutionary dance musical. While most dance musicals (think Dirty Dancing, Save the Last Dance) center on the boy-meets-girl heterosexual love match, Leading Ladies is a beautifully wrought girl-meets-girl story. It is simultaneously a dance musical, coming-of-age story, and coming-out narrative. The power of the film comes from its ability to maintain the generic conventions of the story while completely rejecting the hetero-normativity that is typically the narrative thrust of the genre. What’s perhaps even more amazing is that Leading Ladies succeeds at thwarting convention within a conventional structure while simultaneously being a whole lot of damn fun. Lesser films would sink under such weight.”
https://reelfeminist.wordpress.com/2011/09/03/leading-ladies/
(I am referenced in this review/interview by my former married name, Beahm)