‘And Then We Danced’: Queer As Folk Dance

“This is not the lambada,” a grim-faced dance instructor reminds his students in Levan Akin’s And Then We Danced , directing his comments mostly toward Merab (Levan Gelbakhiani), whose movements have edged too much toward the feminine for his tastes. In traditional Georgian dance, he tells him, “You should be like a nail” and his longtime partner, Mary (Ana Javakishvili), must have a gaze that suggests virginal innocence. But Merab’s hips don’t lie, and neither do his hands, which flutter and float across his body, and the rest of the film is about who gets to dictate how he expresses himself. Though chosen as Sweden’s submission for the Best International Feature Film Oscar — it didn’t wind up getting a nomination — And Then We Danced was an act of indie subterfuge for its director, whose parents emigrated from Georgia and who used to spend summers there as a child. The air of violent homophobia that surrounds Akin’s story of two male dancers was validated both by the making of the