How the queer­ing of Geor­gian folk dance sparked a cul­tur­al revolution

Merab (Lev­an Gel­bakhi­ani) is for­ev­er rep­ri­mand­ed by his dance teacher for his moves. They are just too soft, too flu­id. ​“You need to be like a mon­u­ment,” he yells. Merab finds it phys­i­cal­ly strain­ing to adhere to the stern rules of the Adjar­i­an duet, a type of Geor­gian folk dance. Fear­ful his grace­ful move­ments may betray him, Merab keeps pun­ish­ing and push­ing him­self only to have his bur­geon­ing sex­u­al­i­ty sur­face when Irak­li (Bachi Val­ishvili), a new­com­er to the troupe, arrives.

Years of ded­i­ca­tion and aspi­ra­tions of join­ing the nation­al ensem­ble start to fade away. Merab had expect­ed to sup­press his desires for the sake of career and the appease­ment of his fam­i­ly – for being gay in Geor­gia, while legal, is still con­sid­ered an aber­ra­tion with­in this tra­di­tion­al, Ortho­dox Chris­t­ian society.

Merab’s strug­gle is evi­dent in every scene of Lev­an Akin’s queer com­ing-of-age sto­ry And Then We Danced; a strug­gle which is also being played out in the coun­try itself. Geor­gia, a for­mer East­ern Bloc nation large­ly con­trolled by the Church, still aspires to join the EU and abide by its human rights, includ­ing those extend­ed to the LGBT+ com­mu­ni­ty. It’s the country’s youth which has been push­ing hard­est for lib­er­al­ism, using avenues such as the club scene to cre­ate safe spaces where activism – whether it be on behalf of women’s rights, LGBT+ rights or the relax­ing of drug laws – can thrive.

As in Akin’s film, the club is where Merab even­tu­al­ly finds his own safe space. But now activism is seep­ing into even Georgia’s most stal­wart insti­tu­tions. And Then We Danced is a dou­ble blow for Georgia’s con­ser­v­a­tive and reli­gious groups, not only for pro­mot­ing LGBT+ vis­i­bil­i­ty but also queer­ing the hyper-mas­cu­line tra­di­tion of Geor­gian folk dance by hav­ing Merab and Irak­li become roman­ti­cal­ly involved. There can be no doubt­ing that this is a very big deal in a coun­try where the Church has a 90 per cent approval rating.

The dance in ques­tion is seen as a bea­con of Geor­gian val­ues, with its moves orig­i­nat­ing from ancient mil­i­tary manoeu­vres and ath­let­ics. It fol­lows a par­tic­u­lar and bina­ry for­mu­la: the woman’s moves are sup­posed to cap­ture a nat­ur­al grace­ful­ness and beau­ty; the man’s moves con­vey strength, courage and hon­our. The women are expect­ed to be vir­ginal and docile while the men per­form spec­tac­u­lar acro­bat­ic leaps, turns and spins, sig­nalling to their innate phys­i­cal abil­i­ty and macho chival­ric pride.

Akin was inspired to write And Then We Danced by the first ever Pride march held in the cap­i­tal Tbil­isi in 2013. Fifty activists assem­bled for a peace­ful ral­ly only to be met by over a thou­sand anti-LGBT+ counter-pro­test­ers, spurred on by the heads of Church. The ensu­ing vio­lence result­ed in 17 peo­ple being injured, 12 of whom were hos­pi­talised. The nation­al pre­mière of And Then We Danced in Novem­ber 2019 proved equal­ly con­tro­ver­sial, draw­ing over 500 pro­test­ers from var­i­ous reli­gious and right-wing groups who attempt­ed to block the screen­ing. They hurled abuse at the atten­dees, attempt­ing to shame them as they entered the the­atre and, in some instances, phys­i­cal­ly attack­ing them. A hes­i­tant police force offered lit­tle protection.

On a more pos­i­tive note, over the three sub­se­quent days of screen­ings all 6000 tick­ets sold out with­in 20 min­utes, reveal­ing an appetite for the film, its sub­ject mat­ter and the notion of change.

Lead­ing voic­es from Georgia’s long-silenced LGBT+ com­mu­ni­ty believe that the film has helped huge­ly in chang­ing pub­lic atti­tudes. The nation­al and inter­na­tion­al media atten­tion has put Georgia’s civ­il rift cen­tre-stage, encour­ag­ing dia­logue and vis­i­bil­i­ty. Indeed, in inter­views, Akin and Gel­bakhi­ani have spo­ken open­ly about how the film has gal­vanised peo­ple, giv­ing LGBT+ peo­ple a new­found sense of agency and pow­er. It’s worth not­ing that the film was select­ed for the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val before becom­ing Sweden’s offi­cial sub­mis­sion for the Oscars. This is a cul­tur­al bat­tle Georgia’s author­i­ties could not afford to ignore.

And yet, it took Akin five attempts to con­vince Gel­bakhi­ani take on the role of Merab. It can­not be over­stat­ed how easy it is to be silenced by fear and the prospect of a pub­lic back­lash. Cre­at­ing work that is polit­i­cal, that chal­lenges the sta­tus quo, will like­ly always be met with seri­ous reper­cus­sions – and this is dou­bly dif­fi­cult for an LGBT+ per­son oper­at­ing with­in a con­ser­v­a­tive, Ortho­dox coun­try. Even so, the poten­tial rewards for both film­mak­er and soci­ety are huge (inter­est­ing­ly, Akin has con­fessed that he prob­a­bly wouldn’t have made the film had he not grown up in Sweden).

In the film’s nar­ra­tive, Irak­li and the nation­al dance ensem­ble even­tu­al­ly become sec­ondary to Merab as he starts com­ing to terms with his own sex­u­al­i­ty. He acts on his desires rather than sup­press­ing them, his dance move­ments becom­ing ever more flu­id as tra­di­tion gives way to self-accep­tance. It’s a dance many oth­ers in Geor­gian soci­ety look poised to follow.