Miss Hill Making Dance Matter

Streaming video - 2015

Miss Hill: Making Dance Matter tells the inspiring and largely unknown story of Martha Hill, a woman whose life was defined by her love for dance, and who successfully fought against great odds to establish dance as a legitimate art form in America. Through archival footage, lively interviews with friends and intimates, and rare footage of the spirited subject, the film explores Hills's arduous path from a Bible Belt childhood in Ohio to the halls of academia at NYU and Bennington College, to a position of power and influence as Juilliard's founding director of dance (1952-1985). Peppered with anecdotal material delivered by dance notables who knew her, this revelatory story depicts her struggles and successes, the film is a celeb...ration of dance and an examination of the passion required to keep it alive. "Illuminating... Defiance [and] tenacity, animated Hill’s life, and it drives ‘Miss Hill’ forward, too. Archival footage…distills the essence of a time when American concert dance, like never before, sought to comment on society rather than escape from it; a time when, as the choreographer Bessie Schonberg said, “everything was new.” And that’s only the first half. We also get a thorough history of the Juilliard dance department, its initially groundbreaking curriculum of warring genres (ballet and modern dance) and its near-demise at the hands of George Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein, an episode in which matters of money, power, real estate, politics and national identity collide." - The New York Times. more