Dance Squared
1961 · 3m · Canada
Directed by René Jodoin
Genres: animation, experimental, family
Tones: contemplative, whimsical
Geometric squares move, divide, and recombine to music, revealing their symmetries and properties in a film designed for young viewers.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Jodoin's refusal to narrate or explain—just squares doing their mathematical thing to music—is genuinely subversive for 1961 pedagogy; most films this era would've condescended with a voiceover, but this trusts the audience to *feel* the geometry.
A precise lineage piece: Jodoin sits squarely in the abstract animation tradition (think Fischinger, McLaren), and the formal rigor of letting geometric relationships unfold through pure motion and symmetry is masterwork curation—teaching without pedagogy.
The choice to use only division and recombination of squares—no extraneous elements—means every single compositional shift carries weight; there's nowhere to hide, and that constraint is what makes the three minutes feel inevitable.