Teach Me to Dance
1978 · 28m · Canada
Directed by Anne Wheeler
Genres: coming-of-age, drama, family
Tones: contemplative, tender
Ukrainian-Canadian Lesia persuades her friend Sarah to join her in a Ukrainian dance for their school Christmas pageant, but Sarah's father, prejudiced against Ukrainian settlers, forbids it, testing the girls' friendship.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
It's a competent after-school special about tolerance, which means it's exactly the kind of earnest consensus-builder that makes me suspicious—though Wheeler's refusal to let the prejudiced father soften into redemption is a small, bracing choice that keeps it from total sentimentality.
A formally assured period piece that understands how to use dance as both character revelation and cultural text; the restraint in the editing around the pageant sequence, and the film's refusal to resolve the friendship neatly, situates it thoughtfully within the tradition of Canadian humanist cinema.
The crucial move here is how Wheeler keeps the camera patient and close during the girls' private dance rehearsals—letting us live in the physical intimacy of their friendship before the father's veto lands—so when prejudice enters, it doesn't feel like plot but like an intrusion into something we've already felt.