Alexie and his director of photography Holly Taylor intersperse the story with gorgeous scenes of dancing, the “fancy dancing” of the film's title. This visual technique, in which the film's characters as dancers are shot against sheer black, shows off the digital camera work and gives you a place to enter the story. The scenes alternate from tight close ups to sweeping slow motion long shots, conveying the emotions of the characters without words -- a strong contrast to the use of poetry to tell the story in the rest of the film.

The music of the character Mouse (Swil Kanim), who is an amazing violinist, brings another wordless element into the film to draw you into the story. Mouse can play anything from raw folk tunes to blazing runs of the most difficult classical music. The scene where Mouse wraps his arm around his lover, cradling her while he serenades her with his violin shows us how sexy and hot an image can be without drifting into graphic depiction of flesh. The emotion in her face and the rhythmic motion of his hand tell it all. Like all of the characters in the film, Mouse is beautiful and flawed -- don't we love our lovers' flaws as well as their strengths? Isn't their vulnerability part of the attraction? This is what makes these characters feel real.

The Business of Fancy Dancing feels real because it is Alexie's story, told through his fictional counterpart Seymour, his poetry shaped into film. America loves to cheer the underdog. In seeing Alexie follow up his first film, Smoke Signals, with this more challenging and complex story, I can't help but think we are watching the initial steps of a great new American filmmaker, a filmmaker with the skills of a poet. The little guy not scared to let you see his own true story, his self at its most vulnerable, not scared of beating Hollywood. Alexie's next cinema project? His novel, Indian Killer, as a silent film.

Gary Glazner

Sherman Alexie defeated Jimmy Santiago Baca in his first entrance into the ring at the 1998 World Heavyweight Poetry Bout in Taos, then went up against Patricia Smith & won the 1999 New York Heavyweight Poetry Bout at the first People's Poetry Gathering. He defeated our own Bob Holman in the 2000 World Heavyweight Poetry Bout, on his way to becoming the first four-time Taos Poetry Bout champion before retiring from the ring this year. His interview with Juliette Torrez for Sic Vice & Verse appeared here at About Poetry in 1999, & we have gathered a large collection of Alexie links if you want to read his work online or browse through his books.

Gary Mex Glazner founded Poetry Slams in San Francisco, spent most of 1998 travelling around the world both gathering & giving out poetry, settled in Santa Fe, New Mexico & wrote for About Poetry as our New Mexico/Southwest Museletter correspondent for several years. Among the previous feature articles he has contributed here:

• “Poetry/Life/Politics,” a review of Margaret Randall's new book, Coming Up For Air
• “Poetry and Art in Santa Fe,” a review of two shows that combined poetry & visual art
• “Archipoetry 101,” about the building of Albuquerque's Poets' Plaza
• “To Feel the Poem Dance,” a report from the First International Poetry Olympics
• “Tea House Rappers, Crucification and the Slammer,” on poetry in China 1998