Tina Kakadelis
Film is an art form, but it’s also a means of preservation. In the case of director Erica Tremblay’s newly released Fancy Dance, the preservation in question is the Cayuga language. It’s a language that’s considered to be nearly extinct, with only a few fluent speakers. The world Tremblay creates in Fancy Dance is an alternate reality of sorts, one where Cayuga flows freely amongst its characters. However, the film is not that far removed from our current reality, which has an overwhelming number of missing and murdered Indigenous women. Fancy Dance is centered on one such missing woman and the fight to keep a family, and a culture, together.
Jax’s (The Killers of the Flower Moon Academy Award nominee Lily Gladstone) sister Tawi has been missing for over two weeks, and Jax has spent that time covering the reservation with flyers begging for any scrap of information. She’s been stuck in a bureaucratic loop trying to get any law enforcement to actively investigate Tawi’s disappearance. Reservation police defer to state police who say it’s a federal case. Ultimately, it is Jax and other members of the community who are leading the charge, but they’re continuing to come up short. Tawi’s daughter, Roki (newcomer Isabel Deroy-Olson), remains optimistic that her mother will return in time for the national powwow. In her sister’s absence, Jax has been looking after Roki, but because of her criminal history, Child Protective Services removes Roki from Jax’s care.
The heart of Fancy Dance is the effort that goes into the preservation and care of a culture. Traditions and history do not continue to exist passively. A conscious choice must be made by the living members of a culture to ensure that the deep roots of heritage will continue for future generations. This theme is a touch self-aware as well, speaking to the very real fight to ensure that Native stories are given equal opportunity to be told on the world’s stage by Native filmmakers. Director and co-writer Erica Tremblay and co-writer Miciana Alise are both Native as well. This story is not completely autobiographical, but it borrows from their own lived experiences. Their goal, above all else, was to tell a story about the fight to keep a family together.
What makes Fancy Dance compelling is the individual Tremblay and Alise chose to have at the center of their story about family. A queer, butch woman isn’t often seen as a maternal figure in popular culture, but in Fancy Dance, it’s Jax who’s working the hardest to protect her small family. There’s no better actor to take on this role than Lily Gladstone, who approaches Jax with so much sorrow, sincerity, and introspection. Jax isn’t particularly talkative, choosing to speak only when necessary, yet Gladstone conveys so much emotion in the smallest of gestures. Jax is the heart of Fancy Dance. She holds so much pain and hope as she fights to get answers for Roki.
A lesser film would’ve leaned into the circumstances of Tawi’s disappearance. Time would have been spent going over the grisly details of her last known moments to appease the true crime crowd. Tawi is more than a case number or a statistic. She’s a mother, a sister, a daughter, and a friend. That is how Fancy Dance represents her because that is how she was seen by those who knew her. Roki wants nothing more than to be able to dance with her mother at the powwow one more time. Other people in town see Tawi as another missing or murdered Indigenous woman, but those who know her feel her disappearance intimately. Fancy Dance knows that focusing fully on the crime would defeat the purpose of telling a story about the messy love of a family.
Roki has been dancing with Tawi at the annual powwow for as long as she can remember. It’s a means of connecting with her mother and her culture. Also, a sense of freedom washes over Roki when she dances surrounded by other people at the powwow. It’s a celebration, a commemoration, and a remembrance. It’s also something Roki’s great-grandmother, Nancy (Audrey Wasilewski), doesn’t understand. She tries to bond with Roki by giving her ballet shoes, failing to understand that the powwow is more than a simple dance recital. Yet Nancy and her husband (the accomplished character actor Shea Whigham) believe they can make Roki feel at ease after she’s been removed from Jax’s care if they just sign Roki up for some dance classes.
There’s a feeling of utter desperation that runs through Fancy Dance because Jax and Roki are on their own at every turn. The two of them aren’t the perfect duo. They often argue and don’t understand each other, but their goal is the same. They want to stay together and they’ll do anything in their power to do so because there’s strength in sticking together. The film’s final moments tie things up a little more neatly than what would likely happen in the real world, but it’s a lovely way to end the film. It offers hope to its characters and the audience. Fancy Dance is quiet in its depiction of love and family, but steadfast in its belief of the power of both.
