Lily Gladstone and Erica Tremblay Discuss “Fancy Dance,” Their Upcoming Movie.
Director Erica Tremblay’s newest picture, Fancy Dancing, will have its theatrical debut on June 21 and become live on Apple TV+ on June 28, 2024.
Lily Gladstone, Isabel Deroy-Olson, Ryan Begay, Audrey Wasilewski, Crystle Lightning, and Shea Whigham are among the movie’s stars. Miciana Alise and Tremblay wrote it together.
In Fancy Dance, Jax (Gladstone) is followed as she prepares her niece Roki (Deroy-Olson) for a dance at an impending powwow on the Seneca-Cayuga reservation in Oklahoma, all the while searching for her missing sister. The video sensitively examines familial ties in addition to examining how the legal system fails Native American women.
The movie made its debut at Sundance Film Festival last year and is Erica Tremblay’s first narrative feature. I believe that, in my imagination, I’ve been seeing Fancy Dance develop gradually. First steps were a discussion between Lily and myself. The next phase involved some daydreaming in order to create an outline. Calling this amazing Tlingit writer, Miciana Alise: another step… I try not to get too caught up in looking too far ahead. To the best of my ability, I attempt to complete the task at hand,” Tremblay says.
I was once unsure if the project would ever receive funding, be produced, or even be accepted to Sundance. Every little thing you’re achieving along the road feels like a dream come true. Finally, we can show it to audiences now.
Tremblay had to overcome obstacles in order to have the movie created. There are several obstacles to overcome, including those related to funding the project, getting it produced, getting it viewed, and getting distribution. must have the self-confidence to approach a group of people and ask, “Hey, why don’t you come on board this wild ride?” she says.
But for the filmmaker, Fancy Dance was also a labor of love and had a significant influence. “I hope that this is how I always feel about my work.” I never would have guessed that I would become so close to these made-up fictitious characters. I assumed that you simply “make things up” and carry on. However, I genuinely care about these individuals and these personalities. I find them real, and that surprised me a little.
In many respects, the film seems close and personal, thanks to its direction and acting. Gladstone remarked, “[I loved] getting to establish the relationship of Jax and Roki with Isabelle.” “Our personal friendship/relationship blossomed as a result of the two of us truly enjoying our characters and seeing how those characters truly loved one other. When you have such deep feelings for the person you’re working with, there are always going to be risks.
From the plot to the final result, very little changed in Fancy Dance because Gladstone and Tremblay incorporated their personal experiences as “aunties” and community members into the movie, allowing for rawness and realness to the emotional stakes.
The spectator can sense the depth of cultural memory in the movie. The movie ends with a Fancy dance performance, which is a well-known kind of powwow dance, as the name would imply. In addition to choreographing the dance piece, Hauli Sioux Gray made a fleeting appearance as Jax’s missing.
“Hauli returned to her life [after choreographing] when Isabella and I started shooting.” “Then, when she was gone, Isabel and I really missed her,” Gladstone remembers. It seems as though we had already formed this unit with this woman, whom we truly loved, when she left us at the beginning. We three become rather close.
After the first two weeks, Hauli didn’t actually return to our set until the night of the powwow, when she was there. It was the ideal environment for Isabelle and Lily.
It’s true that Gladstone was anxious about the dancing scene. “I was most nervous about the dance and the powwow,” they recollect. Ironically, both Isabella and I have ballet training. When I was younger, I danced a little bit, but it was women’s traditional dance, which is not the same as fancy dance.
