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    Visiting Filmmaker Brings HBO Doc “How to Dance in Ohio” to The Wex

    As part of the Wexner Center for the Arts’ visiting filmmakers series, documentarian Alexandra Shiva comes to Columbus to unspool her locally based documentary How to Dance in Ohio in a sold out event this Thursday, October 8th, at 7pm.

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    The doc follows three clients of Dr. Emilio Amigo’s, each falling somewhere on the Autism spectrum, as they prepare for their first formal dance.

    “They were incredible. I don’t think I’ve ever collaborated as much with subjects,” says Shiva, who’d helmed two previous documentaries before tackling How to Dance. “There was so much processing with the subjects, and inclusion, and that’s a different experience.”

    In much the same way Dr. Amigo spent weeks prepping his clients for the dance – helping them learn to dance, ask out a date, plan their attire, and prepare for all the social interaction and additional stimuli associated with a formal dance – he used the filming as another opportunity for his clients to learn life skills.

    “Dr. Amigo really used it as a therapeutic tool,” Shiva says. “Otherwise it wouldn’t have worked for him.”

    “Before we started filming, he would send four or five clients into the room and we would do a presentation,” Shiva explains. “We would show them the camera and how it worked. If they wanted to touch the camera, they could. They would talk about their comfort and discomfort with being filmed.”

    According to Shiva, most of the participants took to the idea.

    “They were incredibly brave to allow us in their therapy sessions,” she says. “There were some who were comfortable being filmed in group, there were some who were not comfortable being filmed at all, so there was a group we knew not to film. And there were people who said, ‘I want to be interviewed,’ and a group who said, ‘You can even come home with me if you want to.’”

    This is a project Shiva landed on while at a conference. She says she’d been looking for a way to talk about coming of age.

    “I have a very close friend who has a daughter who’s on the spectrum, and she’s 15 now. I was trying to find a way to tell a story about what it would be like for her to come of age,” she says. “I was doing research, and I met a woman at a conference and she said, ‘You have to come and meet my psychologist in Columbus, Ohio.’”

    When she met Dr. Amigo, she learned that he was planning a prom.

    “And I went – voila! To me, it was the perfect way to make the story relatable,” she says. “We’ve all had that – something was a first for us all, and we were scared about it and we had that kind of anxiety. And for Dr. Amigo’s clients, it was really emphasized. And they were so open.”

    How did the filmmaker choose the three core participants?

    “We filmed four girls and four boys originally, and it was pretty clear before we even started editing that we were really focused on the girls,” she says. “There’s something about girls and the dance, and boys being supporting characters that made sense. And these girls, in particular, and their development – Marideth is 16 and Caroline is 19 and Jessica was 22 at the time. It seemed like the perfect structure to be able to tell the story.”

    The shoot was an emotional one for the filmmaker.

    “There were times that it felt bittersweet, it felt uplifting, sometimes heartbreaking, but more often than not I couldn’t believe the resilience, and I couldn’t believe how hard everybody tried,” she says. “The overwhelming feeling I had was awe at how much they worked at it. I really love these people. I fell in love with them. It was an extraordinary experience.”

    How to Dance in Ohio screens Thursday night at the Wexner Center for the Arts, and premiers Monday, Oct. 26 at 9pm as part of HBO’s documentary series.

    For more information, visit wexarts.org.

    Read more from Hope on MADDWOLF and listen to her weekly horror movie podcast FRIGHT CLUB.

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    Hope Madden
    Hope Maddenhttps://columbusunderground.com
    Hope Madden is a freelance contributor on Columbus Underground who covers the independent film scene, writes film reviews and previews film events.
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