Fancy Dance follows Jax, who has been taking care of her niece Roki on the Seneca–Cayuga Nation Reservation since her sister disappeared. While searching for her sister, Jax is also helping Roki prepare for the upcoming powwow. However, when Jax’s father, Frank, comes back into the picture, she risks losing custody of Roki to him. The pair go on the run to stay together, continuing the search for Roki’s mother in the hopes of her returning before the powwow.

Fancy Dance is a powerful story of family, loss, and culture. The realities of missing Indigenous women is sobering to see on screen, especially as Jax seems to be alone in her quest to find her sister or discover what happened. Erica Tremblay helmed Fancy Dance as director, and she also co-wrote the screenplay with Miciana Alise. Under the Bridge and Killers of the Flower Moon star Lily Gladstone once again delivers a powerful performance and her chemistry with Isabel Deroy-Olson is the heart of the movie.

Screen Rant interviewed stars Lily Gladstone and Isabel Deroy-Olson about their new movie Fancy Dance prior to its limited theatrical release on June 21 and Apple TV+ premiere on June 28. Gladstone revealed how she was on board for the movie before the script was completed and explained how her character’s style of dance connects to her own experience. Deroy-Olson shared how she and Gladstone got to know each other before filming and how the style of dance reflected each of their characters.

Fancy Dance’s Production Process Was “Very Precious And Rare Way To Make A Story”

Gladstone explained why she was excited to portray Jax, in part because of her connection with Tremblay. Gladstone broke down what makes Jax stand out as a character and how Fancy Dance tells such a poignant story about a missing Indigenous woman without brutality.

Lily Gladstone: I was on board to play whoever Jax was going to be before there was a story. I’d worked with Erica on a short film and I was thrilled when she said she wanted to write a feature for me. So there was always the sense that Jax would be a character that was resourceful, breaking the law a little bit in order to do what’s right, and feed and take care of her community and her family, because that was very much the character in Little Chief. So Erica wanted something for me, she said she wanted an anti character, she wanted them to be queer, non-binary, some expression that reflects Erica’s lived experience.

I just kind of was like, Okay, when it’s written, send it to me. I can’t wait. So I was already on board. I had no idea what was going to come out of, especially when I learned it was going to be a collaboration with Michiana that Erica had met through Sundance. So when I read the script, I was just so, I don’t want to say relieved because I knew it was going to be great, but I was along the ride just as everybody is when they watch it. You’re hooked by this relationship, by this world.

Erica accomplished in a feature, everything that she did in a short, in that no beat is wasted. Everything speaks to this much more immense deep conversation. It does so in a way that allows the audience in on it to experience it, to care about the characters, to learn about the facts through the obstacles the characters face, rather than have it being spelled out for them.

Nothing is shoved down your throat in it. So I was just so excited that Erica applied in with Michiana, who I was completely unfamiliar with, that they created such a lived in natural world to have some really difficult conversations and that they did it in a way that never showed a brutalized body, never got into the details of the case or what exactly happened to Tally hung on her absence as it plays out with the people who love her most. It’s a very precious and rare way to make a story that comes to life for an audience that is otherwise unaware.

Deroy-Olson, who ironically played a younger version of Gladstone’s character in Under The Bridge, explained how the actors bonded during the rehearsals while working on language and dance immersion. She also explained how Roki’s style of dance for the powwow is more contemporary, reflecting who she is. Gladstone further explained not only Jax’s style of dance, but the important history behind it and how she connected to the style on a personal level.

Isabel Deroy-Olson: We didn’t know each other prior to filming, and so we met on production. We met the first day of rehearsal and it was immediate. We clicked. I think that getting to learn the language together and the dance together, I think that really brought us closer together. And with the actual dancing aspect of the film, it gave us a chance to kind of reflect our characters and their lived experience through dance.

Because even though powwow, not a lot of people know specifics, but there’s so many various ways to dance. So Roki dances a contemporary fancy shawl and her being younger and her going to powwow all the time, that contemporary aspect of the dance kind of makes more sense for her. Jax on the other hand.

Lily Gladstone: Yeah, Jax is old style women’s fancy dance. So where Roki’s style does favor a very youthful way of movement, it’s mimetic of how butterfly moves. It flits, it barely touches the ground. It’s light, it’s flashy, it’s showy. Women’s old style fancy dance was born from a Ponca woman who was tired of dancing in a very straight, contained, measured way that women danced traditionally. She wanted to move like the men who were doing fancy dance, flashy, big movements, spinning all of it, but a little lower to the ground, a little more taking up space.

That was the way I naturally moved as a kid when my dad would put on powwow music. I’d start grass dancing, which is a men’s style. So when I talked to Holly about it, who plays Tally and was our dance teacher is she’s on the powwow trail every summer. Holly really got into that origin with me about how fancy dance was born from a woman doing it the way a man does, but doing it in her way. That created a whole new way of dancing for women, which eventually led to the creation of women’s fancy shawl, which is a little bit what people see more, but that’s reflected in our wardrobe in the same way.

A lot of the conversations are reflected just in the beats and the moments between these two characters. Roki finds the fringe jacket with her mom’s work uniform, and then that’s a placeholder for the fringe of the shawl. Jax is in a very utilitarian way, the whole narrative has a flower scarf in her back pocket and then when it’s there, when she needs it, neither of these characters have their regalia at the end, but they have everything that they need in hand already to dance in these ways that honor the ways that these women move.

About Fancy Dance

Following her sister’s disappearance, a Native American hustler kidnaps her niece from the child’s white grandparents and sets out for the state powwow in hopes of keeping what is left of their family intact.

Check back for our interview with Fancy Dance director and co-writer Erica Tremblay.

Source: Screen Rant Plus