ABOUT
Larry from Gary is short documentary about a dedicated dance teacher who
continues inspiring his current and former students even after the arts high
school where he's taught for decades is shut down by the state.
Featuring original choreography by Larry performed in vivid locations throughout Gary by some of his best students, including one who went on to study at Juilliard and another who is now a principal dancer with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Larry from Gary humanizes the challenges facing arts education while highlighting the extraordinary legacy of a public school program created by a teacher who changed peoples’ lives forever.
FRAMING THE PROJECT
As a documentary maker, I'm interested in telling stories that inspire meaningful conversations about important and complicated American issues. My previous film about health care Accident, MD received Vimeo's Best of the Year Award in January 2020 after getting a favorable review in The New Yorker and being broadcast nationally on PBS/Independent Lens. My latest project about arts education began when I attended a performance by dance students from a high school in Gary, Indiana located very near where I live.
The performance totally blew me away, so I found and met the charismatic teacher and choreographer who was responsible for creating the dance program and decided the only way out of the depression I felt about Donald Trump being elected was to make a film highlighting this teacher Larry and the incredible work he'd been doing for decades with young people in Gary. Like Larry, I’m a longtime arts educator and practitioner living in this much-maligned city. Unlike Larry, I’m white. Because of this, I knew I wanted and needed the perspectives of people of color and reached out early in my process to find those perspectives to be part of my main creative team.
The positivity of my pitch, which focused on highlighting the ways art and education allow communities with unsung heroes to grow and thrive during difficult circumstances, interested two exceptional documentarians of color living and working in Chicago who became my closest collaborators: my amazing editor Amber Love (who was recently selected for Sundance's inaugural Art of Editing Fellowship) and brilliant producing partner Naeema Jamilah Torres (who recently received her MFA in Documentary from Northwestern). Amber and Naeema’s contributions were invaluable, and together we worked to shape a film intended to inspire and not further traumatize black and brown communities.
So much of this project is about lifting each other up and how art drives the human spirit that it made sense our collaboration would extend to our main subject Larry Brewer creating new choreography for the film – three dances set to compositions written and performed by some of the finest jazz musicians from Gary that show how powerfully music and movement express emotion and take the documentary experience to a whole new level.
Larry from Gary received significant funding from Indiana Humanities
and screened in ten locations throughout the state in early 2020 as part
of the INseparables Film Tour, a program committed to creating conversations exploring how
Hoosiers grapple with urban, rural, and suburban divides. The film had a
midsummer night's dream of a drive-in premiere this past July and will screen next in November at the
Academy Award-qualifying St. Louis International Film
Festival in Doc
Shorts: The Black Experience and as part of their Cinema for Students program.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
WEB: https://www.danrybicky.com/larry-indiana
IG: https://www.instagram.com/larryfromgary/
FB: https://www.facebook.com/larryfromgaryfilm