8 /10 1 Votes8
Cinematography Eugene McVeigh Distributed by Raw Nerve Productions Director Tim Loane Produced by Pearse Moore | 4/5 Fandor Written by Dave Duggan Edited by Declan Byrne Initial release 1996 Music by Jules Maxwell | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Starring B. J. HoggKimberley McConkey Cast B.J. Hogg, Kimberley McConkey, Seamus Ball, Magael Mclaughlin Nominations Academy Award for Best Short Film (Live Action) Similar Redux Riding Hood, Visas and Virtue, A Story of Healing, The Wild Bunch: An Album in, Tell the Truth and Run: Geo | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Dance Lexie Dance is a short film made in Northern Ireland, and released in 1996. The two principal characters are a widower, Lexie, and his daughter, Laura, who live in Derry. Laura becomes keen on Irish stepdance and on joining Riverdance when she grows up. Traditional Irish dancing is practiced by Catholic families. Lexie and his daughter are Protestant, but Lexie relents and encourages his daughter. Self-taught, Laura enters a dance contest across the River Foyle in a Catholic district. The film ends as Laura teaches her father the first steps of the dance.
Ruth Barton writes of the film's structure, "Symbolically, the film illustrates its theme of bridging divides – between father and daughter, Protestant and Catholic traditions, life and death – by the device of the boat Lexie (B. J. Hogg) pilots across the Foyle to and from his job, itself a mixed workplace. Finally, Laura performs in a Féis (dancing competition) in honour of which the boat is decked out in red, white, and blue bunting."
Dance Lexie Dance was nominated in the Live Action Short Film category at the 70th Academy Awards.