Alive and Kicking.

Why would a California choreographer, looking for a place to teach and choreograph, choose to settle in Merida, a city on the western side of Mexico's Yucatan peninsula? Jorge Faz, a child of Mexican-American parents and a student of Tandy Beal and the University of Utah, decided to relocate to Mexico in the early '90s after a few years of free-lance work. A single visit to Merida convinced him he was home. Perhaps he was charmed by the many opportunities to dance in the city parks; the streets were lined with signs showing a man inviting a woman to dance by gallantly doffing his hat. Last year the Jorge Faz Dance Company, a small, lively group of young dancers, mostly from Merida, presented its first full-evening performance.

Faz's life in Merida is the subject of Modern Rhapsody (Rainbow Films), a motion picture codirected by Elly Friedman and Andrea Alvarez, with cinematography by Mario Garcia Joya (known for his work on the Academy Award-nominated Cuban film, Strawberry and Chocolate). Friedman, who was Faz's patron, had been fascinated by the struggles inherent in the creation of a dance company. Rhapsody fictionalizes their relationship. Ricardo Dalmacci plays Paco, a choreographer, and Karen Black is his benefactor. Friedman exercised poetic license by introducing Kate (Robin O'Dell), whose romantic liaison with Paco is complicated by the fact that he has AIDS.

Dance scenes, choreographed by Faz and danced by members of his company, are integral to the film, for Paco's personal and artistic development echo his company's artistic growth. Numbers range from an intimate scene in the company's studio in the exquisite colonial-era Teatro Peon Contreas to a spectacular dance, featuring historical images from the Mayan culture, in the bandshell in Merida's colorful Park of the Americas.

Another film dealing with both dance and AIDS is the recently released British film Alive & Kicking (First Look Pictures). Directed by Nancy Meckler of Sister My Sister renown, it focuses on the relationship between Tonio (Jason Flemyng), a slightly outrageous, narcissistic, but deeply committed HIV-positive dancer, and Jack (Antony Sher), an intense, older psychiatrist who treats people with AIDS. The painful but often comic progression of their attachment is played out against a background of dance company politics (or a least a movie version thereof), friendships, rivalries, and reminiscences about the good old days. AIDS becomes the silent but powerful partner in the life of the company, which has lost more than one of its members to the disease. The dotty behavior of its increasingly forgetful director, Luna (Dorothy Tutin), creates further instability. The troupe's somewhat over-the-top behavior recalls that of the dancers in The Red Shoes many years ago; these modern versions of familiar stereotypes often utter very entertaining dialogue, thanks to writer Martin Sherman.

Flemyng has captured some of the characteristics of a dancer, but he is obviously not one, and this lack diminishes the intensity that should emerge in class, rehearsal, and performance. Even in the climactic dance scene, in which Tonio's illness requires him to be carried by other dancers in a duet with another man, Flemyng lacks physical resilience. Fortunately, the mutual understanding that Tonio and Jack eventually achieve resonates more profoundly than any cliche of artistic temperament.

Flamenco (New Yorker Films) is the latest in a series of stunning dance films by Spanish director Carlos Saura, whose Carmen and Blood Wedding have become classics. Extraordinarily staged in what appears to be an enormous indoor arena sectioned off by huge mirrors, Flamenco presents some three hundred singers, musicians, and dancers, Each work's title and the artists' names are printed on the screen during performance. Although a documentary of the many manifestations of that complex style often referred to simply as flamenco, this film is also vividly dramatic.

Vittorio Storaro's extraordinary cinematography gives the intense performances an atmosphere of heightened intimacy. The camera may circle the performers provocatively or concentrate in radical close-ups on the textured face of a passionately wailing singer, the deft fingers of a guitarist, or the supple torso of a silhouetted dancer. Saura's dramatic use of lighting, mirrors, and such simple props as a table, chair, or platform set against stark backgrounds gives each performance a distinct character -- desperate, flamboyant, or pensive.

But Saura is not without humor. Presenting the fandangos from Huelva, he positions singers Paco Toronjo and Antonio Toscano at either end of a long conference table with the members of Grupo Cane seated on the sides. As each man sings an impassioned love song, the chorus raps its knuckles on the table in sympathy and understanding. Dressed in business suits, the men look as though they could be pitching opposing concepts in a corporate boardroom. In "Soleares," two generations of dancers, Farruco and the young Farruqito, are cheered on by other family members. Throughout we are reminded that there is no age discrimination in flamenco; artists may be young, old, or middle-aged.

The film concludes with the camera, retreating from close-ups of students performing in groups in individually sectioned areas, to take in an arena entirely filled with hundreds of future flamenco dancers, moving in synchrony.