How Can We Know the Dancer from the Dance? The Story of Josephine and Hermene Schwarz.

Nobody has ever gone into dance for the money; the odds against making very much are astronomical. Love is another story. People are passionate about dance. Two recent documentaries explore that devotion--to the art, to fellow artists, and to students.

How Can We Know the Dancer from the Dance? The Story of Josephine and Hermene Schwarz tells how two outstanding women built a thriving dance community in Dayton, Ohio. Coproduced by Joey Easton O'Donnell and Patrick O'Donnell, this in-depth appreciation of the Schwarz sisters brings to light the talent, integrity, imagination, and tenacity they shared with a generation of pioneering American teachers who made dance blossom in this century.

Nurtured in an artistically enlightened family, the sisters first studied dance on doctor's orders. At her very first class, Josephine Schwarz remembers pronouncing to herself, "I love this." She ventured beyond Dayton, studying with Adolph Bolm in Chicago, Mary Wigman in Hellerau, and Doris Humphrey and George Balanchine in New York City, always returning to Dayton to continue the teaching she and Hermene had begun in the twenties. When an injury curtailed Jo's performing career with Humphrey, the sisters created a series of companies that led to the Dayton Ballet. While Jo worked with the more advanced students, directing and choreographing for the company, Hermene taught the younger students, designed sets and costumes, accompanied classes, and provided an emotional anchor.

The video is most lively and informative in the use of interviews with Miss Jo, as she came to be called. (Hermene died in 1986.) Their associates, Jon Rodriguez and Bess Saylor Imber, are especially insightful, as are graduates of the Schwarz School of Dance. Rebecca Wright, who danced with the Joffrey Ballet and American Ballet Theatre, remembers the "creative visualization" of Miss Jo's teaching. Donna Wood, a former Ailey dancer, speaks of Miss Jo insisting on self-knowledge in order to dance. Jeraldyne Blunden, now director of Dayton Contemporary Dance Company, remembers Miss Jo encouraging her to create her new company out of what was in her heart. Blunden recalls dancing in interracial performances presented by the Schwarz sisters in the late 1940s and early 1950s, when everything else in Dayton was segregated. Jack Anderson of the New York Times points out that no other company trained its dancers in both ballet and modem dance from the very beginning of their studies. Schwarz students describe how the sisters also taught them about life. Jo states that she invited them into her home to see them in a social situation. "Our students were our friends," she says.

The video is ineffective and confusing when it dramatizes historical events. Is that child dancing on a lawn Miss Jo or a child representing her? It can also be sentimental--the camera pans from medicine and a spoon past flowers to a pair of ballet slippers--which the Schwarz sisters were not. The wonderful photographs and the film and video clips are inadequately identified, and there are a number of perplexing moments of blank tape. But these are minor flaws in a thoughtful, loving portrait of the Schwarz sisters and their vital achievement. [Available from Global Village Communications [phone].]