DVD Review: Carmen and Geoffrey: Carmen de Lavallade, Geoffrey Holder, Linda Atkinson;Nick Doob: Movies & TV

Jul21

DVD Review: Carmen and Geoffrey: Carmen de Lavallade, Geoffrey Holder, Linda Atkinson;Nick Doob: Movies & TV

Posted by admin | on 21 July, 04:41 AM

Review
What you see is more than an outstanding, five-decade creative collaboration; it’s one of the dance world’s great love stories, too. –Dance Magazine

Product Description
Carmen de Lavallade and Geoffrey Holder, two living legends in the world of American dance, are the subjects of this intimate and revealing documentary.

Carmen was the first to achieve notoriety in the early 1950s, as a lead dancer of incomparable beauty and grace with the Lester Horton Dance Theater and Alvin Ailey’s American Dance Theater. Geoffrey, large in life and an elemental force on stage who would find fame not only as a dancer but also as an actor ("Live and Let Die"), soda spokesman ("the Un-Colaaaaa…") and theater director ("The Wiz"), met Carmen during a production of Truman Capote’s "House of Flowers" in 1954, and proposed to her on sight. They married a year later and have been together ever since.

Filmed over a period of three years in New York, Texas, Trinidad and Paris, Carmen & Geoffrey features candid interviews and riveting archival dance footage. Performances of their work with Alvin Ailey, Herbert Ross, Lester Horton, Joe Layton, Duke Ellington and Josephine Baker, as well as their choreography work and Holder’s stunning achievements in painting and costume design demonstrate the virtually uninterrupted creativity of these icons of dance.

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Beauty in Motion,

By Amos Lassen (Little Rock, Arkansas) -
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)

“The Extraordinary Lives of Carmen & Geoffrey”

Beauty in Motion

Amos Lassen

Carmen de Lavallade and Geoffrey Holder, two fabulous dancers are the subjects of this beautiful documentary by Nick Doob and Linda Atkinson. They are a couple that has been married for 47 years and they began their careers and their partnership in the 1950’s. Carmen is a New Orleanian by birth while Geoffrey came from Trinidad and while they are now in their 70’s, they have a past that is splendid. They are role models as lives that are lived in one of the toughest of professions.
The movie was filmed over several years in the U.S., Trinidad and Paris and there is rare footage. It includes their work with various companies but especially with Alvin Ailey, Duke Ellington and Josephine Baker.
This is 80 minutes of pure pleasure and there is a great deal to learn here. It is beautifully and lovingly made and it made me wonder why we have not heard the names of de Lavallade and Holder more. It is a tribute to two wonderful people and “a panoply of archival genius”. Here are two creative artists who love each other and find joy in what they do and have done professionally. Meeting them on film is probably all I will ever do but it is a great experience. There is magic in this film.

Two of the Best Modern Dancers,

By Lynn Darion (Denver,CO, USA) -

An opportunity to spend 80 minutes with 2 amazing dancers (now in their 70’s) who are still active and creative. It is a documentary about their love for each other and strong marriage just as much as it is about their professional successes. Geoffrey Holder, in particular, is also the most incredible costume designer, and seeing his sketches and Broadway costumes is a treat.
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