A feature documentary by former Cunningham dancer Friedman & Wechsler, If the Dancer Dances tracks the dancers’ often intensely personal challenges, as they reveal what it takes to keep a dance alive.

How can a new cast of dancers inhabit a work from another era? A dance has no script or score; it only comes alive when it’s passed from one dancer to another, body to body.

It’s this intimate process we witness in this film, which brings us into the studio as three former members of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company teach Cunningham’s iconic 1968 RainForest to the Stephen Petronio Company.

The dancers have just twelve days over three weeks to work with the original stagers; the stakes are high – they’re not just learning new choreography but have to find the courage to master an entirely new movement style.