The ESRA Cinema Club was treated to a very uplifting movie on August 25.  This movie was centered on a senior citizen’s dance club in Tel Aviv where, twice a week, retired people come to dance and sing and forget their troubles.

The director, Dalit Kimor, told us this was a fly-on-the-wall production.  She didn’t have any funding for the movie, but with a student cinematographer she immersed herself in the atmosphere of the club and soon the people there forgot she was around. The down-to-earth movie was a hit, and now TV channels and cinemateques are clamoring to show it.

The people she mirrored came from different backgrounds, and as 99% of the dancers were all immigrants, it was an interesting mix of people, some funny, some sad, some eccentric. All of them felt that Ida’s Dance Club gave them the chance to be young again and gave them hope of winning the 2008 dance competition, by sashaying their way through the tango and paso dobee.

Ida, who runs the club, is a larger-than-life former opera singer from Russia, and her vitality and strength show why her club has over 100 people each Saturday night, dancing, singing and letting their hair down.

Dalit’s film took us from the choosing of partners through to the rehearsals and on to the big night of the competition, where the competitors all looked like something out of a Hollywood movie.  The women wore spiky heels and glamorous dresses, while the men wore tuxedos. As they took to the floor, one by one in front of the judges, all the misery in their lives was totally forgotten, and the most important thing was the music and the dance steps.

Julie Andrews once sang “A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down”.  Surely Ida’s Dance Club is the sweetest thing on earth to these lovely people.