There are probably quite a few proud fathers who would love to make a mainstream tribute to their own offspring. Few of them, however, have the resources — or talents — to handle it as well as Steve Zahn does with “She Dances.”
Zahn co-wrote, produced and stars with his dancer daughter Audrey in this lovely drama about, well, a proud father and his dancer daughter. But before we even see his perpetually fretting Jason, we meet her high school senior Claire. Claire and her mom Deb (Rosemarie DeWitt) are mildly panicked, because an emergency has come up and Deb can’t accompany Claire to her last-ever dance competition. It’s out of state and she needs a guardian, so … Jason it is. Claire wants nothing to do with her estranged father, and we can understand why when she and Deb call over to the depressing apartment where he lives. True to form, he does everything possible to get out of it. As he bluntly puts it, “I’m not sure … what to do?”
Jason also insists he’s overcommitted already, in trying to sell the artisanal distillery he built with his best friend Brian (Ethan Hawke). But Brian pushes him out the door, one of many people who are curiously insistent when they encourage him to “just be there.”
Soon enough, we discover there’s far more to Jason’s alienation than we first realized. The family has recently experienced a tragedy that did, in fact, split all of them apart. So as he and Claire join her dance partner Kat (Mackenzie Ziegler, “Dance Moms”) on a road trip to the competition, they find themselves connecting for the first time in ages.
Director Rick Gomez, who wrote the script with Zahn, draws on his own experience as an actor (“Silo”), and takes a sweetly gentle approach with his outstanding cast. Though he relies a bit too heavily on split screens, he more often steps back to give the actors considerable freedom. And each time, they step up to meet the moment.
The elders — Steve, DeWitt and Hawke — all create memorable moments of quiet impact within their characters’ everyday lives. But Audrey and Ziegler are charming as well, tempering their relatable rolled eyes and teen-speak with flashes of touching vulnerability.
A more objective team might have given Audrey a little more space to find her footing in a leading debut; the credits dramatically read “Introducing Audrey Zahn,” and when the film repeatedly stops to capture her dancing, it does feel like we’ve been invited to a stranger’s recital: it’s nice to see, but clearly means more to the family that included us. That said, she handles her first starring role with confidence, building solid connections not only with her father, but Ziegler, DeWitt and Sonequa Martin-Green (“Star Trek: Discovery”) as her choreographer.
Indeed, it gradually unfurls that the film’s thematic ambition is as grand as its tone is understated. Gomez has crafted a moving portrait of a father-daughter bond, absolutely. But we realize halfway through that we’re really watching a sensitive tribute to a great many types of relationships. Because his cast is so locked-in, there’s also room to explore the distance between best friends, partners, collaborators and competitors. So though “She Dances” feels like an intimately personal film, it’s also, in the end, a pretty powerful one.
