Co-Sponsored by TBZ A dance teacher and her students go into the Pandemic alone and come out of it together, making a film about how older women move through space and time. Does your grandmother dance? Come see why!
Why We Dance
A short film about a long-running online dance class for older women and a few of their partners.
Project Overview
“Why We Dance” (42 minutes; 2025) is about women dancing, confronting body image, seeking renewed community and relevance, developing resilience, becoming grandmothers. The context: an online dance class filmed by the dancers themselves.
The film documents a Zumba Gold class sponsored by the Newton MA Senior Center and taught over Zoom since the beginning of the Pandemic by an extraordinarily charismatic and compassionate teacher, Ketty Rosenfeld, who immigrated to the US from Indonesia. Many of the dancers are also immigrants. As friends invited friends, a virtual community of women from all over the country formed around this teacher. This is a micro-budget project, experiential and non-didactic, filmed by the dancers themselves.
Key Personnel
Key Artist: Ketty Rosenfeld is a highly regarded Zumba teacher and the inspiration for this film. An Indonesian immigrant married to a Jewish man from Newton, she is eclectic in her outlook and familiar with dance forms from around the world. She served as the Director of International Education at Northeastern University for many years before beginning to teach Zumba in the Greater Boston area in 2015.
Producer/Director/Editor: Michal Goldman is a life-long dancer, Academy award-winning filmmaker, founder of Filmmakers Collaborative, and founding Director Emerita of the Boston Jewish Film Festival.
Liaison & Tech Support: Carole Rodenstein recently retired from a long career in high technology management with a focus on health care. She has danced with Ketty since 2017 and is now a licensed Zumba teacher herself.
Additional Information
Winner of the Team Choice Award, 2025 Through Women’s Eyes International Film Festival
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61553294529635&sk=about
For further information please contact Michal Goldman: michal@filmmakerscollab.org
Funded in part by the MA Council on the Arts/the Newton Arts Council and the Puffin Foundation
Fiscal Sponsor: Filmmakers Collaborative