Q&A with Leslie Shampaine, Pip Gilmour, Manish Chauhan, Jay Sean

Call Me Dancer
New York Premiere
Leslie Shampaine and Pip Gilmour, 2023, USA/India, 87m
English and Hindi with English subtitles
Call Me Dancer will take you on a fascinating journey. A true-life fairytale from the streets of Mumbai to the stages of New York, it features Manish, a young and talented street dancer from the City of Dreams, that is Mumbai. His working-class parents depend on their only son’s support. When he accidentally walks into an inner-city dance academy and encounters a curmudgeonly 70-year-old Israeli ballet master, a hunger develops within him. Ambitious and passionate, Manish is determined to make it as a professional dancer, but the odds are stacked against him. A story of struggle and tenacity, family, culture, rebellion, passion, and an unlikely friendship. Call Me Dancer was filmed in India, Israel, the United Kingdom, and the United States, and features music by Jay Sean and Anik Khan and a score by award-winning Nainita Desai.

Preceded by

What I Know So Far
New York Premiere
Shawn Fitzgerald Ahern, Choreography by Emilie Leriche, 2022, Ireland, 5m
Movement, words, a soliloquy. A keeping-track-of small thoughts and bits of knowledge. A poem, written as a reminder.