Sie ist jung und hat große Träume, wie so viele Frauen in ihrem Alter. Sängerin Ali ist in Iowa auf dem Land aufgewachsen. Eines Tages kauft sie sich ein Flugticket nach Los Angeles, um dort Karriere zu machen. Sie landet in der etwas heruntergekommenen Burlesque Lounge, einem Revuetheater, das seine besten Tage schon hinter sich hat. Geführt wird die Lounge von Tess, die gleichzeitig der Star der Show ist. Ali wird als Cocktail-Kellnerin eingestellt, doch sie sehnt sich danach, auf der Bühne zu stehen. Eines Tages erhält sie ihre Chance – und versetzt die Zuschauer durch ihre atemberaubende Stimmgewalt in Staunen und Begeisterung.

Der überdrehte und tyrannische Balduin managt eine berühmte Balletttruppe, deren zwölf Tänzerinnen als echte Attraktion gelten. Während ihrer Tournee wacht Balduin über das Training, die Disziplin und vor allem die Moral seiner Mädchen, weshalb er sich das Vertreiben von Verehrern und Milliardären auf Brautschau zu seiner vorrangigen Aufgabe gemacht hat. Diese zwingt ihn zu strategischen Kraftakten und raffinierten Tricks, die ihn bisweilen an den Rand des Nervenzusammenbruchs bringen.

The lives of two local professional dancers change suddenly as American soldiers stop in their town hoping to be entertained in accordance with the Broadway style. Effectively, they perform up to their expectations. However, as the army men have to march northward, their moment of glory finishes heartlessly.

Die Tänzerin Rosie Valez ist alleine mit ihrem Esel in der Wüste gestrandet, als sie von dem Bandenchef Hard Case Williams und seinen Männern vergewaltigt wird. Sie kann aber von dem Revolverheld Abel Wood schließlich in Sicherheit gebracht werden. Sie gelangen in das heruntergekommene Dorf Chili Verde, wo die resolute Marguerita Ventura einen Saloon führt. Abel findet heraus, dass Marguerita und Rosie auf ihren Rücken jeweils eine Hälfte einer Schatzkarte tätowiert haben. Daher wollen verschiedene Goldsucher die Rücken der beiden Frauen sehen, was zu anzüglichen Situationen führt. Abel legt sich auch mit Hard Case Williams an, der ebenfalls auf der Suche nach dem Schatz ist.

A humble Romanian actor in his 40's, hardly surviving between a complicated part in a musical, a depressed wife, and the obsession of an imminent, devastating earthquake, becomes the victim of his manipulative father.

Two young strangers meet in Naples and begin to flirt and dance in the street.

Chicago After Midnight (1928)

This ultra-kitsch documentary goes behind the scenes at Murray's Cabaret Club, where Christine Keeler was later a showgirl.

Bill Moyers and filmmaker David Grubin give viewers a rare glimpse into dancer/choreographer Bill T. Jones’s highly acclaimed dance Still/Here. At workshops around the country, people facing life-threatening illnesses are asked to remember the highs and lows of their lives, and even imagine their own deaths. They then transform their feelings into expressive movement, which Jones incorporates into the dance performed later in the program. For this documentary, Jones demonstrates the movements of his own life story: his first encounter with white people, confusion over his sexuality, his partner Arnie Zane’s untimely death from AIDS, and Jones’s own HIV-positive status.

In this Pete Smith Specialties short, two professional dancers beautifully demonstrate the rumba and conga while actors humorously display some incorrect techniques for those dances.

Stories about young Ukrainian dancers and their hasty flight to the Netherlands. You see their new life as refugees. The former conservatory in The Hague is a shelter for them where they collect their lives and find refuge in their profession: dance. The formation of a new ballet company, The United Ukrainian Ballet, is an important foothold in winning back their lives. They find comfort in each other and close friendships develop. In addition, there is the great love for ballet, for the dancers the best way to express themselves.

Two lazy friends (Mimis Fotopoulos and Ntinos Iliopoulos) find a job as ice-cream vendors to pay their back rent. When they start giving ice-cream to poor children for free, their boss, incensed, chases them off, and they take refuge in a nightclub, where they disguise themselves as female dancers. One misunderstanding follows another, until the impresario seeks them out, offering them a job as a comedy routine.

A synthesis of sound and movement; colourful characters dance and move in repetitive patterns to percussive and melodic elements. A combination of motion and music that is hypnotic and beautiful. At first it feels structured and orderly but as more elements are added becomes quixotically expressive.

Soon after the VE Day celebrations, there is a second chance to let the hair down, and these dancers make the most of it with much humour.

The story unfolds in an alternate reality. Chee-Ke works for the "dance police". By the will of fate, he has to quit. For three years there is no news about the hero. But suddenly the singer Kunnei is kidnapped by the villain Bachata, and Chee-Ke is forced to go on the warpath. The policeman and his assistant must defeat the kidnappers in dance battles.

The motions and gestures of military riot police, slowed down while performed by dancers, are surprisingly beautiful. Menace and violence estranged from context and time looks eerily strange, and all too familiar. In this gallery piece, Isaac Chong Wai somehow anticipates, a year early, key images of the Hong Kong protests.

Hear the Lama band, see the sacred dances: welcome to Sikkim, in the shadow of the Himalayas.