Mia Slavenska, A Dancer's Odyssey Trailer
TRT: 5.5 mins.

Notes from the Filmmakers:

Maria Ramas
Mia Slavenska was one of the most celebrated ballerinas of the 20th century and Croatia's greatest dancer. She was also my mother. She came of age during an explosive time of dance in an era that witnessed the birth of ballet modernism and modern dance. She danced through a dark time of Western history when powerful nationalist currents swept Western society inexorably into a second world war and spawned unthinkable cataclysms. Yet, while politics buffeted Mia Slavenska and those she loved, she insulated herself in her world of dance and art. She escaped the looming war in 1939 by immigrating to the United States with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo.

An expatriated artist, she pioneered her art form in these then-culturally virgin hinterlands and was one of a handful of artists who changed the face of American culture by introducing Americans to ballet. Acknowledged as the most beautiful and versatile of all her contemporaries, and as the greatest technician of her era, she was a pioneer who pre-echoed Balanchine's neo-classicism and a maverick who moved freely between classical ballet and modern dance. In 1952, when she danced the role of Blanche Dubois in the modern ballet, A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams called her his greatest Blanche.

Mia Slavenska died in Los Angeles in 2002, believing that she had been completely forgotten, not only in the United States, but also in her native Croatia. When I began, I thought that I was making this film because my mother asked me to tell her story. But over the past three years, as I have retraced her life journey, I realize that I am making this film because "once upon a time" Mia Slavenska danced.

Kate Johnson
It has been 6 years since we began our own odyssey of uncovering Mia Slavenska's story. After her death, her daughter Maria Ramas, found me through word of mouth amongst the dance community of Los Angeles. Together we created a film about Mia for her memorial and in the process discovered a much larger story. Maria decided to devote herself fully to telling her mother's story, a promise she had made on her mother's deathbed. She approached my partner Michael and myself to co-direct a feature documentary and it has taken us to Zagreb, Paris, London, New York, Chicago, and Miami to capture the images and people who knew her.

I knew of Mia Slavenska when I began working on the film. I had trained as a modern dancer and Mia's legacy was etched into the fabric of Los Angeles contemporary dance. However, what I didn't know was about the power of art to transform both individuals and nations. I knew it intellectually, I knew of stories of the transformative power of art, but I hadn't experienced it at such a profound level as I have in the process of making this film. When Maria came to me I thought that I was done with dance. I was in the midst of a creative crisis. I thought I needed to focus on more "important" things. I questioned if art was truly necessary in a world that needs so much to survive. But Mia's story kept unfolding revealing ever deeper facets of the impact an artist can have on her artform, cultural history and national identity.

Filming in Croatia was a life changing experience. The scars of the recent war were evident on monastery walls and in the memories of the people. It was a new democracy, an independent country, and it was ready to reclaim its lost history. While behind the Iron Curtain it had been sealed off from any knowledge of the many artists it lost during the war and ensuing communist regime. Then, Mia could only be whispered about in the ballet halls and back stages of the national theatre. In 2005 we witnessed a country rediscovering its rich artistic contributions to the world and Mia was central to its cultural legacy as Croatia's greatest ballerina. Mia had touched many people and the memories of her performances were some of the beautiful images stored in the hearts of those who had seen so much suffering and had lived through countless wars and occupying forces. I began to understand that fleeting glimpses of artistry can nurture people through the darkest moments of their lives and can empower them to keep going in the face of insurmountable pain.

When we returned to Los Angeles I discovered that I was a second generation Mia trained dancer. I didn't know that my teacher, Susan Rose, had trained closely with Mia when she was at Cal Arts. This discovery surprised me and everything seemed to come full circle. I re-embraced my dance past, and while I never returned as a dancer, I began to realize the impact that the training had on my filmmaking. Dance informs my work with a visceral sense of musicality, rhythm and a sense of transitional flow in storytelling. I see images, sound and stories weaving together as a kind of dance. Dance is an ephemeral artform and was ever more so in Mia's time when few performances were filmed. As we face the challenge of telling segments of Mia's story with limited archival resources, I pull from my background as a dancer, video artist and documentary filmmaker to recreate scenes so that the viewer can get an impressionistic yet visceral sense of the impact of Mia's live performances.

Mia: A Dancer's Odyssey has become not only a film but also a cause. We are returning to a nation the artist it lost, we are refusing to let an artist be forgotten, and we are remembering that yes, art in all its forms, does matter.

Michael Masucci
It is rare when a film project can actually effect the cultural climate of a nation, especially before that film is even finished. But this project has already done just that, as it increasingly has served as a catalyst for a re-discovery by Croatia of the life and work of its most important dancer. This responsibility of the filmmaker as not just storyteller but also as historian, has re-affirmed my conviction of the power of cinema and the role it plays in our world today.

Throughout my work on this important project, I have felt compelled to rethink my own beliefs about the role of 20th century cultural history, not just in dance but in the arts as a whole. Mia's story is an iconic glimpse into not just the life of an artist, or the evolution of dance in a previous century, but also the role that society plays in art and how, in the end, the forces and agendas of a few may erase the life, legacy of an artist, and even the remembrance of art itself. The film serves as a reminder that just as dance is ephemeral, so too history itself may simply disappear.

I am proud to be part of the realization of this film and how it acts as a form of archeological detective story, uncovering previously overlooked or forgotten elements to tell a story much more diverse and expansive than we usually find in dance histories. The film takes Mia Slavenska off the stage and shows not just her strengths but also those forces, personal and private, which drove her, tortured her, and embraced her. Her family, her friends, her enemies, all are as much the story as is her career. Far beyond being just another documentary about dance, this film places Mia's personal journey in the context of some of the most tumultuous events in modern history, including World War II and the Cold War. Looming ever present in the film are the nationalist struggles which drove artists like Mia Slavenska from their homelands around the world and into the promise of the American Century.