Boaz Yakin’s experimental dance film Once Again (For the Very First Time) prioritizes voiceover and movement. The fractured narrative and poetic dialogue sets it apart, while also making it challenging to follow at times.
He opens with a man, later revealed as DeRay (Alvin Ailey dancer Jeroboam Bozeman, looking like a cross between hiphop stars/actors LL Cool J and Common), who appears to have been shot in the chest, plummeting from the sky down to the Earth, where he lands in a stark, Severance-like hallway, at which point he dances to spooky, percussive music.
Writer/director and New York native Yakin (Remember the Titans) introduces several other characters before returning to DeRay who has a talk with himself–represented by his double–while preparing to knock on his former flame's door.
Other characters include a woman and a girl. Dressed in black, the woman (Mecca Verdell), dances while questioning why God blessed her with such a good life. Another character, a teenage boy, follows three young men through the subway and into the Bronx. He ends up on the ground with a bloodstain across his heart. Yakin moves on to the woman, now in white, who comes across as a ghost before revealing that the boy and the man and the woman and the girl are the same people at different ages.
DeRay, a street dancer, and Naima, a slam poet, were once involved. Yakin captures their courtship, breakup, and all the stops along the way, except everything plays out of order. Both are grappling with guilt and trauma, which feeds into their art. Yakin, whose parents taught movement at Juilliard for decades, incorporates both rap and dance battles, in which DeRay and Naima usually emerge triumphant. These battles recall the breakdancing films of the 1980s and the slam poetry films of the 2000s.
At times, the filmmaker suggests that Naima represents Death and that DeRay is dead. A blood motif also runs through the film, from the dancer's mysterious chest wound to the red rain that pours from the ceiling of Naima's apartment, saturating everything in it before turning to ash. That said, it's symbolic blood, since no knives, guns, or other weapons ever put in appearances.
Notably, the film is one of several from Boaz Yakin, an Israeli-American, to feature majority-Black casts, including his coming-of-age drama Fresh and Jeymes Samuel's western The Harder They Fall, which he co-wrote with the director. It's also his second dance film after 2020's Aviva, a genre he considers closest to his heart, possibly because he grew up with dancer parents.
If the narrative proves frustrating--especially in its early stages--since it takes so long to figure out who's who and how they relate to each other, Once Again (For the Very First Time) benefits from two charismatic performers, appealing music from Marcus Norris, magnetic jazz and hiphop moves from choreographer Rennie Harris, and evocative cinematography from Ray Huang.
Is this experimental musical suitable for dance or performing arts programs?
Yes. Once Again (for the Very First Time) is ideal for performing arts programs at high school and collegiate levels. It offers rich material for students studying choreography, physical theatre, or interdisciplinary performance, and encourages discussions on how dance and spoken word can be used to explore grief, memory, and identity.
Why should public and academic libraries add this dance film?
Libraries with strong performing arts, African American studies, or contemporary independent cinema collections will find this film a valuable addition. It showcases diverse talent, innovative storytelling, and themes of love, death, and reincarnation, while offering an unconventional lens on urban Black experience through the arts.
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