I Saw a God Dance

Overview

I Saw a God Dance has a serendipitous beginning that take us all the way back to 1938, when Tom D’aguiar filmed the Indian choreographer and dancer Ram Gopal in his youth, dancing on the terrace of his large bungalow in Bangalore. Abraham found this footage by accident in a plastic bag in D’aguiar’s house (on whom Abraham made her film Straight , and she revisits the deteriorating footage of Ram Gopal ten years later to embark on a different exploration of another man and his professional and personal quests. Bringing together the heavily blemished 8mm footage with photographs, documents, reviews, audio, and recent interviews with those who knew him, I Saw a God Dance conjures Ram Gopal’s life from disparate archival fragments.