New York Times Friday, September 29, 2000 'The Great Dance - A Hunter's Story': A Run to the Death By LAWRENCE VAN GELDER Under a blazing sun that goads the temperature to 120 degrees, the route lies across sand that sears the feet and through thorn bushes that rake the skin. The setting is the Kalahari Desert, which lies mostly in Botswana. Hour after hour, a man runs without stopping. He runs not for a medal but for survival - for himself, for his people. He has little water. After a year without rain, the first storm has only recently come. The runner is one of the !Xo San, a bush people whose relationship with this terrain, its animals and birds and insects, its shifting sands, its winds and the god they call Bihisabolo are elements of a 30,000-year history addressed with immense visual beauty, compassion and a sense of adventure in "The Great Dance - A Hunter's Story." (The exclamation point in !Xo San names represents a clicking sound.) The man running across the desert is one of the !Xo San hunters, a dying breed of men who can read the wind, the raindrops, the desert and its inhabitants as they seek food. And in the climactic scenes of this remarkable documentary directed by the brothers Craig and Damon Foster, the filmmakers follow a hunter named Karoha Langwane in a run to the death. By the time his race is concluded, the kudu he tracks stands exhausted, and Karoha slays it with his spears, winning food for himself and his people. Karoha and his fellow hunters, !Nqate Xqamxebe and the bow and arrow specialist Xlhoase Xlhokhne, are the focal figures of a film that reveals their remarkable skills as it displays the sere beauty of the landscape they inhabit at a time when civilization is encroaching and the survival of their immemorial way of life seems unlikely. These are men who can not only track using the most obscure of clues but also use those same clues to recreate the story of how some animal died or was killed before they came upon it. "That is what we do," one says of the hunting. "That is who we are." And he adds: "Tracking is like dancing. This is the great dance." "The Great Dance" opens today at the Cinema Village (22 East 12th Street, Greenwich Village). With its scenes of hunting and slaying animals like porcupine or dining on carrion wrested from vultures, it is not a film for squeamish, well-fed people whose relationship with food is confined to freezers and shelves at the supermarket. After the film was completed, it notes without further explanation, the individual hunting licenses of the !Xo people were revoked. In a very real way, "The Great Dance" constitutes an act of preservation and a requiem. Directed by Craig Foster and Damon Foster Top of Page Newsday Friday, September 29, 2000 The Art of the Hunt A stunning documentary follows the Bushmen By JOHN ANDERSON Rating: *** ½ Knockout nonfiction film about the Bushmen of the Kalahari - specifically, their hunt for food and their shamanistic connections to the natural world. Story base don the words of !Nqate Xqamxebe. Narrated by Sello Maake Ka-Ncube. With !Nqate Xqamxebe, Karoho (Pro) Langwane, Xhloase Xlhokhne. Directed and photographed by Craig Foster and Damon Foster. 1:15 (gore, killing of game, ingestion of dubious foodstuffs). In English and !Xo with English subtitles. At Cinema Village, 12th Street near University Place, Manhattan. No disrespect to any Olympian in Sydney, but the greatest athletes in the world may well be Xo San Bushmen of Africa's Kalahari Desert. After running down a kudu for three hours-while carrying spears-the Xo hunter kills the deerlike beast, builds a fence of thorns against lions and hyenas, builds a fire, butchers the game, cures the meat and then carries it back to the tribe. What would we call it? The meat-athlon? As illustrated by the first-rate documentary "The Great Dance: A Hunter's Story," it is just a source of food and life for a people who find themselves as endangered as any other species on the Southern African plain. Exquisitely photographed and directed over a three-year period by brothers Craig and Damon Foster, "The Great Dance" is one of those rare films that successfully captures and communicates a way of life and an aesthetic that, while part of the parched Kalahari landscape for 30,000 years, is indeed exotic - and vanishing, thanks to the pressures of cattle ranching and ironically, wildlife parks. Still, the Bushmen pursue meat the way Bushmen have since pre-history, maintaining a spiritual link to the natural world that is precisely defined and inseparable from their temporal lives. "Tracking is like dancing," says !Nqate Xqamxebe, whose words provide the film's story lines. "Your body feels happy. It knows the hunt will be good. You feel it in the dance. It's like talking to God." In other cultures such words would be used to describe art, which is precisely the point. The Xo hunter's duty is an art, one learned through dedicated practice and perfected only by becoming one with his medium --- in this case, the animal he intends to kill. "The Great Dance is not, it must be said, for the squeamish. The Xo are nothing if not pragmatic, and if gaining food for their children means stealing game from other hunters - a cheetah, perhaps, or in rare instances a lion - then so be it. This practically includes chasing vultures off carrion, which is consumed on the spot. "As children," relates !Nqate, "we often grew up eating rotten things. It doesn't make us sick." For audiences it may be another story. This is a small part, of course of a much bigger and quite stirring movie, which includes more truly astounding photography of animals big, small and dead. At one point you watch vultures scurrying around a dead springbok, the perspective being from inside the body, Carrion-cam? You won't see that at the Olympics. Top of Page New York Post Friday, September 29, 2000 DANCES WITH BUSHMEN By V.A. MUSETTO Rating: *** WHEN the Xo San bushmen of the central Kalahari desert in southern Africa get a hankering for meat, they have to get it the hard way: Hunting down animals, then killing them with spears and poisoned arrows. As shown in the documentary "The Great Dance," this might involve chasing after an animal for three hours in 120-degree heat, until their prey can't run anymore. But as one native says, "Tracking is like dancing, because your body is happy." Or it may involve following a cheetah to a pregnant deer the big cat has killed, then feasting on what is left of the corpse - including the unborn. "Our faraway village will have meat at last," a bushman exclaims. The Xo San are believed to be the oldest inhabitants of southern Africa, living much the same way their ancestors did. But time is running out. "Since these scenes were filmed, the Xo people's individual hunting licenses have been revoked," the closing credits report. "Their hope is to regain rights to ancestral land, where their forefathers hunted and gathered for over 30,000 years." "The Great Dance" is the labor of love of South African brothers Craig and Damon Foster, who directed and photographed this intriguing documentary. Shots of dead animals being ravished by predators may not be to everybody's liking, but the film will get you thinking about how "progress" can often be a step backwards. Top of Page New York Daily News Friday, September 29, 2000 THE GREAT DANCE: A HUNTER'S STORY. Rating: *** Allowed unimpeded access to the !Xo San people of the Kalahari Desert, Craig and Damon Foster have created an eloquent record of an event that may never be seen by outside eyes again. A year after the Fosters filmed the !Xo San, the tribe's hunting licenses were revoked, threatening an end to its traditional antelope chase. The documentary never shies away from either the beauty or the cruelty of the hunt. Fortunately for us, the Fosters ingeniously made the most of their position, strapping minicams onto vultures, cheetahs and men alike, so that we could share each remarkable view. Top of Page Village Voice Friday, September 29, 2000 Might of the Hunter by Edward Crouse A grassroots refutation of Discovery Channel/National Geographic dispassion, The Great Dance: A Hunter's Story is hot and sweaty with fetching curves. From the opening shots-a series of kaleidoscopic video views that suggest a camera tunneling through either a nightscape or someone's digestive tract-the hyperfocal visuals clear out any thought that this might be PBS. Lensing in cooperation with the Working Group of Indigenous Minorities in South Africa, Craig and Damon Foster spent three years alongside the !Xo San bushmen in the central Kalahari. At times their technique implies an equal amount of time taking in extreme sports videos. For all the intensive wrangling of digital-video footage and data, it appears as if a good deal of the shoot was spent breaking the portable cameras-as evidenced by certain perilous shots, like the ones that go nose-to-nose with a lion or a lens-pecking vulture. The !Xo have never been documented from the inside out, Coke-promoting tale The Gods Must Be Crazy notwithstanding. The Great Dance mostly covers the "chasing hunt," a process in which three hunters, !Nqate, Karoha, and Xlhoase, track an animal through shimmering, sweltering heat waves, with minimal water, in an attempt to take over its mind and wear it out. The photography not only inhabits the eyes of the hunters but takes on the point of view of beetles, scorpions, cheetahs, even raindrops. The lens distortions are so intense that when the camera tracks a real-life cheetah close-up, the animal seems to house two battling dwarves. The only generic doc tic here is the jollified narration by South African actor Sella Maake Ka-Ncube, which resembles the least effort by Annie's Geoffrey "Punjab" Holder. Top of Page www.SpiritualityHealth.com posted Friday, September 29, 2000 The Great Dance: A Hunter's Story (Aardvark/Earthrise/Liquid Pictures/Off The Fence, 2000, Not Rated) The !Xo San of the Kalahari desert are often referred to as "The First People" since they are the earliest inhabitants of Africa, having lived in the same region for 30,000 years. This extraordinary documentary was photographed by Craig Foster and Damon Foster and created in association with the Working Group of Indigenous Minorities in Southern Africa. It presents an up-close and personal look at a hunter and two friends who track animals much as their ancestors did thousands of years ago. Like the good Duke in Shakespeare's "As You Like It," these hunters find "tongues in trees." By reading the tracks of animals, they are drawn into an intimate relationship with them. They become one, in a very real sense, with the animal they are pursuing. These hunters are masters of attention. They display a heightened sensitivity to the environment, a dry region that sometimes has no rain for a year. As the hunter notes: "The insects and the wind keep time for us." These men are able to read signs of the animal and the weather in the sand on the ground. In fact, they delight in creating mini-dramas out of the details they glean from the hunt. The result is stories to share with each other. The filmmakers have documented "a hunt by running" as it is called. A man with a bow and arrow runs all day after an animal under the burning sun. He must, as the narrator notes, outrun his thirst. This takes great endurance and the ability to stay focused. The hunter believes God has set this animal aside for the tribe. Those back home eagerly await the outcome of the chase. For this tribe what happens in the bush is a matter of life and death, the survival of the community. "The Great Dance: A Hunter's Story" presents a moving meditation on the spiritual practices of attention and connections. These indigenous people teach us the art of being totally alert to the report of the senses. They also show us what can be gained by establishing an intimate relationship with the land and the animals that reside there. Top of Page Citizen - South Africa Friday, October 20, 2000 The great dance of the Kalahari By LEON VAN NIEROP DOCUMENTARY: The Great Dance: A Hunter's Story STARRING: Nqate Xqamxebe CREATORS: Craig and Damon Foster RATING: 8/10 THERE is a very thin line between exploitation and exploration, which the Foster brothers have managed to tread with the grace of an African springbok in this documentary. While so many directors before them have tried to provide a glimpse into the lives of the Kalahari Bushmen and their special spiritual relationship with their environment, few manage to explore their hearts without turning on the sentimental taps. Just think of how many Bushmen have been exploited in commercials and comedies, which makes this film and its sober tone even more remarkable. The Fosters give a poetically beautiful account of their ways of life, their hunting patterns, their bond with the animals they live with and the way civilisation (mis)treats them. For they are, indeed, the stepchildren of southern Africa. And they were here long before any other tribe or nation invaded the continent. This documentary chronicles their attempts to survive, especially in the light of new laws which restrict their way of hunting. The Great Dance is not an advertisement for the Bushmen; neither is it a manipulative plea for recognition and sympathy. It is a tribute to their unique way of surviving and paints a graceful picture of a people on the brink of extinction whose very means of survival is threatened by hunting laws. The Fosters followed the Bushmen through the roughest and most hostile terrain in southern Africa. They endured harsh conditions to bring us a film that is informative, magical and absorbing. Instead of giving a Westernized travelogue-view on their day-to-day existence, the Fosters actually managed to make the audience one with the Bushmen. We become them. And we learn and explore a fascinating world while gaining an insight into their thought patterns and philosophies through restrained narration. We see (and hear) nature through their eyes. We go on the hunt with them, we track animals with them, we walk, sleep and hunt with them and we begin to understand the intense, spiritual relationship they have with the animals around them. The way in which they almost respectfully, and with great compassion, kill for food after they "take over" the mind of their prey is presented in a unique way without a trace of sensationalism. The scene of a bushman outrunning a buck and then gracefully killing it for food is one of the highlights of this compassionate film that is both a documentary and a dramatic experience. Not that the camera ever falls in love with the beauty of its subject. It simply reflects and discovers with great insight. There is no "story" in the traditional sense of the word, rather there's an exploration of the truth. And the unglamorised truth is often far more "entertaining" and engrossing than a fictionalized account which has so often been attempted before. The Great Dance is recommended as a unique and provocative experience. It provides a glimpse into the lives of Bushmen in such a natural, unforced way, that one is scarcely conscious that one is watching a film. Not just a documentary, this is also a visually stimulating and emotionally moving experience, providing insights and information in the most accessible and professional way possible. It is one of the few documentaries to touch upon Africa's magic and why its people are so unique and special. A must-see.

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