New Dance Film "The Enemy Within" Has Its NYC Premiere

November 28, 2001

The dance film The Enemy Within premiered in New York four days ago. The short film features New York City Ballet’s Tiler Peck, Alvin Ailey’s Matthew Rushing, Complexions’ Samantha Figgins, and freestyle dancer Marquese “Nonstop” Scott. It’s hard to imagine that anything these dancers are in together could be bad.

The film describes itself as a “never-before-seen collaboration, which is a bit of an exaggeration considering that many dance films feature technically trained ballet dancers pairing up with street dancers. That said, the dream-like quaility of the narrative certainly sets it apart. I also appreciate that the director, Preston Miller, utilized dance as the preferred language to examine the universal struggle against self-doubt. By using dance itself to tell a story about something that all dancers (and all people) face, he does credit to the art form and the possibilities of dance on film.