Watch Dancing Across Borders For Free

Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

Good start, but then it gets ruined

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

This film is thought provoking when you look beyond the veneer of the romantic ballet story of a young naïve boy with inherent talent "rescued" by a benevolent American woman offering him a "better life" and a career path. But just as removing a ballerina's pink satin pointe shoes reveals deformed toes and bloody toenails, the darker side of this film reveals how ballet dancers can become objects in the hands of institutions, benefactors, teachers and choreographers. You get the sense that Sy has a confused sense of identity - and how can he not when he is asked to make decisions at an age where he did not really understand what he was getting into? If ballet has its roots in the court of Louis XIV, then it is fitting that this "exotic" Cambodian boy be brought to America and displayed as a rarity in the court of New York society. The result of Sy's sacrifice is that as of 2016 he is a member of the Carolina ballet - a lesser regional company. Watching this film I can't help but wonder if he would have been happier staying in Cambodia with his friends and family, following a destiny of his own choosing and not one dictated by a socialite.

The Cambodian people are still suffering in the wake of the atrocities and inhumanities committed by the Khmer Rouge. An American filmmaker visits Cambodia and watches a folk dance performed by children in an ancient temple where she senses that one boy has "something special". After she leaves the country, she keeps recalling this boy and wonders if his natural talents might translate into ballet skills. She arranges for his travel to the U.S. and an audition.This is the improbable yet true story of Sy (pronounced SEE), who leaves his native country with no real understanding of ballet, no understanding of what he is to encounter, and no use of the English language. Dancing Across Borders is a documentary that shows the development of this dancer, who came to ballet so late, and his awakening to the possibilities of his new life. He trains with excellent teachers. He learns the discipline of ballet. And he is exposed to other cultures and the world at large as he travels to competitions.In the end, Sy feels somewhat displaced--alienated from his family and the Cambodian experience. But he comes to love ballet and feels he is on the right path.Anne Bass, the woman who discovered him and the director of this film provides a fairly unbiased look at the journey of Sy. The film lets us know that we do not witness all the bumps along the road Sy travels. On a more subtle level, this is a film about the mysterious spark that illuminates some few who are more than technicians, they are truly performers.

Dancing Across Borders is about Sokvannara 'Sy' Sar, a Cambodian boy who is spotted by a woman during her trip to Cambodia. Upon seeing him perform a traditional Cambodian dance, and recognizing the uncultivated talent he possessed, the woman offers Sy the opportunity to come to America and study ballet in New York City. This documentary is about Sy's journey to America and how he not only learned ballet, but came to be an extraordinary professional dancer.I found this documentary to be very heart-warming. Sy is a very likable guy. The documentary contains countless dance footage of him with interviews with Sy and his teachers interspersed throughout. Considering that Sy had never heard of ballet, he didn't know any English upon his arrival to the U.S., and got a very late start in pursuing a professional career in ballet, his story is quite miraculous. I thought that the subject of this documentary was really interesting and I found myself rather inspired by Sy's story.My issue with the documentary was that it dragged a bit. The pace seemed a bit too slow to me and many of the interviews were just saying the same thing again and again: how great Sy is. I loved the dance footage though. There were some especially great clips of rehearsal footage. I just felt that Dancing Across Borders could have used a bit more editing. Overall, I liked it though! I give it 6 stars!

Netflix kept telling me I would like this, so I finally watched it (via streaming, also available on DVD), and boy I certainly did!It's one of the best ballet films I've seen, if not the very best. The documentary follows a gifted young Cambodian boy dancer, Sy, from his (recreated) childhood in Cambodia, where he begged his mother to be able to attend dance classes. She said no, but he snuck off anyway to the school. He was spotted by an American during a performance, and when she went back to the U.S., she couldn't stop thinking about his enormous talent, his charisma, his exquisitely fluid movement and form, and his beauty. Since she knew that dancers in Cambodia have no future at all and that he would quickly become an impoverished fisherman, she approached ballet schools in NY and insisted that they take him on as a student.The film then follows several years worth of Sy's training, performance, and competition in the U.S. and abroad.Wonderfully satisfying ballet footage, well presented, and in a variety of styles and locations, within an inspirational story. Backstage highlights as well, at the nations' best ballet companies.Really the best ballet film I've seen, and highly recommended.