Runner-up for Audience Favorite at this year’s Maine International Film Festival, Dance First stars MIFF Mid-Life Achievement Award honoree Gabriel Byrne in a sort of dual role as Samuel Beckett and Samuel Beckett, the great Irish dramatist best known for the existentialist Waiting for Godot. But existentialism is nowhere in Dance First, whose concerns are both more personal and more directly Gaelic. Literary genius Beckett lived a life of many parts: Parisian bon vivant, WWII Resistance fighter, Nobel Prize-winning playwright, philandering husband, recluse. But despite all the adulation that came his way, he was a man acutely aware of his own failings. Titled after Beckett's famous ethos, "Dance first, think later," the film is a sweeping account of the life of this 20th-century icon, made more than human in director James Marsh’s imaginative film.

This film is eligible for the Youth Arts Access Fund. Call the Box Office at 207.873.7000 to obtain YAAF tickets. Pay it forward! Donate to YAAF here.

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