“Dancing represents work towards reaching a powerful, controlled feminine ideal of sexiness and strength. The fits are a closely related inverse; they are highly physical and gendered, but instead represent the loss of bodily control through a mysterious spasm.”
“Are the fits purely a metaphor for the trauma of women’s coming-of-age? The film never quite says. As the viewer is left grasping for a specific antagonist, a more important question arises: What purpose would diagnosing the origins of the illness serve? Which is also to ask: who would it serve best?”
“Establishing the fits as performative would do a disservice to the reality of the dancers’ experience, while completely ignoring the girls’ complicity in the epidemic would be to miss the plot, and the point.”
“These young women’s bodies craft an alternative to language.”
“As historian Stacy Schiff writes about the young women of Salem, from centuries earlier, “the girls expressed in fits what they could not entrust to words.” To switch languages — to code-switch — is to change the terms of engagement in a world that places them at multiple disadvantages.”
“But the grand finale is a dance film requisite that Holmer does not withhold. Toni’s culminating fit marks her transition from one form of physical power to another. In this dreamlike fantasy, Toni’s feet float above the ground, her braids thrash wildly and a vision of the Lionesses appears: they perform in perfect unity, resplendent in blue and gold sequins and full make-up as Kiah Victoria sings, “We choose to be slaves to gravity.””
“In these final scenes, Holmer conjures the mourning and ecstasy of balancing choice and surrender, lending depth to the typically flat spectacle of synchronized movement. As she told Vogue, “We’re saying that there is power in collective identity. And it should not be conflated with conformity. There is that fear, though, and it’s real.””