A love story transcends time when two ballet dancers meet at a mysterious private estate.
Director Biography – Jason O. Silva
Jason O. Silva is an independent commercial and narrative director based in Los Angeles. His cinematic eye and emphasis on actor-driven narrative drive his unique style and perspective. His obsessions are unlikely friendships and unusual stories. His dream is connect people through narrative and foster conversation that furthers the human experience.
His first feature film, Lonely Hearts Club followed a day in the lives of three broken people coming together during a long layover. It premiered at the Los Angeles Independent Film Festival, where he was honored with the Vanguard Award. He was the series director for a the scripted 1-hr show Crazy Love for Lifetime. His short films have screened in dozens of festivals and events and garnered several awards, as well. Some of his stories and characters include a man who was born with a wooden spoon for a hand, a couple that meets while disposing the bodies of their murdered first dates, and an awkward three-way wedding proposal in the park.
Jason’s work can also been seen in book form for his award-winning middle-grade series The Tale of Edgar Trunk, on the stage for his equity production of Theresa Rebeck’s Seminar, and around various Los Angeles venues for his jazz speakeasy popup Brass.
I started working with professional ballet dancers a few years ago with the ambition to capture one of the world’s longest standing classical art forms through the camera lens. But there was something so pure about their art that I fought against my natural inclinations as a filmmaker – to cut to different angles, to linger on the specific details, to see on screen what I could not from a seat in an auditorium. I realized the dancers were literally shaping space with their bodies and their movements, and that the great space around them – all that splendid negative space – was theirs to command. It was as much a part of their art as the dance itself. Who was I to carve up that perfect canvas?
Once hooked… and in the frenzy of exploration of what was a new universe for me, I came across a French film called Pas de Deux – an art-house performance piece, decades old, that utilized some striking in-camera effects. While I was blown away by the style and innovation of the piece, I fixated on the title. Pas de Deux – a dance term – translating to “dance of two.” Simple and lovely! What a concept… one relatable not only in dance but in life, especially in relationships of every kind. I realized ballet was much more universal, much less rigid, than ever before. Because art is expression. More importantly, art is conversation.
Inspired, I wanted to tell a new story that would fuse ballet with a universal and accessible love story and tell it through a more traditional narrative style. Although, Pas de Deux leans more into visual storytelling relying on little dialogue, and the dancing is sparse. I wanted to focus in on and humanize the dancer, who in ballet we rarely glimpse beyond the facade of their character… and yet whose lives and histories often intertwined within the niche community are rich, romantic, tragic, and every bit as colorful and varied as the human condition itself. But what is all that if it cannot be shared? Thus, the beauty of a “dance of two,” where no two dances are ever the same.
Jason O. Silva is an independent commercial and narrative director based in Los Angeles. His cinematic eye and emphasis on actor-driven narrative drive his unique style and perspective. His obsessions are unlikely friendships and unusual stories. His dream is connect people through narrative and foster conversation that furthers the human experience.
