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Review: Swing dancing lives in high-flying doc ‘Alive and Kicking’

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With its acrobatic zest, swing dancing was a perfect expression of defiant resilience during the Great Depression. For contemporary enthusiasts, it’s an antidote to the emotional disconnect of the so-called connected age. Swing buff Susan Glatzer, a film executive turned director, makes these points in her first documentary, “Alive and Kicking,” without pushing them; she lets the dancers’ ecstatic moves do most of the talking, and they’re persuasive.

It’s not a matter of fashionably nostalgic posturing when the twenty- and thirtysomethings in the film enthuse over the Lindy Hop. For many, it’s a calling. Among the well-selected devotees profiled, some are professionals who teach the craft, while others are still working their way up the competitive circuit.

Breaking more than a few molds are the Swedish dance duo known as the DecaVitas, who decided that the dance floor had more therapeutic value than the psychotherapy they’re qualified to practice.

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Glatzer captures the love and support of an intergenerational community, one in which nonagenarians cut the rug alongside up-and-comers. She’s there for some of the late-in-life international appearances of in-demand instructor Frankie Manning, a leading choreographer at Harlem’s Savoy Ballroom in the ’30s and a postal worker when swing revivalists embraced him half a century later.

There may be no fancy filmmaking steps in “Alive and Kicking,” but the jaw-dropping improvisations and physical intimacy of the dancers make it an action film par excellence — joy-fueled and gravity-defying.

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‘Alive and Kicking’

Not rated

Running time: 1 hour, 28 minutes

Playing: Ahrya Fine Arts Theater, Beverly Hills

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