In 'Best of the Best,' the Dance Numbers Are Built Like a Stolen Diamond

Plenty of movies use a dance number to tell you something about a character. In 'Best of the Best,' the numbers are meant to carry the whole person: IndieWire spoke with director Lena Khan, choreographers Phillip Chbeeb, Makenzie Dustman and Joya Kazi, and cinematographer Adam Carboni about dances that contain every facet of the characters. The comparison the crew reaches for is a diamond — specifically, one stolen by the British. Fiction, but an unusually precise piece of craft talk for a dance sequence: the diamond's most precious property is also its most telling, because a facet is a surface you only see from one angle at a time. That is essentially how a number has to work — a side of the character now, another side a few beats later. And the stone in the simile isn't sitting in a display case; the image arrives with a theft attached, which suits a film asking its staging to deliver larceny and psychology in the same breath. Whether anyone's feet manage all that is a separate question, but 'every facet' is a strikingly explicit brief for choreography — the dancing is being asked to do work dialogue usually gets.