Spartanburg Events Calendar

The Greenville Jewish Film Festival’s SummerFest 2024 promises a captivating blend of cultures with the spotlight on a Mumbai street dancer’s journey under the guidance of an Israeli ballet master.

Call Me Dancer is a 2023 documentary by director and producer Leslie Shampaine. It is a story of perseverance, passion, culture and an unlikely friendship. The documentary follows Manish Chauhan, a street dancer from Mumbai, whose working-class parents depend on their only son’s financial support.
When he accidentally walks into an inner-city dance school and encounters the brilliant but curmudgeonly 70-year-old Israeli ballet master Yehuda Maor, a hunger develops within him. The ambitious Manish becomes determined to make it as a professional dancer, but the odds are stacked against him. Together, Manish and Yehuda transform each other’s lives, searching to uncover who and what they are. Yehuda seeks purpose and a place to call home. Manish dreams of dancing on the world stage but struggles to break free from the confines of his economic and social circumstances.

SummerFest will be held Sunday, August 25 from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. at the Gunter Theatre, 300 S. Main Street, Greenville. Tickets can be purchased through the Peace Center website at www.peacecenter.org. Adult tickets are $50 and students are $25, and go on sale in late July. Tickets include: a dance workshop with Manish, the film screening, a guest appearance by Manish, and Indian Street Food from Saffron Indian Cuisine.

In addition to the screening, the festival is offering a Master Dance Workshop with Manish at the Gunter Theatre on Sunday, August 25 from Noon to 1:30 p.m. with the ticket purchase. This one-of-a-kind advanced beginner masterclass features athletic contemporary dance movement fused with a Bollywood flair.

Four billion years. Millions of species. Five mass extinction events (and counting, but more on that later). It’s the story of Life on Our Planet, a stunning new series chronicling the ongoing rise and fall of lives on Earth, from the cataclysmic events that reshape our ecosystems to the creatures that survived (or didn’t) along the way. Because life always finds a way — but as this eight-part epic journey proves, the road from single-celled life-form to the biodiversity we know today was anything but drama free.

About Keith Scholey
Keith Scholey is the series producer for Netflix’s Our Planet and Director of the cinema film David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet. Born and raised in East Africa, he qualified as a Zoologist with both a degree and PhD from Bristol University. He began working with the BBC Natural History Unit as a Researcher and subsequently became a producer making many films for the Natural World and Wildlife on One series as well as for special series including David Attenborough’s award winning The Private Life of Plants. As Head and Editor-in-chief of the BBC Natural History Unit, he oversaw series including David Attenborough’s Life of Birds and The Life of Mammals, Blue Planet, Andes to Amazon, Cousins and Wild Africa. A veteran producer, editor and director of the natural history world, he left his job as Controller of Factual Production, responsible for all BBC ‘in house’ Factual content to join Silverback Films and continue the mission and aim of making content that makes a difference. Awards for productions he has been responsible for include Emmys, Baftas, RTS’s, Wildscreen pandas and Jackson Hole Awards. He was awarded a Doctor of Science degree from the University of Bristol.