Dancing Heidelicht

The documentary Dancing Heidelicht is a visual ode to old age. The film observes how the elderly protagonists in café Heidelicht dance, drink, talk and scintillatingly move across the dance floor – in sofar as their health permits it. Time after time, another couple comes into view that tries just as much to kill time as hang on to it in the age-old dance bar. In the course of time, a place like Heidelicht has become a rarity. From the 1920s, a bar like this could be found in nearly every village in the southeast of Noord-Brabant, with long rows of tables, a dance organ and a polished dance floor. In Heidelicht, things have been kept the way they were as much as possible: sansevierias in the windows, a billiard table in the corner and stout women waiting on the patrons. At home the dancing seniors apparently have not got much to do.