Dance Grozny Dance (the Sacred and the Damned) is a documentary movie from 2002 which is about a children’s dance troupe from the ravaged Chechen capital of Grozny, and their European Tour, in Amsterdam, London, Krakow and Warsaw.

The film shows the children practicing in the rubble of Grozny and performing in Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw and London’s Lyric Theatre. The group’s performing becomes a metaphor for the horror of a daily reality in which these children could disappear from one moment to the next. The images are touching and unforgettable. It becomes clear as the film progresses that these children not only want to dance, but must dance, in order to find a release for their overloaded nervous systems.

Jos De Putter, director, says that he was shocked by the devastation that he found in Grozny: “It reminded me of the photos of Dresden at the end of World War II … anywhere there is a war, the important areas are hit. By the nature of war, the whole city – and I mean literally the whole city – is in ruins. People are living in holes because Russia has not kept its promise of paying for reconstruction”.