There’s Still Time to See “I Went to the Dance” (AKA “J’ai été au bal”)

Les Blank’s, Maureen Gosling’s and Chris Strachwitz’s “I Went to the Dance” had folks dancing at the Rialto Cinemas Cerrito on the night of Thursday, September 14.

It attracted a crowd of fans of Cajun and Zydeco music, and of Les Blank and Chris Strachwitz, late musical and filmic entrepreneurs who were based out of El Cerrito.

The movie has several more Bay Area shows. Catch it if you too enjoy hearty roots music. It will play at several independent cinemas, including the Elmwood in Berkeley, Roxie in San Francisco, the Lark in Larkspur, and Rialto Cinemas Sebastopol, some of them through September 21. Several screenings of the movie will feature live entertainment.

The El Cerrito show was special because it featured a performance by the band of Eric and Suzy Thompson, performing Louisiana music of the style portrayed in this wonderful, and recently restored, movie.

The movie is both a detailed history of the development of this French-language music and a toe-tapping entertainment. And yes, people were dancing to the music of Eric and Suzy and their band.

Also on hand during the event were Anthony Matt, who headed the restoration of this and other Les Blank films, Les’s son Harrod, a noted artist in the art car movement, Maureen Gosling, Les’s co-filmmaker on many projects, and Susan Kell and Chris Simon, collaborators on this and other films with Les Blank (as well as filmmakers on their own.)

There were so many high points to this event, but one of them surely was Harrod Blank thanking Eric and Suzy for a gift they had given his father shortly before his death in 2013.

“They did something that was so special for my father that I will never forget,” Harrod said, “and that was, as he was dying in his bed, about three days out, they performed for him, and it was absolutely beautiful.”