In Heaven There Is No Beer? (1984) film notes by Tova Gannana for CSA Hitchcock

Dancing is unlike walking or running or standing. When you dance you travel. You take a turn around the room, you change partners. Like a meal, dancing is communal. With dancing comes everything that is good and worth doing. You eat, drink; see old friends, make new ones. To dance is to gather. 

In Heaven There Is No Beer? (1984) Les Blanks documents the people who love to polka. They polka on the beach between umbrellas, the boardwalk, the pool, and even in the pool. They polka at church luncheons, and at a tavern called the Friendship Lounge. Polka is for those who want to be happy, who want to dance away from, or dance in the face of, all that makes a person feel lonely. 

Dancing in pairs is unlike going to a concert where you face forward. Your seat behind you, a crowd around you. At a concert you are passive, when you dance you are kinetic. Dance halls like roller rinks have speed and rhythm that keeps you moving even if you want to sit down, or for a moment, collapse. 

In Heaven There Is No Beer? children play music on stage and dance alongside those who are older. Like all things ancient, the polka to survive must be passed to the next generation. Polka musicians sing songs about sausages, the girl they’d like to marry, the town they were born in, and the Polish blood that runs through their veins. Polka is dear to those who claim it as their culture. Polka can be found in many countries such as Germany, France, Italy and Mexico. Les Blanks centers his film on the Polish polka. An elderly man who has come to Polkabration, a festival which began in 1964 as a one day event and by the time of filming had grown to eleven days, explains, “It’s like a big happy wedding. When I come here I feel as free as a bird. You break up the monotony of all the time you spend working hard.” 

The images in the film are intimate; a man holding a woman’s foot slides ice between her toes. People dance in whatever they are wearing; sometimes it’s a bathing suit. The feeling of the film is one of movement, of being moved by music. 

“I guess I find polka music in a way a rejection of the mass media of the United States,” says Jerry Halkoski, a band leader from Oconomowoc, Wisconsin. At dusk in a parking lot he tells  how he’d wanted to convert people to polka by going on The Tonight Show but then changed his mind, “With me it’s not so much of a cause anymore, it’s hey if I enjoy it that’s fine. It doesn’t have to be mass consumed. Maybe it shouldn’t be. It would spoil it perhaps.” 

The film opens with dancing feet and the voice of a woman counting, “One, two, three, one, two, three.” Everyone has a reason they polka. In Heaven There Is No Beer? Les Blanks doesn’t find conformity, but individuality. To dance is to make a decision to be yourself.