A documentary about Lee Ann Womack’s “I Hope You Dance,” penned by Mark D. Sanders and Tia Sillers, is presented by Hallmark.
According to Lee Ann Womack’s crossover hit song “I Hope You Dance,” time is a wheel that is continually turning and moving us forward.
The song “Hope” has rolled through many people’s life experiences in the fifteen years since its publication, according to songwriter Mark D. Sanders. He has performed it at weddings and funerals. He has encountered siblings who had incorporated the song into their mother’s tombstone. Another man he met was motivated to dissolve a dead marriage by the song.
When Hallmark Movies & Mysteries debuts I Hope You Dance: The Power and Spirit of Song on Thanksgiving, “hope” takes a new turn. Produced by Spencer Proffer (Gods & Monsters) and directed by John Scheinfeld (The U.S. vs. John Lennon), the 95-minute special combines four tales of renewal that are closely related to the song, highlighting the impact that music can have on the globe.
Proffer, who worked in the music industry before becoming a film producer and produced artists like Quiet Riot, Eddie Money, and former Hollies lead singer Allan Clarke, says, “The song and its spirit affected so many people for all the right reasons.” “We wanted to make it even better.”
I Hope You Dance includes a couple who was convinced to get married after seeing a bride and her father dance to the song at a wedding reception, and it recounts the story of a paralyzed woman who used “Hope” as personal inspiration to walk again. There’s another segment on a program that helped homeless people get back on their feet by teaching them ballroom dancing. And the final chapter shows how a college student who loved the song was able to change multiple lives as an organ donor.
“I haven’t had any other songs that affected people like this,” says Sanders, a Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame member who also has authored “Blue Clear Sky” and “Heads Carolina, Tails California,” among other titles. “I had no idea what it was going to do. But I guess people are looking for a positive message in their lives.”
For years, Womack has personally witnessed the impact of “I Hope You Dance.” It was co-written by Sanders and Tia Sillers (of “There is Your Trouble,” “That’d Be Alright”), won country song awards from the ACM, the CMA, and the Grammys, and was selected single of the year by the Academy of Country Music and the Country Music Association. In 2000, it topped Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart for five weeks, and in 2001, it topped the Adult Contemporary list for eleven weeks.
But the song was a challenge for a time when Womack inadvertently became an informal psychotherapist. Fans invariably shared with her how “I Hope You Dance” had helped them overcome gripping tragedies, and hearing those emotionally charged tales was difficult.
She says, “Every listener can put their own story into it because it does not have a plot.” “I believe that is one of the reasons so many people have been moved by the song.”
Intention was the source of its power. Sillers came up with the concept after witnessing the majesty of nature on two consecutive journeys: a songwriting trip in the Rocky Mountains and a vacation to an ocean beach. The possibility those sights symbolize motivated her.
Sanders gave the song some harmony. Early in life, he had gone through some terrible times, such as a final year of high school when he occasionally went to bed hungry and losing his best buddy, who was killed when he was 22. To prevent the song from appearing sarcastic about hunger, he altered the second line. In order to provide some urgency and perspective, he also included a counter-melody that depicts time as a wheel in motion.
“I typically have to add some shading when Tia and I write together. It kind of bothers me if it does not go so crazy positive,” he says. Because you suddenly start talking about how you are going to die someday and you do not want to accomplish nothing with your life, I always include some negative shade of some kind, and I believe that is what that short piece is. It elevates it above the status of a Hallmark card.
The film’s journey from a dubious concept to television took over a dozen years. Around 2002, Proffer was approached by Universal Music Publishing if he had any ideas on how to transform the song’s message into a significant visual asset. Scheinfeld combed through hundreds of accounts about the song’s influence to choose the few that made the movie, and it was not until the last three or four years that the movie received funding and its final direction.
“I Hope You Dance” honors faith, love, hope, and hard work, therefore it makes sense that the film would be released around Thanksgiving. The Pilgrims’ daring and uncertain trip from England to America gave rise to the holiday. Taking chances is also a theme in the song.
In the movie, the late poet Maya Angelou states, “I think courage is the most important of all the virtues because without courage, you can not practice any other virtue consistently.”
With the project, which consists of not just the TV special but also a follow-up DVD release and a book with extended transcripts from some of the interview subjects from the film, such as Womack, the authors, Brian Wilson, Vince Gill, and Graham Nash, Proffer is taking a chance.
