Someone, somewhere, desperately wants me to become obsessed with ballet. I think it’s working.
In early August the UCLA Film & Television Archive presented their newly restored prints of one of my favorite narrative films—Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger’s The Red Shoes. I went twice, and dragged friends with me to both screenings, for which everyone was grateful. The prints are gorgeous to look at, and I actually cried a little bit while Robert Gitt gave his presentation on the work the Archives undertook in restoring the film. The film, if you haven’t seen it, presents a tragic love story between a prima ballerina and a composer and features an astonishing 15-minute long ballet sequence.
And now Frederick Wiseman’s newest documentary La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet is out in limited release. A nearly three hour long loosely structured, un-narrated look at the workings of the Paris Opera Ballet, the film sounds a bit intimidating but is actually quite engaging. By taking the role of a by-stander in the rehearsal studios and company meetings, merely observing the people who make the Paris Opera Ballet run—from the janitors to the dancers and the artistic director—Wiseman creates a fascinating portrait. The highlights of the film of course are the dances themselves—and in particular Wayne McGregor’s Genus—one particular rehearsal early in the film drove me to return to the theater a second time to see it, and perhaps more times yet to come.
Also of note is the Los Angeles Filmforum’s ongoing retrospective of the complete film works of choreographer/filmmaker Yvonne Rainer.
But more on that later…