Right from the beginning of Frederick Wiseman’s documentary, the director sets a rhythm. We get an aerial view of Paris, and then the cuts take us ever closer to the Palais Garnier, the home of the Paris Opéra Ballet. The shots of the building whisk us from the magnificent façade of the opera house, with a detour to the subterranean passageways (think Andrew Lloyd Webber) before the camera rises to the top floor of the building. It’s almost a Leitmotif; Wiseman returns to the (roughly) identical sequence of shots several times during the film.
The magic starts there, as it has for centuries, and Wiseman just lets it unfold for more than 2-and-a-half hours. The director’s style should be familiar after four decades of film making. Much of the time he adheres to what seems a fly-on-the-wall approach, visiting dance studios during rehearsals or sitting in on business meetings with members of the staff. We tour the costume shop, where sequins are sewed on tutus with scrupulous care. We dip into the company cafeteria. We attend a meeting of what passes for a development department planning session for a tour by an American Friends support group. We eavesdrop on a conversation between a dancer in career transition and the formidable director of the Paris Opéra Ballet, Brigitte Lefèvre.
Most of all we are with Wiseman as he fixes his camera on the extraordinary wealth of dancing talent assembled by the company. The instruction is meticulous, vivid and sophisticated; you get the impression that these dancers can do virtually anything. We are granted insights into the working methods of choreographers like Wayne McGregor and Angelin Preljocaj. We also encounter examples of Gallic exceptionalism at its most egregious. I wondered at the balletmaster Pierre Lacotte and his swipes at Balanchine technique. None of the ballets we are allowed to see in snippets can begin to compare with that choreographer’s monumental contribution.
Wiseman has made his reputation by investigating the internal workings of institutions, whether they be political, social (i.e., The Titticut Follies, a corrosive exposé of a Massachusetts hospital for the criminally insane) or artistic. One really needs to compare La Danse with Wiseman’s 1993 film on American Ballet Theatre (which was shown, courageously, on PBS). In that pre-Kevin McKenzie era, ABT was, on the evidence, a dysfunctional company, consistently on the brink of financial oblivion. How different is the situation at the Paris Opéra Ballet, a great, centuries-old, state-supported institution, where nobody ever discusses the need to sell tickets. The closest the movie comes to economic reality is the episode in which a government representative updates the dancers, who are state employees, on their eligibility for pensions at the age of 40. Dream on, Americans.
Lefèvre remains a charismatic presence, an ideal combination of artist, government functionary, diplomat and den mother. She quotes literature in one sentence and scrutinizes a dancer’s weight gain in another. And she oozes culture from every pore. Most illuminating is Lefèvre’s conversation with her artistic staff on the dancers’ unwillingness to take much interest in modernism.
Wiseman’s stylistic method can be infuriating. Until the movie’s final crawl, he refuses to identify dancers, choreographers or the ballets we are witnessing, although we catch glimpses of the company’s leading étoiles of the moment. More seriously, one must wonder at the POB repertoire we are permitted to see in finished form. McGregor’s torso-twisting Genus seems fascinating, especially in its chrysalis stage. But the rest of it! Mats Ek’s Lorca-inspired Maison de Bernarda looks as awful as the bloody mess that Preljocaj has made of the Medea story. Rudolf Nureyev’s unmusical Nutcracker is no better; Sasha Waltz’s take on Romeo and Juliet (to Berlioz) is inconclusive. Heaven knows what Emanuel Gat is doing. Lacotte’s speculative version of Paquita alone upholds the classical tradition in which the POB has cloaked itself. You wonder if this is where four centuries of dedication to the classical ideal have taken us.
Good contemporary classical choreography is not easy to find these days. Why should POB be any different? This, I should note, is an institution that dances Balanchine and Robbins with consummate brilliance. Too bad we don’t see more of them in this often absorbing film.
La Danse opens Friday in the Bay Area at the Balboa in San Francisco and the Renaissance Rialto Elmwood in Berkeley. Dancers Group will present a benefit screening of La Danse (for the Parachute Fund) Thursday at 7 p.m. at the Elmwood.
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