La Danse is a fly-on-the-wall documentary of the Paris Opera Ballet, one of the world’s greatest ballet companies and the world’s oldest company. Documentarian Frederick Wiseman’s well-known style offers no voice-over,just an intimate look…
La Danse is a fly-on-the-wall documentary of the Paris Opera Ballet, one of the world’s greatest ballet companies and the world’s oldest company. Documentarian Frederick Wiseman’s well-known style offers no voice-over, no interviews, and no inter-titles, which permits you an intimate look into the world of professional ballet dancers, choreographers, and the operation of the company.
Wiseman takes you to see rehearsals of different dance productions from the classics works (including The Nutcracker and Romeo and Juliet) to the modern (Songe de Medée – think erratic movements and squeaky violins). Immediately you are in awe of how skilful the dancers are from how instantaneously they make changes to their dance steps upon instructions from the choreographer. You learn that dancing is not just performing the correct action at the right time but the emotion it exudes. You recognize the difference a good dancer brings to the final production.
In between watching dancers you observe the Artistic Director in various meetings – one with an aging principal dancer complaining about her schedule, then with a young dancer on her improvements and complimenting on her weight-loss and another with hosting a tour for American donors.
The scene where the Artistic Director held a meeting of the whole company discussing retirement arrangement (dancers retire at 40!) contrasts the current news of French strikes against the raising retirement age. Wiseman also gave you a glimpse of the company with shots of the seamstress painstakingly completing sequin details on the costume of 150+ dancers as well as the repairman maintaining the 134-year-old opera house.
The film was nicely concluded with scenes of the final productions on stage with full costume and scenery. However I felt a bit left-out not all final performances were shown that matched with the rehearsals we saw earlier.
I found La Danse to really showcase ballet dancers at the highest level, and a more in-depth look in the actual dancing than The Secret Lives of Dancers – the documentary TV series on the Royal New Zealand Ballet, which I enjoyed for the drama.
After La Danse, on my way back to the car park I felt like I can leap as high as the Parisian dancers and I promised myself to book tickets to the Nutcracker show this December by the Royal New Zealand Ballet!
By Lillian Kuan, 25 November 2010.
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