LA DANSE: THE PARIS OPERA BALLET

France/US, 2009, 160 minutes, Colour.
Directed by Frederick Wiseman.

For decades, Frederick Wiseman has been making documentaries. He has covered a wide range of institutions, interested in presenting them, exploring them, and leaving his audience able to form opinions and make their judgments about the value and values of the institution. His documentaries tend to be long and thorough and offer the impression of objectivity.

This is what he has done here. The institution under observations in the Danse Theatre of the Paris Opera.

It is as if we were invited to go on a tour of the Opera House, not just the theatre auditorium (which appears only briefly with its Chagall roof). Rather, we go upstairs and downstairs, through corridors and basements, to offices and workrooms behind the scenes and, especially, to the rehearsal rooms.

It is a long tour, just under three hours. Those whose favourite music form is not ballet will enjoy it but perhaps want to move to other rooms. Those whose favourite music form is the ballet will not worry too much about the time spent.

The tour is mainly inside, though it is punctuated every so often by a breather. We look at Montmartre, the overview of the geometry of Paris boulevards, the gabled roofs, the Opera facades, local detail. We are definitely in Paris.

Ballet is the focus of the film and it stays. There are some scenes with the artistic director, her vision of the company and its program, some pep talks to the group and to a dancer, and some scenes of meetings about contracts and pensions, and the dancer’s active career ending at 40.

But, most of the film is watching rehearsals and some performances. Anyone who thought that ballet might be a dance soft option will have to marvel at the strenuous rehearsals, the requirements of timing, balance, the tough physical realities of mime, motion and agility. We listen to several choreographers and instructors in action and pay attention to the small details they require of the dancers for greater perfection. We see the dancers repeat their lessons, sometimes failing, affirmed when they succeed. We see the dancers with natural talent and those who have to work on technique. We see the achievements in the selections of ballets, some classical but many quite modern in their visual style and action as well as musical score.

Interestingly, there is no real indication of house politics or disputes, though we can see where tensions could rise, bureaucratic and/or artistic temperament.

However, Wiseman and his director of photography (who offers models of framing, zooming quietly, blending medium shots and close-ups, with fine-tuned editing, for how cinema can unobtrusively capture the movement, grace and talents of the dancers in action) offer us the luxury of a visit and the observing of a world class ballet company in action.

1. The work of Frederick Wiseman, his themes, studies of institutions, society, individuals?

2. Audience response to ballet, to contemporary dance?

3. The Paris setting, the exteriors, Montmartre, the roofs, the boulevards? The recurring inserts of the exteriors? Confirming the Paris setting, French language?

4. The tour of the Ballet, the audience watching, Wiseman watching, the possibility of picking and choosing and not remaining too long with one aspect? The range of the tour? The rehearsals, instruction, the artistic director, the meetings, the discussion of policy and pensions, behind the scenes, the workers and the preparation of sets, costumes, makeup, hair?

5. The camerawork, the camera placed to observe, the long takes, the gentle zooming, whole scenes, the parts of the dance, editing, the flow?

6. The choreographers, the instructors, the dancers, their various styles, instructions?

7. The dancers, their age, experience, natural talent, training for technique, being fit, athletic? Their development? Their having to retire at the age of forty?

8. The social issues, the artistic director, the programming, planning for three years, committees, fundraising? The social issues of pensions for the dancers?

9. The range of ballet excerpts, the long scene from Medea, The Nutcracker, individual dances, Romeo and Juliet and couples? Classical, contemporary? The range of musical score from classic, contemporary, modernistic?

10. The appeal of the film, the target audience, interest in the ballet, the attracting of the dancing? An experience of the world of dance?