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La Danse (Film)

by Annette Basile | October 18, 2010 11:11 | Edited October 18, 2010 12:14

While there’s insight to be gained, this overly long and often mundane doco is unlikely to spark an interest in the general viewer.

You'd think that a fly-on-the-wall documentary about a prestigious Parisian ballet company would have plenty of drama, sweat and tears. But there's no conflict in La Danse, and perhaps that's the point - that life at the Paris Opera Ballet is actually quite mundane. It's another day at the office for these dancers, who are mostly faceless. Their instructors though, and the company's admirable artistic director, have more forceful, distinctive presences.

 
La Danse enters the company's office, costume workroom and canteen (an especially banal moment), but spends most of its time in the rehearsal rooms, taking only a few brief but magnificent side-trips to the stage. In the lacklustre rehearsal space, there's no orchestra, lighting, costumes or operatic story to follow - only a bare bones piano accompaniment and occasionally interesting dialogue.

 

But there are rewards, principally the insights gained into how performances are shaped. A dancer needs dedication and stamina. A good dancer, it's said here, is half nun/half boxer, and both horse and jockey. It's heartening to see that the company isn't afraid of risky material, and of giving it time to stick, while the staff meeting discussing retirement is of particular interest, with young dancers facing the end of the professional road at age forty.

Made by one-time lawyer and maverick veteran documentarian Frederick Wiseman (High School, Public Housing), there's little narrative, fitting with the acclaimed filmmaker's singular style, which also bypasses interviews, narration and even text on screen. Ballet aficionados will no doubt find something here that the untrained eye misses, but maybe the test of a documentary is how much it can appeal to wider audiences, or at least doco enthusiasts. To have broader appeal, a film like this needs to tell a universal story, and, arguably, La Danse doesn't.

 

There's certainly something to take out of it, but at two-and-a-half hours, it's a long haul for the general viewer.