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Ballets Russes

2005, Movie, NR, 118 mins

Ballets Russes: Review

BALLETS RUSSES
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You don't have to know an arabesque from an alligator handbag to enjoy Daniel Geller and Dayna Goldfine's loving documentary about the various incarnations of the Ballet Russe: The reminiscences of its international cast of raconteurs — razor-sharp survivors of a bygone era filled with glittering, larger-than-life personalities and outrageous twists of fate — are better than any soap opera. Flamboyant Russian cultural impresario Sergei Diaghilev (1872-1929) formed the first Ballet Russe in 1909, cultivating artists, dancers, composers and choreographers including George Balanchine, Igor Stravinsky, Pablo Picasso, Vaslav Nijinsky, Michel Fokine, Léon Bakst and Léonide Massine. The company folded after his death, but Monte Carlo Opera Ballet director René Blum and Russian expatriate Colonel Vassili de Basil, revived it as the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, hiring Balanchine and Massine and recycling the original company's vast stockpile of costumes and scenery. For 30 years, egos raged behind the "everything is beautiful at the ballet" facade. Balanchine was ousted in 1933, Blum quit in 1935, and Massine and de Basil jockeyed for control until 1938, when Massine formed his own Ballet Russe and fought de Basil for the name. Massine won, forcing de Basil to rename his company the Original Ballet Russe, which conquered Australia and South America before folding in 1948; Massine's company toured the US under the auspices of booking agent extraordinaire Sol Hurok. Balanchine, who'd spent the intervening years working on Broadway, in Hollywood and even choreographing an elephant dance for the Ringling Brothers' circus, replaced Massine and then left to form his own company, the world-famous New York City Ballet. The Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo limped on until 1962, when it danced a last, threadbare performance at New York's Brooklyn Academy of Music. In their day the various Ballets Russes brought classic and daringly modern works to small towns and international opera houses; their dancers went to Hollywood and to Broadway, trailing an intoxicating aroma of old-world glamour. When the ball was over, they scattered to Denmark, England, Australia, Venezuela and the United States, settling in cities as diverse as New York, Dallas, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles and Chicago, where they taught, started companies and tended the flames of their golden youth. Geller and Goldfine have assembled a treasure trove of color and B&W performance footage, but the stars are the incredibly diverse Ballets Russes alumni, from grown-up "baby ballerinas" Irina Baronova and Tatiana Riabouchinska to Yvonne Craig, who became TV's Batgirl, to pioneering gay pornographer Wakefield Poole. leave a comment --Maitland McDonagh
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