ABT, are you ready for your close-up? - American Ballet Theater

Dance Magazine, June, 1995 by Hillary Ostlere

Noted filmmaker Frederick Wiseman has cast an unblinking eye on many subjects in his twenty-eight years of making documentaries. He's covered everything from conditions in a Massachusetts mental hospital for the insane in the starkly probing Titicut Follies, to the monastic serenity of Essene, the bustling racetrack world of Race, the low life of Law and Order, and the high life of fashion in Model. Now as part of his grand scheme to film America's institutions, sixty-five-year-old Wiseman is adding cultural enterprises to the already impressive twenty-six subjects that have brought him three Emmys and a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, among other honors. For his first project in the genre he's turned his camera on American Ballet Theatre. The film, Ballet, is scheduled to air nationwide over PBS on June 26.

"When I started," Wiseman says, "I didn't know much about ballet - I'd go to it in New York or when I'm home in Boston. As we professed with the filming I got drawn in and became quite enthralled. We spent seven weeks in the studios, then followed the company on tour to Greece and Denmark for another two weeks. I shot 110 hours of film, which I edited down to 170 minutes." The result is an engrossing work that slowly gathers momentum as it reaches the ultimate climax of performance.

Wiseman's account of how he chose ABT is typically casual and straightforward: "I went to see Jane Hermann [then ABT's codirector with Oliver Smith] and told her what I wanted to do. She immediately said yes, so John Davey, our director of photography, and I moved in with the crew." For the next seven weeks they became an invisible presence at ABT's studios and headquarters on lower Broadway. According to ballet mistress Georgina Parkinson, "They were there, very intimately, for such a long time, one could forget their existence and behave absolutely naturally, even though we sometimes carded hidden radio microphones."

The objective was not to make a dance film, like The Turning Point or The Red Shoes, or even the "you are there" performances so meticulously recorded by Paul Czinner. Wiseman strives to show every facet of a ballet company realistically, from the day-to-day grind in the classroom and rehearsal studio, to the adrenaline-laced rigors of performance. Nor does he ignore the downtime and off-duty moments. We see dancers exhausted, bored, relaxing, letting off steam on tour in an Athens taverna, joyriding in Copenhagen's Tivoli Gardens - even walking their dogs. Wig dressers, publicity photographers, stagehands, costume designers, ABT's office personnel, and the cleaners who wipe the studio floors are caught in Wiseman's lens. Highlights include the late Agnes de Mille, with Terry Orr at her side, setting her last work, The Other, on a wonderfully cooperative Amanda McKerrow; choreographer Ulysses Dove whirling through a rehearsal of his Serious Pleasures; the Kirov's Irina Kolpakova intensely coaching Susan Jaffe; and Christine Dunham earning applause from her usually blase dancers for an all-out rehearsal of a Raymonda variation.

Early on, says Wiseman, he elected to use his single camera to take in the whole studio. "I began to appreciate the hard work and skill it takes to dance well. You have to shoot dancers wide and see their entire body from head to toe."

When the camera also takes in the front office, it can get too close for comfort. Codirector Hermann, after seeing Ballet at a special screening, was overheard asking Wiseman to delete the sizzling swear word she had used when castigating the presentations manager of the Metropolitan Opera House for not telling her the Kirov Ballet would duplicate ABT's repertoire when it played there. ("I'm tired of people always saying I'm coarse," she told Wiseman.)

Ever the unbiased "recording eye," Wiseman follows his habitual objective, to concentrate on the subject - the effort and discipline that goes into ballet, and the progression from rehearsal to performance with all that it involves - without commentary. There are no identifying captions, even when you get a glimpse of Natalia Makarova coaching Cheryl Yeager in La Bayadere or Michael Somes of the Royal Ballet rehearsing Frederick Ashton's Symphonic Variations with Cynthia Harvey, Sandra Brown, Ashley Tuttle, and Ethan Brown. Explains Wiseman, "In my style of film I don't identify because I think it interrupts the film inserting subtitles saying Susan Jaffe or Agnes de Mille. It doesn't really make any difference; you see an intelligent person talking or a great dancer dancing."

The same dictum applies to the extracts of ballets shown at various lengths in performance. (These include Raymonda Act III, La Bayadere, Glen Tetley's Rite of Spring, Symphonic Variations, Clark Tippet's Bruch Violin Concerto No. 1, The Sleeping Beauty, and Kenneth MacMillan's Romeo and Juliet.)

Dancegoers will, however, immediately know Alessandra Ferri and Julio Bocca as they perform two pas de deux, the passionate balcony and bedroom scenes from Romeo. Zoom lens and inspired editing give the impression of actually being with the dancers, lending a rare, breathtaking immediacy. Says Wiseman, "We shot it at the Royal Theatre, Copenhagen, using two cameras instead of our usual one, placing them in the wings almost onstage and at the back of the orchestra. The moment I saw Romeo, it was instantly apparent ... that this was the right ending for the movie. Bocca and Ferri are obviously involved artistically - they ... feel at ease with each other. The acting's very good as well as the dancing. It's a cliche, but it was just like the real thing. They transcended dance at that point. You feel that they are Romeo and Juliet."