© Jeff Vespa / WireImage Ballets Russes film review Discuss the film and this interview Film Website: www.balletsrussesmovie.co.uk Renee Renouf reviews

Forty dancers were filmed and personal and career memorabilia recorded over a two year period before the post production challenge commenced. Twenty of these dancing veterans are included in the two-hour film already shown in Melbourne, Sydney, Toronto and Port Townsend, Washington before formally opening October 26 in New York City. Oh, yes, sponsored by the International Documentary Association, Ballets Russes was one of fifteen films screened during its Docu Week, quietly, in Los Angeles to qualify it for consideration in the Oscar marathon. The DVD release is projected for early 2006.

I asked the couple, who made their first documentary on Isadora Duncan with narration by Julie Harris, about the Australian and Toronto responses. "Oh," breathed Dayna, "It was amazing!" "There was the response to the film," Dan commented, " And then there was the response to Irina Baronova, who was there."

"Australia, more than any other country, is still very conscious of the debt they owe the Ballets Russes," Dayna observed. "In our film Tamara Tchinara Finch says, "We were very resentful because we thought Australia was only convicts and kangaroos." No one was coming of stature, no other cultural organizations the way the Ballets Russes did. They loved it. The roots that the Ballets Russes left behind are visible to this day in ways that have been covered up in this country. People who scratch underneath the surface here and in Europe recognize the debt, but in Australia it's right there. There is such an appreciation."

"People were going up to Irina, touching her, saying 'I feel like I am touching history." It was so wonderful, so beautiful. Valrene Tweedie, whom we filmed but who is not in the film, came to a special showing in Sydney arranged with the Friends of the Australian Ballet for a sneak preview. She was so generous and was one of the first to stand up after the screening and said, 'Thank you so much for getting our history right.' She also told a few stories to the audience. It was really special."

Dan mentioned, "Both Irina Baronova and Tamara Tchinara Finch separately said they felt we had placed them in history. I thought that's peculiar because there has been so many beautiful things written about Ballets Russes, placing them, in my mind, in history. What they were saying is there hasn't been a film quite like this, that puts into perspective their whole generation of Ballets Russes dancers, which would extend that interest to a lay audience not well versed in dance history."

"The first time Irina said that in Sydney it took my breath away. I didn't understand, but then I began to realize that many people going to the ballet don't know; they don't know what happened, how it got popularized, the impact this semi-forgotten company had."

Dan continued his comments, "It's rewarding. Some people who know their dance history are engaged by it and feel it's a fair portrait. People, who don't know dance, or who are stubbornly resistant to it and have been yanked into this movie audience, come out saying things like, 'Boy, I think I'd like to go to the ballet now.'" That's a pretty remarkable journey to tear preconceptions apart about what they thought might be an elitist art form, or so rarified they had no way to access it. They see it's an art form dreamed up by people battling their own limits of imagination, battling politics, of colorful dancers - not remote figures on stage minus personality -but interesting performer-athletes. It takes the barrier down. I would be delighted if the outcome of the movie is a raft of people, who wouldn't be caught dead in the theater watching ballet, are now inclined to go."

Dayna smiled as she related to Frederic Franklin the responses and interest in attending the ballet after seeing the film at Sundance. He quipped "Oh, dear, we're in the covered wagons all over again."

The Toronto response, equally memorable, was enhanced by Frederic Franklin's presence. Dan felt the audience responses similar; voluble, laughing and some wiping away some tears as the lights went up.

Film Poster

"Freddie received the same standing ovation as Irina. Perhaps any difference was the presence of the National Ballet of Canada and its school. There are people in Toronto who had studied with Freddie whereas in Australia Irina didn't stay around. One woman gave him a book and said 'Forty years ago I took class with you.' Young girls from the National Ballet School, twelve to sixteen, bent their backs so that Freddie could autograph their tickets. For a moment it brought to life what it must have been like for them, every day, when they were performing, when they would come off that stage and there would be fans."

Dayna commented, "The film was shown the opening night of the documentaries and then again on Saturday. The amazing thing was to see people who had been there on Thursday night back again bringing friends. That was reassuring as well as seeing Freddie getting another standing ovation."

"The press that interviewed Freddie in Toronto were not dance but film press. One woman from the Globe and Mail brought a friend from a competing paper who had been on extended maternity leave. She said, 'The only reason I'm letting you do this is because Freddie is here.' The two sat down, rapt at having an interview with Freddie. Sheila Benson, a lead Los Angeles Times film critic in the '80's who had been a Clara for a Ballet Russe Nutcracker performance, was equally enthralled. The look on the faces of these people who had grown up with these legends!"

"Freddie called before going to Toronto and said, 'I'm starting to get calls from the press, and I think I need to know what I am talking about.' I sent him a DVD and he called the next day.'Oh, Bill and I were up all night watching it over and over again!' I wanted him to stop watching and be fresh for Toronto but he said, 'No, I can't, I'm going to watch it again tonight.!'"

"Unearthing and researching this project was a big job. But the biggest challenge was finding a balance, and from that balance inviting a broader audience, not just the dance aficionados who are the first to get into the theater. We wanted to reach beyond them," Dan reflected. "It took a good, solid three years to get the elements fused into a narrative that respected the dance history, that allowed the personalities of the people in the film to bloom. Stories are idiosyncratic and anecdotes sometimes don't line up directly with dance history. Yet to understand the mood, tone and intent of the Ballets Russes, you need that feeling. To fuse those elements took forever. The first attempts less than promising, so we started again with another approach. It took longer than normal trying to make the de Basil-Massine struggle and the internecine battles clear for the audience, to tie up that knot."
 

Discussing The Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo demise, Dayna paraphrased Wakefield Poole who stated as the company started the busing system with one-night stands, it was easier to stage a 'ham and eggs' program of three ballets than unloading more productions; these were saved for more than a one evening engagement. "It was a combination of expense and sheer time constraints. We talk about money problems, we talk about changing times, the competition with ABT, New York City Ballet, that for so long Denham was the sole artistic arbiter. After Massine left, he never appointed another artistic director; Balanchine was only the resident choreographer and when he left it was just a series of guest choreographers."

Dan evaluated the documentary's limitations by saying, "The film is not an encyclopedia; it's only two hours long. It will have certain emphases that derive from the people who were alive to interview, sparkling on camera, and telling their particular tales." Dayna commented, Yvonne Craig called from Los Angeles to say, 'You got it all right.'

Dan stated that the footage of all forty dancers interviewed is being given to the Dance Division of the New York City Library in Lincoln Center and will be available for research. Of those who did not make it into the final cut, he commented ,"It's not like the material is going to disappear. We did not set out to make a film as told by experts, but a film as lived by participants who will bring you along on their journey."

Dayna added, "The twenty who were not in the film contributed their spirit and also informed the direction of the production. People gave us fabulous interviews, but getting even twenty people into a two hour film was an unwieldy process. Each person in the film comes alive as a character; they are not there for just one comment. Providing an ambience for someone emotionally who resonates with the audience is difficult. It's not like the others were absent from the editing room."