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Exactly what you will get from it depends largely on how much you already know. If it's all completely new to you - if you're not even a regular ballet-goer - you'll get a picture of a lost world, a world of extraordinary vitality, where the most famous names in the arts of the time mingled as a matter of course with the hardworking dancers: when one of them says 'We had the painters in', he's not talking about someone giving the dressing-rooms a quick freshening, he means people like Matisse. On the other hand, if you're a scholar of the period, you'll probably get irritated by the way the film skates over a lot of the detailed history, and by the way it sometimes presents as fact what is actually just a point of view. There are occasional mis-identifications, too (so I'm told), and the way the music and the film-clips relate, or don't, can be annoying. But I'd guess that most audiences won't fall into either of these categories, but will be -like me - people who've read about the Ballets Russes era for years and years and are deeply, blissfully grateful for the chance to see it brought back to life on the screen.
 

What comes through most strongly is the mix of the hard, hard work of endless touring with a glamour which has almost disappeared from the dance world. I don't know if the characters we meet during the film were formed by the life they led or whether you had to be strong-minded to start with in order to survive - either way, these people jump out of the screen and hit you in eye. From the rather scary Mia Slavenska to the scatterbrained Nathalie Krassovska and the utterly gorgeous George Zoritch, these are STARS, certain - and rightly so -of their attraction. The backbone of the whole film is the ninety-something Frederick Franklin, with a dry wit and an endless fund of stories, and apparently still with more energy than most people half his age. Though most of the dancers are very well known - the baby ballerinas, Maria Tallchief, Danilova, Massine - there were some real surprises for me, like the American-Indian Yvonne Chouteau who was just a name to me but whose dancing was a revelation. There's a much more serious side to the tale, too, exemplified by the lovely Raven Wilkinson who talks about her experience as a black dancer in the company touring in the southern states of the USA - a very frightening story.
 

Add to all this the many extracts from legendary, lost ballets of the time -most of it amateur footage but no less riveting for that - and the sum is perhaps the most thrilling dance film I've ever seen. If you can't see it in a cinema, wait for the DVD - but see it somehow: it's unmissable.