© Paul Kolnik Bringing Balanchine Back High-definition digital video Length 80 minutes Director: Richard Blanchard Producer: Christopher Ramsey Cinematographer: Dick Pope Narrator: Kevin Kline recent NYCB reviews more John Mallinson reviews Discuss this review (Open for at least 6 months) Bringing Balanchine Back will be broadcast in the UK on Sky's Artsworld channel on October 22nd at 5pm. It is slated for release on DVD in the US later this year.

The documentary shows the week long trip from departure to return with quite extensive coverage of the performances and film of the company relaxing. Some of the out-and-about St Petersburg footage is stagey but the director is sure footed when it comes to the filming backstage in the theatre and in performance. Arts documentaries will always frustrate aficionados by dangling snippets of performance. Thus we see the seven minute version of Serenade and three to four minute extracts from others ballets including Balanchine's Symphony in C, Symphony in Three Movements, Western Symphony and Agon, Jerome Robbins's Dances at a Gathering and Glass Pieces, and Peter Martins' Hallelujah Junction. Overall the balance between on-stage and off-stage footage is right for this type of feature, but how one wishes that full versions of some of the performances would be released. Unlikely, but at least they should end up in the Balanchine or NYCB archives.
 

Several dancers are featured, amongst them Darci Kistler, at 41 coming to the end of her career, dancing in Serenade; Benjamin Millepied in Symphony in C saying that the spirit of Nijinsky inspired him to leap higher; Wendy Whelan and Jock Soto, shown in a wonderfully intense excerpt from the Agon pas de deux, so sweat-drenched that they might have been performing underwater. You meet Ballet Master in Chief Peter Martins ("Fun, I'll have fun when I go back to New York!") and Kirov director Valery Gergiev (unkempt, charismatic, wayward), the conductor Andrea Quinn (struggling with the orchestra), production manager Perry Silvey (keeping calm), and ballet mistress Rosemary Dunleavy-Maslow who had been on both previous visits.

With such a large cast to hand there's always a risk of overbalancing a documentary by focussing too heavily on individuals. In this case the director's attention to Alexandra Ansanelli almost does this. Ansanelli, here not at her most natural in front of the camera, had a difficult trip. She was due to premiere in Serenade in St Petersburg but injury had stopped her rehearsing before leaving New York. By the day of her performance she had not danced it with the full company let alone on stage. There followed a very strained rehearsal with Peter Martins. She did not dance that day. This must have been a low moment for her and it is here shown in embarrassing fly-on-the-wall manner, presumably with her concurrence. She finally made a successful Russian debut in Western Symphony.

An effusive Lincoln Kirstein wrote of Balanchine's first visit "His return to his early youth has been touching in the extreme and historic in Terpsichorean annals." There was also much emotion surrounding this 2003 visit. The 20 years since Balanchine's death vanished; the dancers seemed to feel his presence and performed for him. Rosemary Dunleavy-Maslow was especially moved: "When I stood in the wings it all flooded in, everything that we always got from dancing and being with him and part of his world … and being able to carry that on and to bring it back here and to say 'You see, we didn't forget'."
 

The visit was not without problems. There was the heat wave, there were the mosquitos and lack of air-conditioning and the endless daylight (White Nights) to get used to. The Kirov orchestra had trouble with some of the repertory (especially the Stravinsky). Valery Gergiev conducted part of the first night's programme bringing his best players who never appeared again during the week. Then there was the disappearing orchestra on the first night. Gergiev whisked them off in the interval for extra rehearsal of Symphony in Three Movements leaving the dancers waiting on stage and the audience shifting in their seats.

Overall it seems to have been a very successful trip. The vox pops were favourable, with one man commenting "When you see the real thing … there is no comparison, it's wonderful." Others: "We didn't expect this from the Americans." "It's the best thing that has happened this summer. It's fantastic."

This is a decently-made film which gives an entertaining and interesting view of the atmosphere and the problems and triumphs of the visit.