Karen Kilimnik's Sleeping Beauty and friends (2007)

Perhaps "Dance Rehearsal"'s most spectacular work, choreographed by Kilimnik, is the video installation Sleeping Beauty and friends. It's a love letter to ballet as something that aims for an ideal that, inevitably, is held in check by what we are. The video of the stage performance was intentionally wobbly, so was the dancing. Using variations from specific ballets and jumbling them up, Kilimnik tries to help Siegfried distinguish between the Black and White Swans. Here two women dance neck-to-neck, and he still doesn't get it. What about James in La Sylphide? Truthfully, he and the sylph, who wears tons of Swarovski crystals, are made for each other — each is more self-involved and narcissistic than the other, not far from the truth. Sleeping, which also included perspectives on Don Quixote and Diana and Actaeon, was nothing less than brilliant. A number of lectures and a ballet film series are scheduled concurrently with this exhibit.

DANCE REHEARSAL: KAREN KILIMNIK'S WORLD OF BALLET AND THEATRE

Through Dec. 9

Tue.-Sat., 11am-4pm; Wed, 11am-7:30pm, free

Mills College Art Museum

5000 Macarthur Blvd., Oakl.

mcam.mills.edu