A dancer's life
Altman choreographs a naturalistic vision of the realities of company life.

By Lynn Rapoport

IN TERMS OF sheer, brute-force dramatic impact, the climactic moment of Robert Altman's The Company takes place 20 minutes into the film, as a pair of dancers perform a soulful, romantic duet on an outdoor stage and the weather turns bad. It's a classic summer's-end Midwestern storm. The wind is rising; leaves twist in the air around the dancers and settle onstage as the man and woman negotiate their relationship and the orchestra plays "My Funny Valentine." They're in a city park somewhere in downtown Chicago, and because they haven't been instructed otherwise, they continue dancing as the storm builds and a stage manager monitors the condition of the stage. Captivated audience members open umbrellas and stay where they are as a company dancer takes a star turn.

It's a gorgeously theatrical moment: the charged air and debris on the wind lend a kind of tearfulness to an already emotionally fraught duet by Lar Lubovitch, a renowned real-life choreographer who briefly appears in the film. It's also a doubly lucky break for one of the dancers, an upcoming member of the company named Ry (Neve Campbell), who was understudying the part when the scheduled soloist sustained an injury: it's the kind of moment those inside and out of the company will have cause to keep in mind. And in another movie altogether – let's say 2000's Center Stage for the sake of discussion – this windswept scene would have been a shoo-in for grand finale. What better way to signal that a star is born, that the spirited, dances-outside-the-lines ingenue is finally due for her incredibly lucky yet richly deserved break, cue happy, "I Love New York" theme music? Instead, we're in Chicago, watching real members (except for Campbell) of a slightly fictionalized Joffrey Ballet, in a film where a surprising, successful performance is, in the shorter term, one good night for one dancer in a season of ups and downs. Backstage elation is tempered by an evening that ends on a minor key, as Ry goes home to an empty apartment to decompress and quietly, privately react to an affair that's ended badly.

This is a film that – more than any fictional account of the dance world I've seen – finds a hundred offhand ways to say that basically, that's how it goes. The life of a dancer is mostly tough breaks. You could, for example, be a young talent receiving praise for your technique during rehearsal and horrifically, audibly snap your Achilles tendon on the eve of a solo performance, rendering yourself useless (and possibly unpaid) for the rest of the season. You could be an older talent beginning to find yourself out of sync with the needs of the company. You could be a talent of just about any age who still needs to pick up shifts in a local nightclub on your rare nights off in order to make rent.

Earlier, as the opening titles clear the screen, Ry is seen discussing her romantic life with fellow dancers; midway through the film a relationship with a local chef (James Franco) unobtrusively resolves itself on-screen. But Altman doesn't let us, or her, luxuriate in personal histories. Using structure, tone, and character sketch rather than character speeches to get the point across, he challenges us to ask what these histories signify, compared with the threat of standing water and broken bones, compared with the life of the company. The histories can't pull rank, at least. So the offstage theatrics of a bruised heart get a note in the margin as a girl goes home to her studio apartment, unwraps the bandages on her bloody feet, waits for the bathtub to fill, and weeps. She even has to share her background music with another dancer, seen practicing late at night in the studio.

In classic Altman fashion (and really, a ballet company seems an ideal cast for this particular choreographer to set a film on), Ry is one of a few dozen characters who occupy the screen at one time or another. Some 9 or 10 performances – pieces created over the years by real-life choreographers such as Lubovitch, Gerald Arpino (artistic director and cofounder, with Robert Joffrey, of the Joffrey Ballet), Robert Desrosiers, and Alwin Nikolais – are delicately interspersed between quiet scenes of company life whose emotional tone and distance more closely resemble those of a documentary than a feature-length drama about the performing arts. The Company seems to be trying to approach that life as intimately as it can while still claiming the creative freedoms of a fictional account.

Rehearsals with choreographers are choppy, awkward, and utilitarian (with Lubovitch) or eyebrow-raising (with visiting choreographer Desrosiers, setting his comically extravagant Blue Snake on the company) or frustrating (with company artistic director Alberto Antonelli, entertainingly played slightly larger-than-life by Malcolm McDowell and standing in for Arpino). There are meetings between Antonelli and various dancers (whom he refers to en masse as his "babies"), who gripe or politely listen or petition for favors. A young apprentice fumbles through his first days with the company, then fades into the routine of learning his way. Whereas in Altman's previous film, Gosford Park, a gorgeous knot of plotlines concerning the inhabitants (upstairs, downstairs, guests, and landholders) of an English country manor, tests the viewer's memory and struggles to untangle itself by film's end, here plotlines impose themselves and then fade out of existence, more realistic than cinematic. And the only question on the test is, do these fragments of lives matter if that's all we get?

Having gone through 13 years of classical ballet training and performance, I would have to answer fervently, uncomfortably yes. A decade and a half later I still find it painfully fascinating to look in on the milieu, on accounts of the professional life: the rooms full of mirrors, the performance halls full of strangers, the sound of the teacher's cane on the floor in the studio, the grace and disfigurement, the wear and tear on everything you can name, the physical and psychological discipline unlike anything I've experienced since in my own adult life. Those touchstones have an unending resonance, whether they make their appearance in potboiler romances like Center Stage and 1977's The Turning Point (films that borrowed dancers from the New York City Ballet and American Ballet Theatre, though not a whole company) or William Richert's 1972 documentary A Dancer's Life, about the now-defunct ABT School in New York City (recently televised on the 10th anniversary of Rudolph Nureyev's death).

All of which makes it easy for me to understand why Campbell, who danced professionally in Toronto before injuries ended one career and she started another, worked for seven years to make The Company happen (she produced it and has a cowriting credit on the screenplay). It's equally believable to me that, sustaining new injuries during rehearsal, she would dance with a broken rib while filming, as she's stated in recent interviews about the making of The Company. But then, I remained curious about the particulars of the world the film inhabits through three separate screenings. The film's ability to fascinate people without any ties to the dance world is less certain. Fame was cool, what with the leg warmers and Irene Cara taking her shirt off and weeping. Flashdance had steelworkers and break dancing and hot sex. The real thing, lacking the '80s kitsch factor and the bra-removal scene, is hardly up for discussion. I still remember a college friend – six foot five, with the build of a professional basketball player – launching into a cruelly hilarious diatribe about how ridiculous humans look while trying to achieve a state of grace.

Whatever Altman thinks about states of grace, he clearly believed the real-life dramas of the company's days and nights would be enough to sustain a one-and-a-half-hour movie. But the question remains, will people be transfixed by a series of quiet offstage spectacles, stay to the end waiting for the point to kick in, or leave the theater early in disgust to have irate discussions in the car about the nature of art? When I think about audiences walking out, it's that kid from college I picture, heckling the company's use of physical space from the seat behind me. Because it's an Altman film, it's just possible he might have waited in line in the first place.

There are stories in this movie, many of them, whether you need an insider's guide or simply an active imagination to see them. The antipode to Campbell's possibly rising star, an aging soloist has a routine meeting with Antonelli and two of the ballet masters and casually takes an early step toward ending her career. She's the most irritating character in the film, and yet it's unsettling to watch her egotism prevent her from noticing she's replaceable. Elsewhere an ambitious principal dancer pushes the director to give the ballet he's choreographed a prestigious premiere and is rebuffed. In Center Stage a similar scenario plays out like a steamroller; here it's simply one of a hundred moments of conflicted discussion Antonelli finesses his way in and out of each day with the help of a personal assistant and a genius for manipulation. And in a sense it's those moments that best articulate the plotline of the only story that matters in the end, that of the company itself.

'The Company' opens Fri/16 at Bay Area theaters. See Movie Clock, in Film listings, for show times.