Passionate loves

Film Arts Festival centerpiece Ballets Russes brings dance's past back to life.
By Rita Felciano

THOUGH THE FORM has undergone a revolution in recent years, too many documentaries still have an off-putting learn-because-it's-good-for-you whiff to them. A doc about ballet companies that have left behind fading memories, grainy photos, and snippets of dark film doesn't exactly sound thrilling. Yet Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine's Ballet Russes turns out to be fabulously entertaining. It's fun, it's touching, and it sets the record straight on what began as the tale of a Russian émigré but ultimately became an American saga. Ballets Russes is a great yarn, well spun.

This special film is about people and passion. A passion that led many of its practitioners to take unreasonable risks, endure years of hardship, leave family, country, and culture behind and yet – even in old age – express gratitude for the life they have had. In some way's it's very much the story of a migrant, which ballet – in this country, of course – is.

Though Geller and Goldfine have made one film on dance before (1988's Isadora Duncan: Movement from the Soul), Ballets Russes's hook isn't the art form but the people. Old people, most of them very old. The duo had recently finished a documentary about college students, Nine Months in a Freshman Dorm, so perhaps they were eager to move up the age scale. That opportunity came with the first-ever reunion of Ballets Russes dancers, in June 2000 in New Orleans.

Ballets Russes untangles the complicated strands of Sergei Diaghilev's descendants. When Diaghilev, creator of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes in Monte Carlo, died in 1929, his company died with him. Out of the ashes rose two ensembles: one of the them the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, the other the Original Ballet Russe. (Just to make things even more confusing, for a while in the '40s there was also a Grand Ballet de Monte Carlo.) Like members of any family with an inheritance, the two companies fiercely competed for dancers, for choreographers, and for audiences.

The interviews Geller and Goldfine conducted in New Orleans – and, later, all over the country – gave them give Geller and Goldfine access to an extraordinary treasure trove of photos, film, programs, and flyers from a period of nonstop traveling by both companies that brought ballet to the hinterlands of America. To think that in the '40s some little town in Idaho, for instance, could see such work as Leonide Massine's Bacchanale – with its astounding sets by Dalí – is extraordinary to contemplate. Much of the film's archival material whets the appetite for revivals, particularly of Balanchine's Cotillion and works by Massine.

Ballet Russes also puts to rest the adage that dance – until the advent of video cameras – left few visual traces of its existence. One of this film's big surprises is the sheer quantity of footage the filmmakers unearthed. A lot of it came from the dancers' private collections and a great deal from dance historian Ann Barzel, who started filming both companies in the '30s. (The footage is easily recognizable as having been shot from the wings or a balcony close to the stage.) The mix of sepia, black and white, and early color evokes a period sense but also creates visually rich textures.

Working with editor Gary Weinberg, Geller and Goldfine layered this plethora of material into a finely textured portrait, not only of two companies with fiercely committed artists, but also of a complicated era. Shots of a chestnut seller in Paris, people sitting four deep in a ticket line in London, and Hitler passing in his big convertible go by very quickly, but they effectively suggest time and place for the narrative. It's a narrative that, from the first scene (little girls in a ballet class in Paris) to the last (dancer-teacher Nini Theilade musing about the current generation of dancers), establishes a trajectory that never lags. The film's rhythm – gentle, leisurely, but always on the move – is one of its chief pleasures.

Actor and former dancer Marian Seldes's voice-over approach is unobtrusive, though sometimes her mannerisms border on the sentimental. Since most of the footage lacks sound, it's up to composers David Conte and Todd Boekelheide to create a score that interweaves original and adopted music – they do so seamlessly.

While the film reflects the dancers' ongoing enthusiasm for the art, it doesn't neglect darker themes. Many of the dancers, not having passports, made it out of France by the skin of their teeth. Yvonne Chouteau, one of four Native American ballerinas, still remembers the pain she felt when leaving her family at the age of 14. But the most harrowing account is that of African American ballerina Raven Wilkinson, who left the country to dance with the Dutch National Ballet after the Klan made her presence in the company too difficult.

Ballets Russes' greatest pleasure, however, is meeting so many of these dancers, most of them well into their 80s and still full of sparkle and enthusiasm, ready to do it all over again. Frederic Franklin is the soul and collective memory of the whole era. Mia Slavenska, a great beauty in her youth, with gorgeous bedroom eyes, now cragged in a wheelchair, is tough and feisty. (She has no love lost for Balanchine.) Dame Alicia Markova, described in the film as egotistical by some colleagues, is perfectly coiffed and as icy as a mountain lake. You'd never think of her ethereally floating through Giselle. Irina Baronova, who preferred climbing trees to dancing, looks like she's still able to do both. George Zoritch, whom every ballerina fell in love with, remains quite a hunk – and one with a sense of humor. And then, of course, there is third-generation dancer Nathalie Krassovska, at 88, still making love to the camera – or whoever was behind it.

One of the dancers I would love to meet is Theilade. Born in Indonesia, she toured as a solo cabaret act at 14 and became the Fairy Queen in Max Reinhardt's legendary A Midsummer Night's Dream. At 89, she still teaches in Denmark. She is smart and self-effacing yet fiercely committed to educating dancers' minds and bodies. What a dame!

'Ballets Russes,' Film Arts Festival opening-night gala premiere. Thurs/3, 7:30 p.m. Jewish Community Center, Kanbar Hall, 3200 California, SF, $40-$50, (415) 552-FILM. Opens Fri/4 at the Embarcadero Center Cinema, One Embarcadero Center, promenade level, SF. Call for price. (415) 267-4893; and Fri/11 at Shattuck Cinemas, 2230 Shattuck, Berk. Call for price. (510) 464-5980. See Movie Clock, in Film listings, for showtimes.

Film Arts Festival

The 21st annual Film Arts Festival of Independent Cinema runs Nov. 3-9 at the Jewish Community Center, Kanbar Hall, 3200 California, SF; Roxie Cinema, 3117 16th St., SF; Parkway Theater, 1834 Park, Oakl; Smith Rafael Film Center, 1118 Fourth St., San Rafael. For more information call (415) 552-FILM; for tickets go to www.filmarts.org. All times p.m. unless otherwise noted.