DIRECTED & EDITED BY FREDERICK WISEMAN

Documentary master Frederick Wiseman’s 38th film in a career that has spanned more than that number of years, turns his attention to one of the world’s greatest ballet companies, the Paris Opera Ballet. John Davey’s camera roams the vast Palais Garnier, an opulent 19th century pile of a building: from its crystal chandelier-laden corridors to its labyrinthine underground chambers, from its light-filled rehearsal studios to its luxurious theater replete with 2,200 scarlet velvet seats and Marc Chagall ceiling. LA DANSE devotes most of its time to watching impossibly beautiful young men and women — among them Nicolas Le Riche, Marie-Agnès Gillot, and Agnès Letestu — rehearsing the choreography of Mats Ek, Wayne McGregor, Rudolf Nureyev and Pina Bausch. For balletomanes and the curious alike, LA DANSE serves up a scrumptious meal of delectable moments, one more glorious than the next, made even more precious by their ephemeral nature.

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(Recorded November 4, 2009)
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Presented with Generous Support from the Grand Marnier Foundation.

“One of the finest dance films ever made. A feast for ballet lovers. Sumptuous in its length and graceful in its rhythm.
Transfixes you with the inner workings of an institution.”
– A.O. Scott, The New York Times

“A JOYOUS EXPERIENCE! Fanatical artistic direction is the subject of Frederick Wiseman’s LA DANSE. The dancers, whom he photographs not in the manner of the commercial cinema, where bodies are broken up into threshing limbs, but in full frame, top to bottom, with space around them, so that we can see the incredible moves the dancers are capable of.”
– David Denby, The New Yorker

“What a thrilling week for dance onscreen. A portrait of one of the world’s great companies by one of the world’s great vérité documentarians. LA DANSE captures a living ecosystem. Beyond offering the privilege of watching gorgeously photographed scenes from seven ballets classically smooth and atonally jarring, LA DANSE is an anatomy. It’s about flesh and bone and sinew, about sublimity on Earth.”
– David Edelstein, New York magazine

“Two magnificent movies about ballet – one fiction, one fact; one a restored classic, one a brand-new work making its U.S. premiere – open within 48 hours of each other at Film Forum... Both films offer us the extraordinary experience of watching the burning commitment to perfection.”
– Melissa Anderson, Village Voice

“Frederick Wiseman remains the most prominent invisible man of American documentary film. LA DANSE… does more than offer intimate access to great dancers like Nicolas Le Riche and Agnès Letestu and choreography by Rudolph Nureyev and Pina Bausch… it also ventures beyond the stage and studios and into sewing rooms, cafeterias and administrative offices. It is above all a portrait of an institution. (Wiseman’s) movies reveal the most basic foundations of society. (His) best movies, despite the aura of vérité purity, also have the heft and intricacy of great drama.”
– Dennis Lim, The New York Times

“ Heavenly!” – V.A. Musetto, New York Post

“An absolute treat for balletomanes.” – Leslie Felperin, Variety

“With his latest documentary LA DANSE, Wiseman turns his all-seeing eye and organizing intelligence on the most evanescent of arts.”
– Nicolas Rapold, Sight & Sound magazine

“Glorious! The American documentary master’s typically rigorous and compelling study of all that goes on in the rehearsal rooms,
offices and finally on the legendary stage of the Paris Opera Ballet. A superb portrait of the perennial pas de deux between art and commerce.”
– Jason Anderson, Eye Weekly (Toronto)

FRANCE / USA • 2009 • 158 MINS. • IN ENGLISH AND FRENCH WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES
Zipporah Films - FILMSOURCE INFORMATION


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