Book123

    Free register and download UseNet downloader, then you can FREE Download from UseNet.

    Download without Limit " Audiobooks & Video Training Ballets Russes (DVD-Rip, Documentary) " from UseNet for FREE!

More

Ballets Russes

Genre: Documentary | Studio: Geller/Goldfine, Zeitgeist Films | Language: English | 2005 Year

IMDB: 8.0/10 | Starring: Irina Baronova, Tamara Tchinarova; Director: Daniel Geller | ASIN: B000G5SIBM

Mirrors on Ftp2share.com: Rapidshare, Depositfiles, Filefactory and Megaupload

“Part history, part love letter, Ballets Russes may be the most purely delightful documentary in years. The movie follows the birth of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo in the early 1930s, an event that eventually led – after years of exhilarating experiments, bitter artistic battles, and exhausting tours – to the establishment of modern ballet around the world. Ballet Russes combines astonishing film footage of fantastical ballets (featuring extravagant sets designed by Salvador Dali and costumes by Henri Matisse) and interviews with surviving dancers in their 70s, 80s, and 90s (ranging from Dame Alicia Markova, who was a prima ballerina with the original Ballet Russe under impresario Sergei Diaghilev, to Yvonne Craig, who went on to become Batgirl in the '60s TV show Batman); the result is a breathtaking range of scholarship and depth of feeling. The heart of the film is the dancers themselves, who are sly, thoughtful, gossipy, and amazingly youthful in spirit – even the most difficult times are discussed with humor and honesty. Ballet fans will find this an essential document, while anyone who's never even thought of going to ballet will be completely caught up in these dancers' passion and wonder. A beautiful, entrancing movie.” – Buy It at Lowest Price on Amazon



click to enlarge

click to enlarge

click to enlarge

“«Ballet Russes» is entrancing. I am not particularly a ballet fan. I had a few lessons as a six year old, basically enough to vaguely remember there are five basic positions. Though one of my favorite memories is seeing “Rodeo” at the old Metropolitan Opera just before its demolition, I usually find both classical ballet and its bun heads to be boring. I was certainly never able to keep straight in my head the names and places of ballet's 20th century history. I did once take a wrong turn at a summer job at the new Met and froze when I found myself next to Dame Margot Fonteyn as she was warming up alone for a rehearsal.

But until I saw them talking so personally, other legends like Alicia Markova, Maria Tallchief, let alone the endless Russians, were just names to me. This documentary is cultural history made fascinating by entertaining raconteurs and amazing illustrative archival footage. Creators Daniel Geller and Dayna Goldfine have made the best use of talking heads since Warren Beatty's “Reds”.

The word diva is never used, but these are grande dames and gentlemen, in their '80's and '90's, still with erect posture and various accents from around the world, who have commanded the world's stages with an expression and a hand motion, let alone a lifted leg, and know how to put across an anecdote, especially when talking about larger than life, legendary personalities. (We hear from a few corps members in a round-up towards the end). With deft and sprightly editing, each point an interviewee makes is supported with illustrative photographs or incredible archival film or ephemera documentation, with beautiful music of course. A past world is literally conjured up for us.

Starting at the dissolution of the Diaghilev company that rocked the worlds of dance, music, art, theater and polite society, the film primarily takes a chronological route. From the Russian e'migre' community of Paris in the 1920's (what James Hilton novels refer to as “White Russians”), we are introduced, “Mikado”–like, to three little girls at school. We get glimpses of ballet mistresses recreating the Russian dance conservatories of their youths and are transported to the birth of a company built on this first generation of a new European life.

With only a frisson of gossip and cattiness, the emphasis is on the styles and personalities of each dancer, manager, choreographer, designer, chaperoning mother, and impresario over 40 years of astonishingly creative artistry amidst sturm und drang. There's a lovely anecdote of two prima ballerinas battling for the attention of a young prote'ge' from each side of the stage during performances. Another regal prima ballerina recalls facts of another's fame, then after what feels like a full minute of silence, lifts an eyebrow and dryly turns from the camera, saying “Of course, I was really the first”. There's shades of “Citizen Kane” in remembrances of an infatuated manager pushing forward a young corps dancer as a star.

From amusing to poignant, real world politics off the stage only occasionally crosses their consciousness, when the story deals with World War II, with great anecdotes of escaping Paris before it fell and trying to convince the strict dance masters that rehearsals weren't possible when they were all sea sick nervous wrecks, and moving accounts of racism during their tours.

Men are some of the most eloquent and voluble interviewees, with the point made how long time artistic director Le'onide Massine particularly created ballets for male dancers. The film reinforces my biases against George Balanchine, who was affiliated with the company a couple of times, for his misogyny in insisting that the ideal image of women is like anorexic, pre-pubescent boys.

The filmmakers are a bit too uncritical, only occasionally allowing in shots of reviewers' pans. Much is made of some dancers war time Hollywood sojourn, but no distinction is made between corny clap trap and “7 Brides for 7 Brothers”, one of the all time great movie musicals, though the footage from the former is rarer and they can assume we've seen the latter. While there's no mention of how they must have influenced Gene Kelly, much is made of the impact the company's tours had in small towns and cities, bringing ballet for the first time around the United States.

While some of the footage of a 2000 reunion goes on a bit too much in showing the elderly dancers trying to recreate their glory days, slipping into Russian arguments about steps, it does demonstrate how much of choreography is kinesthetic memory and can only be transmitted person to person. This is reinforced as we see them now as dance teachers in a disapora around the world – from Denmark to Australia to South America to Arizona – and one noting that while today's dancers are better athletes and technicians “They have no warmth!” as she firmly corrects them – just as the original Russian teachers did so long ago in Paris.

As is ironically sung in “A Chorus Line”, “Everything is beautiful at the ballet”. This film is a beautiful statement that dance doesn't have to be evanescent – it can be passed on. It lives in these dancers' memories and we should be very grateful that they have been captured in this film.” –

click to enlarge

click to enlarge

click to enlarge

“The good news is that in Ballets Russes, viewers don't need to know anything about ballet to enjoy this electrifying documentary by Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine, This is a lovingly and confidently made documentary that brings to life an era of unequaled artistic excitement. Equally heart-wrenching, and riveting and thoroughly entertaining the Ballet Russes unwinds like a historical thriller, laying bare the politics, rivalries, tremendous egos, and creative appetites that produced two of the world's greatest ballet companies.

Weaving actual historical footage of the companies with interviews of these dancers today, the film starts with a first-ever reunion of Ballets Russes dancers in New Orleans in 2000, and juxtaposes this with the various permutations of the troupes that started with impresario Serge Diaghilev's legendary Paris-based Ballets Russes. When Diaghilev died in 1929, ballet came to a standstill until a pair of entrepreneurs began Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo two years later.

What follows is a beguiling journey through the intoxicating twists and turns of the next 30 years of ballet history, which involved competing companies, the legendary choreographers George Balanchine, Leonide Massine and David Lichine, and almost every major dancer you can think of, including dancers such as Alicia Markova and Alexandra Danilova. The guides through this world are the dancers themselves, many white-haired and elderly, offering up sharp and often-funny anecdotes. Some were barely in their teens at the time, from families who had lost everything in the Russian Revolution.

These men and women, many of them now in their 80s and 90s, are still totally alive and articulate, including the regal Markova, the coquettish Nathalie Krassovska, and the red-convertible driving octogenarian Tatiana Riabouchinska, who continues to teach because “what will I do, sell fruit? This is my life”. These dancers, choreographers, and impresarios were shamelessly passionate in pursing their professional and personal lives, and the result is a story filled with enough backstage intrigues, romantic rivalries and unlikely assignations to make it the juiciest of artistic soap operas.

The male dancers are equally compelling, there's Frederick Franklin, who talks movingly of his nearly 20-year partnership with Danilova and also the 90-year-old Marc Platt, who had his name changed to Platoff because everyone had to seem Russian, and the vital George Zoritch, captured reliving the past with Krassovska in a moment from “Giselle”. Their grainy performance clips give us an emotional quality that is not to be matched, and their interviews reflected an era of excitement, novelty, innovation, and yes, even sexiness!

The Ballets Russes is one of the best documentaries of the year, a wonderful story of a grand moment in high-art culture, the archival footage so breathtaking, and the reminiscences so piquant, that even a novice can't help being swept up in this ode to one of the world's greatest art forms.” –

Download (3% Recovery)

from Rapidshare, Depositfiles, Filefactory or Megaupload:

Download Link (Download)

Password (if required): & 119;& 119;& 119;& 46;& 65;& 118;& 97;& 120;& 72;& 111;& 109;& 101;& 46;& 114;& 117;

Rating:
2.5 out of 5 by Book123