La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet

Frederick Wiseman, one of the world's greatest documentary makers, films the Paris Opera Ballet, one of the world's greatest ballet companies, and the result is an impressively fluid and insightful glimpse inside one of France's foremost cultural institutions. Wiseman wastes no time in taking us behind the scenes into rehearsals, placing dance itself at the heart of the film, and in sum we see preparations for and/or performances of seven ballets, including The Nutcracker by Rudolf Nureyev, Medea by Angelin Preljocaj, Romeo and Juliet by Sasha Waltz and Orpheus and Eurydyce by Pina Bausch. He also shows us how the company functions at every level, from administration and fundraising to the selection of the dancers and their pastoral care. The relationship between the beauty of the pieces and the sheer hard work that lies behind them is keenly but subtly drawn, and the struggle to maintain creative integrity in the face of commercial reality has a resonance far beyond the specific context. What is self-evident and makes La Danse so special is Wiseman's love of dance and understanding of how to film it (his previous films include Ballet, 1995), every bit as valuable as his vast accumulated knowledge of how institutions work.

Sandra Hebron