The Company (movie), May 25, 2005, my living room

Go rent this movie. It has no plot, but some of the best dancing I've seen on film. The Joffrey Ballet plays "the company" of the title, and half of the movie is footage of them dancing. Neve Campbell of "Party of Five" fame plays the main character, and I must say that I have new respect for her. Growing up she trained at the National Ballet School in Canada, and she did all her own dancing in the film. She doesn't quite have the polish of the Joffrey dancers, but she does a great job in a duet with Domingo Rubio, My Funny Valentine by Lar Lubovitch, who plays himself in the film. (It's an enthralling dance, by the way.) There's a decent interview of Ms. Campbell here. Some of the other pieces shown in the movie are Light Rain, Suite Saint-Saens, and Trinity by Gerald Arpino, the artistic director of Joffrey. Also shown are Tensile Involvement (Alwin Nikolais), Strange Prisoners (Davis Robertson), and Creative Force (Laura Dean), a latin-inspired dance in red costumes. White Widow is a dance for a woman and a swing. The music is dreamy, and as she spins and swirls in her long white dress there are several excellent demonstrations of the conservation of angular momentum. The piece was choreographed by Cynthia Quinn and Moses Pendleton of Momix; Mr. Pendleton was also one of the founding members of Pilobolus, who performed here in April. The film ends with Robert Desrosiers's The Blue Snake, not my favorite piece but very colorful. The aim of the film is to show non-dancers how things run "behind the scenes" at a ballet company. There's a horrifying moment when one of the dancers is rehearsing a solo from La Vivandiere Pas de Six and snaps a tendon. (I'll wait while you cringe. Better?) Several of the dances are shown in rehearsal before we see them on the stage. I guess what with already knowing what rehearsal is like, I couldn't see the fascination of those parts of the film. Everyone knows that ballet dancers' feet bleed. Do we have to see it again? There's also very little character development; things happen to the dancers, some good, some bad, but I found myself not caring. Still, while the film's not going to win an Oscar for best screenplay, it should win one for best dancing. (If only there were such a category. Sigh.)