Etoiles: Dancers of the Paris Opera Ballet, early October, my living room

So I finally got around to watching this documentary after finally having broken down and joined Netflix. Other than the postal service sometimes taking more than a week to get a movie from Netflix to me, it's been great to have access to a much broader selection of dance videos than are availble at the local rental store. (It doesn't take much, does it?)

The movie explores the daily lives and careers of dancers in all five levels of the company: quadrille (sort of a permanenet understudy), coryphée (member of the corps), sujet (solists), premier danseur (principal), and étoile (prima ballerina and whatever they call the male equivalent). I'm sure some of this is fascinating to the general public, but it's actually not that interesting if you've trained in an intense ballet program and performed with a company, professional or not. After all, I know that ballet dancers start young, that the competition is extreme, and that dancers' careers are short.

There were a few interesting things along the way, though, including the discussion of how the view of motherhood has changed over the years. As in other professions, it seems to have gone from "once you get married/pregnant you're out" to "parenthood makes you a better dancer." There were also a few dancers whose parents had been Etoiles, which surely must give you a leg up (so to speak) on advancement in the associated school. After all, the teachers probably see someone's potential more clearly if they're familiar with her mother's dancing.

There was a lot of discussion of particular choreography and what it was like to dance it, but disappointingly short snippets of the dances themselves. If there wasn't time for it in the film, they might have at least included excerpts on the DVD.

The film was, naturally enough, in French. I took French in high school and can read it fairly well, but I could only follow what people were saying by reading the subtitles. It was amusing, then, when the film would switch to a classroom shot and the teachers were calling out ballet steps - all of a sudden, I could understand what they were saying. Mon dieu! C'est un miracle!

Uninterrupted, Saturday, September 30, 2006, Cobb Civic Center

I finally made it to a performance by a local group other than Atlanta Ballet. The Ruth Mitchell Dance Theatre is based in Marietta, on the Square and a bit west of a local landmark, the Big Chicken. (Honestly, you have to see it to believe it.) RMDT is itself a local landmark, having been established 50 years ago.

The program consisted of 10 dances, a mix of ballet and modern performed by a mix of professional and student dancers. I was surprised to see that, coming from a studio that is primarily a ballet studio (at least to appearances), the modern pieces were actually stronger. The show ran a bit long (more than 2 1/2 hours), which makes for more than one reason a few numbers should have been cut. Also, as Mr. Silvershoes asked should a show called "Uninterrupted" really have an intermission?

I'll stick with the highlights. Hair (with a twist), choreographed by the current Artistic Director Lisa Toups, was a modern piece set to music by Digital Empire. (Which Digital Empire, I couldn't say.) Performed by a gaggle of teenagers, hair was indeed the star; the movement of the dancers served to propel their hair in amusing and rhythmic fashions.

Guest modern troup Zoetic performed Forever in 3 Days, choreographed by Candess Giyan. I loved this piece, partly for the dancing, which was skillful, but mostly I think because it was so similar to dances created by the modern community in Houston. There was a little too much "forever," but only a little.

The highest point of the night came, appropriately enough, with Hi Jinks. This high-spirited dance was choreographed by Sam Watson. With its 60's-theme-song-like music by Esquivel and Martin Denny, it reminded me of Mark Morris's lightheatered Sandpaper Ballet. The five couples gave it their all, making the campy choreography shine. It even had a surpise ending, with beehive wigs that glowed after the blackout.

One piece deserves mention because it shouldn't have been part of the show. Sinfonia Concertante was danced well, but it featured six girls who looked like they couldn't have been taking pointe for too long. The choreography was necessarily simple. It would have been a lovely recital piece, but didn't belong in show by a company that, in their words, "is committed to presentation of professional quality, varied, dance programs."