Dance Channel TV

The ballet world is spinning after one of the art’s brightest stars walked away from Britain’s Royal Ballet without explanation, days before he was due to take the lead in a new production.

Ukrainian dancer Sergei Polunin announced this week that he is quitting immediately. He had been due to open as Oberon in “The Dream” next week. The 21-year-old has thrilled audiences since he became the company’s youngest-ever principal dancer at the age of 19. Royal Ballet director Monica Mason said Polunin’s resignation had “come as a huge shock.”

While ballet websites swirled with speculation that Polunin might have been poached by a rival company, there was no word from the dancer.

A film by Wim Wenders

Reviewed by Steven Woodruff

Wim Wenders’ PINA is the German nomination in the foreign language film category for this season’s Oscars. It is unusual both for its subject (the iconic, theater dance choreographer, Pina Bausch) and because it is an art film shot in 3D, something of a first. The film began production in 2009 shortly after Bausch’s unexpected death.  It deals with her choreography and the Tanztheater Wuppertal dancers themselves more than it does with Bausch. We see her obliquely, through her work, her dancers and their reactions to Bausch and what it feels like to grow up inside her choreography. The overwhelming feeling you take away is for the affection and philosophical connection that flows between Bausch and her collaborators. In this sense, PINA is more of a glancing homage for an artist who operated in a world of primal emotions, and obsession for her particular brand of movement. It is anyone’s guess whether this is the film Wenders originally intended to make or whether it is a version transformed in some way by Bausch’s death.

 

The film is loosely structured around lengthy excerpts of four choreographies: Le Sacre Du Printemps, Kontakthof, Café Müller, and Vollmond. Vollmond (2006) is the only recent work of the four. All of the stage performances were shot during the company’s 2009-2010 season. Interspersed with long sections from those pieces are candid portraits of the company dancers speaking about Bausch and their personal experiences with the company as well as vignettes of the company members dancing in a variety of non-theatrical settings: a labyrinth of empty rooms, a quiet brook, a glass-sheathed house, a hill top, a traffic island in downtown Wuppertal. In the portraits, Wenders films the dancers looking into the camera while they speak in their own voice overs. You come away with the terrific sense of loss created by Bausch’s absence. One asks for Bausch to visit her in her dreams. Another remembers how Bausch chided her to be wilder. The portraits are brief but poignant. They distill much of the same emotional territory that preoccupied Bausch in her work: loss, love, and longing.

 

The location dance sequences have been chosen with a sense of the extravagant and peculiar. One, with its profile of parading dancers we see early on in the film as part of a stage performance. Another set in the factory yard amidst a complex array of conveyor machinery, and scaffolding shows the dancer stuffing cold lunch meat for padding into her toe shoes and bourréeing across concrete like an industrial strength swan. Another pas de deux is set on a traffic island beneath a suspended city tramway.  The choreography is supplied by the dancers themselves, perhaps intending to channel something of Bausch or simply playing with movement in a way that expresses a personal homage.  One solo, danced at the precipitous brink of a dusty, open pit stone quarry, was especially revealing for its contrasts and the way in which you feel emotionally startled by the sudden scene change. The dancer flails wildly in the dust and ultimately makes his way up a steep embankment.  Just as he arrives, Wenders cuts to an actual stage performance from Vollmond, with the dancers bucketing water over a truck-sized boulder. 

 

Wenders says he waited for 3D technology to catch up to his vision of what his concept for the film required. The theater scenes come across in great detail but they also look strangely over telescoped in depth. The color also is somewhat bleached out with the pall of a grey and a washed out green film that obscures the true colors. I’m not sure that the work has been significantly enhanced in any meaningful way by the 3D effect. The clarity is startling. The scenes from Le Sacre du Printemps are brilliant for the way in which they conveying the fierce commitment to movement exhibited by her dancers and for the hyperrealism of the set, a stage covered with a thick blanket of red earth. You get a terrific sense for Bausch’s detailed environments, the totality of her choreographic designs, and the variety in her distinctly heterogenous company of dancers.

 

The film is sure to be a hit with the dance crowd. Her work has been ground breaking and anyone involved in the contemporary theater dance game is in her debt.  We see Bausch dancing in a few scenes of archival footage. Those scenes are astonishing for their power. You don’t doubt that she had the ability to see deeply into people. She was one of a kind, a true explorer, who stuck with her vision of movement and theater to the end.

 See The Trailer

The film opens on Friday, January 13^th at the Hollywood Arclight and The Landmark in Westwood and is distributed by Sundance Selects. It is in German with subtitles

The Bolshoi Ballet's David Hallberg describes Fred Astaire as his main artistic inspiration and explains that dance has always been his calling. Stephen Colbert in tights, with David Hallberg, an extraordinary and articulate talent - what a brilliant way to introduce former the former ABT star, now with the Bolshoi, to an enormous American audience.
see the video below

Another Saturday, which for us, here at Dance Channel TV, it means another episode of “Bolero”!  This week’s episode was devoted to the theme of “passion”.  Some pairs’ performances exuded so much emotion, we could feel it through the screen.  Others, unfortunately, left us cold and detached.  First to perform were Kristina Kretova and Alexei Yagudin, who were dressed and performed as vampires.  For the first time since the beginning of the show, the pair did not receive top scores.  Giving them 79 points, the judges noted that, compared with their past performances, the pair has not grown.  Julia Makhalina and Povilas Vanagas were next and performed a piece based on the movie “Frida”.  The judges were not impressed, awarding them 69 points and pointing out that the number was not dynamic enough and the pair seemed stifled.  Following Julia and Povilas were Natalia Osipova and Roman Kostomarov.  Although the choreography was at times odd, the execution was flawless.  We absolutely love seeing Natalia evolve from a classical dancer into a new character every week.  She has amazing range!  Not surprisingly, they received 80 points.  Natalia Somova and Maxim Marinin performed tango.  The pair confessed that they had a lot of disagreements about the number when they were rehearsing but none of it was apparent to the viewers and the judges.  The technique was impeccable, and the passion unquestionable. If they were on ice, it probably would have melted. They received 80 points as well.  Following with the “Latin” theme, Irina Perren and Peter Chernyshov performed a flamenco number choreographed by Nacho Duato.  The jury was left wanting more.  Awarding the pair 76 points, they noted that the number lacked any surprises and constituted one monotonous piece. Put it in a less diplomatic way, they found it boring.  Yevgenia Obraztsova and Maxim Stavisky also chose tango.  Giving the dancers 73 points to the disappointment of the viewers who seemed to really like the performance, the judges felt that the piece was not inventive enough and that the pair was uneven in their delivery in terms of technique.  Vera Arbuzova and Alexei Tikhonov were praised by the judges for their number, stating that the pair had made a huge step forward as compared to their previous performances.  The judges felt that artistically they were amazing; however, technically, could still use improvement.  The pair earned 76 points.  Last to perform were Catherine Krysanova and Maxim Shabalin.  They received only 72 points because, as pointed out by the judges, the piece, though promising in the beginning, did not deliver, lacking complexity.  Thus, Osipova/Kostomarov and Somova/Marinin teams led this week.  Next episode is dedicated to Hollywood which certainly promises to be exciting.  Can it be Saturday already?!

The third episode was special, especially for those that know the movies from the Soviet era.  “Our Cinema” episode gave the pairs an opportunity to dance to songs from some of the most beloved films of that period.  The first pair, Faith Arbuzov and Alexei Tikhonov, performed a dance to the song “Dark Night” from the film “Two Soldiers”.  The theme of the song was not an easy one: war.  Perhaps that made the number performed by the pair reserved and understated but the jury commented that the choreography of the pair did not fully showcase their technical skills.  The pair received only 70 points, the lowest of the night.  Leaders of the two previous episodes, Christina Kretova and Alexei Yagudin, chose a song from the movie “12 chairs”.  Performing a tango piece with a funny twist, they once again garnered top scores. Osipova and Kostomarov performed a lyrical dance to music from “Slave of Love” which was a big contrast to their sexy performance last week.  The judges felt that Natalia’s part was much more thought out than Roman’s, creating an imbalance of sorts.  They received 79 points.  Yevgenia Obraztsova and Maxim Stavisky created very expressive images through movement to a song from the movie “Blunder” and earned 75 points.  Next to perform were Natalia Somova and Maxim Marinin.  They danced to a song from a much loved movie “Irony of Fate, or Enjoy Your Bath”.  The pair received 80 points and high praise from the judges who noted that the performance was a harmony of three personalities: the choreographer and the two amazing dancers.  Julia Makhalina and Povilas Vanagas danced to a song from the movie “Five Evenings”. Performing a folk number, they stood out from the rest and were liked by the judges.  The risk paid off, earning them 78 points.  Next were Irina Perren and Peter Chernyshov who danced to a song from “City of Gold”.  The performance was full of beautiful romance and emotion.  The pair received 80 points.  Last to perform were Catherine Krysanova and Maxim Shabalin who danced to a song from the film “Orange Love”. They received only 74 points because the judges felt that the dance did not possess any feelings despite being technically quiet complex.  The detached nature of their performance was highlighted even more by the mere fact that they followed Irina and Peter’s lyrical performance just minutes earlier.  Notwithstanding the points, one thing is clear: the dancing is amazing, and we are hooked!