The Frederick Wiseman documentary La Danse, about the Paris Opera Ballet, which I loved (particularly the parts with Laetitia Pujol), is going to air in several segments on PBS beginning on June 16th. Excellent!
FILM OF NEW YORK EXPORT OPUS JAZZ COMING TO PBS
Remember the film version of Jerome Robbins’s New York Export: Opus Jazz that NYCBallet dancers Ellen Bar and Sean Suozzi had planned — and begun — to make in 2007? If not, I wrote about it here and here when a completed scene (pictured above) that was filmed in Manhattan’s High Line starring Rachel Rutherford and Craig Hall had been shown at NYCB and the Guggenheim.
Well, as of August 24, 2009, filming has resumed thanks to WNET (New York’s PBS station), who has acquired the film for its excellent Great Performances: Dance in America series.
The team — which consists of Bar, Suozzi, and filmmakers Henry Joost, Jody Lee Lipes, Matt Wolf and Anna Farrell — is currently scouting locations to shoot the remaining four movements of the 28-minute ballet (the film will consist of the ballet, interspersed with documentary coverage and narratives of the dance’s characters and their background stories). Each danced movement is to be filmed in a different part of the city (to capture NY’s different moods) and will be danced by NYCB dancers.
WNET plans on a broadcast sometime in the Spring of 2010. I’m really hoping it shows on other local PBS stations outside of New York as well, please please PBS — so everyone else can see it! This is the first Robbins ballet to be filmed since West Side Story. I will keep you updated on times and stations, and you can check the project’s Website and Facebook page as well.
In the meantime, here’s a trailer: