Ballet 422

Great dancers deserve to be filmed by a competent director and crew. Unfortunately, this did not happen in "Ballet 422."

I have had the good fortune to have seen hundreds of live performances; have watched hundreds more on TV, laserdiscs, and DVD; and have myself filmed over a hundred ballet performances. I therefore know a little about both the art of ballet, and the techniques for recording it.

(P.S., I am also married to a ballet dancer.)

What I have found over the past forty years is that there are no right ways to film a ballet, or a documentary about ballet, but there sure are a lot of wrong ways.

This film seems to be an exercise in finding every possible wrong way to photograph dancers. Here are some examples:

* The camera person seems to have an aversion to feet. Virtually every shot cuts off the dancers' feet and lower torsos, and by tilting the camera to far upwards, gives us vast, pointless shots of the ceiling.

* I don't think I have ever seen an extended dancing scene in which the dancer is shown out of frame, with her arms occasionally appearing in the shot, only to disappear again. I am all for artistic shots, but if you're going to take a chance at doing something different, MAKE IT WORK!! This was just stupid and most definitely did not work.

* Whoever edited this has no sense of continuity. They also don't understand when to begin and end a shot. This movie could be used in an editing class to show exactly what NOT to do when editing.

* The lighting is awful. Yes, I know it is a documentary, and much of it is shot with available light. However, I also know that many of the shots required setup and WERE lit, or at least some attempt was made at lighting.

* The ending shots, where the movies should come together is a completely pointless series of juxtapositions that make absolutely no sense.

I don't think I have ever seen such an incompetent production, and this includes some high school films done by first-year students.

The only reason I give it three stars instead of one is that the solo dancing is absolutely wonderful (although the group dancing is pretty sloppy and lacks coordination).

So, if you do rent this, make sure you have a fast forward that works, and just watch the dancing and skip all the pointless and useless and incompetent footage that adds nothing but bloated, pointless time.

Jody Lee Lipes (the director and main camera person) should not ever again be allowed anywhere near a camera, not even the one in his cellphone.

A simple, unpretentious, thorough account of the creation of a new ballet showing the contributions of the personnel involved, choreographer, dancers, musicians, costumers, hairdressers, therapists and ultimately, the audience. Despite the exhortations of politicians and the press, my heroes are not the young people sending drones out to menace peasants in third world countries; my heroes are the young artists depicted here. I could not do this, nor have I ever wanted to do this, but I'm glad someone is doing it.

This was pretty disappointing. There is just not enough dance and too much filler (or cinema verite) as in:

• Justin Peck (choreographer) walking down empty corridors

• the orchestra being conducted

• too much on costume assemblage (there is footage of a washing machine)

• NYC subway stations

There is not much on the inspiration for the dance and the choreography; there is some perspiration (some short dancing scenes), but very little on the creative process. It's like seeing architects and engineers walking and talking, but never seeing the finished product(the building - in this case the dance).

For dancers only. Not for the audience. I pressed fast forward several times. Badly assembled and edited.

Ever seen a group of middle aged or even older Chinese mama sans doing the group dances in a town square or in a big empty space of a community park with loud music. Those women danced in uniform with lot of gestures of hands and body languages. What made those group Chinese dances so boring and disgusting to watch? Because those women just followed the music to do an uniformed dance without any essence or meaning to show anything else. It's just a group exercise, nothing more.

What we saw in Ballet 422 was exactly like what I've mentioned above. It's just a group exercise dance in uniform but without anything in it. Those dancers just followed the music tempo to move around but in all very poor form, the music itself was also a hollow meaningless mess. The angles of the dancers' hands, arms, legs, bodies were so messy, never in uniform. They were so busy to follow the music tempos to move, run, glide around but always in a messy forms. There's no story in it, no feeling in it, just like those Chinese old women's dances, the New York City Ballet just did a group exercise on stage with a live orchestra and controlled lighting.

The guy who designed this only paid attention to the techniques, the detailed movements of every dancer, and those dancers also danced like pre-programmed robots but never achieved the uniformity that was the most important requirement of a ballet program. The choice of the music was so bad without any meaning or story in it, just lot of notes changed either fast or slow, or faster or slower. I really don't know what's the purpose of asking so many professional dancers to do a totally meaningless ballet program. What I saw in this documentary was like watching a bunch of ballet students tried very hard to follow a meaningless music, practiced and practiced.

The young guy who choreographed this ballet program was a soul-less, feeling-less mechanic but definitely not an artist. After watching this documentary, it also showed that The New York City Ballet is a 3rd grade ballet company, it has so many mechanics, technicians and robotic dancers but with no soul or heart. It should be disbanded long time ago. If you don't know what I've described about the Chinese mama sans dancing, just go to youtube.com and take a look, then you might understand why and how this Ballet 422 was just a hollow mess.

A behind the scenes look at the concept, creation and choreography of a new ballet for the New York City Ballet. One the Corps members is tasked with the choreography and assisting the costume and lighting teams in creating a piece over several months. I enjoy documentaries and have seen several about the topic of ballet, if that is your wheelhouse you will enjoy it as well.