1h 52min | Music | 26 December 1966 | Color, ws
Director: Truck Branss
Stars: Margot Fonteyn, Rudolf Nureyev.
Rudolf Nureyev ... choreographer
Watched online, ok print.
It took a lot of self control not to shut this off.
This is the great Nureyev and Fonteyn. Supposedly Fonteyn is past her prime, but I wouldn't know.
Nureyev is wearing a ton of makeup, which we get in closeup, not what it was designed for.
But what bugged me from the start was the corps. If they're supposed to be doing the same moves at the same time, they should be in unison. They ain't. I don't know how much rehearsal time Nureyev had with this company, but it wasn't enough.
In act 1, Nureyev's movement was prancy, effeminate. If he did any good leaping, I missed it.
Again, I feel that ballet has a rigidity that turns me off. Part of it is the spine almost always being straight. But also, it's as though they can only move into positions that have names, and that is just too limiting.
The camera work was no treat either. One of Nureyev's leaps that I did catch chopped off his head. Any golden-era (studio) H'wood cameraman (and they were men, unfortunately) would have jumped the camera up with him. It's not like he improvised the jump. They did it again when he simply stepped up to his throne, and they stayed with him for several seconds with his head chopped at the eyebrows. It's not as though the queen would have been shorted if they moved the lens up.
So this was not the performance to warm my heart toward ballet.
Seven Arts Prod. et al, dir. Branss; 6
