When her daughter joins a ballet company, a former dancer is forced to confront her long-ago decision to give up the stage to have a family.
Director: Herbert Ross
Stars: Anne Bancroft, Shirley MacLaine, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Tom Skerritt, Leslie Browne, James Mitchell.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076843/
Watched online, ok print.
Watched for MB, dance; thought of it because of c.track on Pennies From Heaven ('81), also directed by Ross.
19 songs in the Soundtracks.
The synopsis above is oversimplified. SM's crisis begins to boil when AB and the ballet company come to OK for 2 nights. AB & SM were competing years ago for the same role, and SM got pregnant by TS, also in the ballet troupe, so she gets married and moves to OK with TS. When AB visits, she spots the talent of eldest daughter LB, and LB gets invited to NYC for the summer, also with her brother. Mom SM goes along. Then the sturm really hits the drang.
At one point after a performance, SM & AB get involved in a physical fight, but it quickly devolves to spanking each other while standing, and then laughing about it.
I don't care for the film, because it's mainly about feelings: midlife and postteen.
The only moments that are fun to me: when MB dances solo. There's a fair amount of that, and easy to hear his cues (the music slows for his long leaps). The other ballet makes me shrug.
Toward the end, we attend a Gala performance, with lots of small chunks of ballet, each with their onscreen dancer, music and choreographer credits, hence the length of this list:
Alvin Ailey ... choreographer: Miss Browne's Gala Solo by
Frederick Ashton ... choreographer: Miss Browne's Final Solo
George Balanchine ... choreographer: "Tchaikovsky Pas de deux"
Jean Coralli ... choreographer
John Cranko ... choreographer: "Legende"
Mikhail Fokin ... choreographer
Lev Ivanov ... choreographer
Harald Lander ... choreographer
Kenneth MacMillan ... choreographer: "Romeo and Juliet: Pas de deux"
Alexander Minz ... choreographer
Dennis Nahat ... choreographer: "Anna Karenina"
Jules Perrot ... choreographer
Marius Petipa ... choreographer: "Black Swan: Pas de deux" and "Le Corsaire"
The film is ok. More MB dancing would be better.
Tried to tag this with genre Music, but it didn't go through (yet?)
Fox & more, dir. Ross; 6
