Word: ballets
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...Nutcracker Ballet...
This week the fable will reach the big screen. Warner Bros. is releasing a major film of George Balanchine's classic 1954 production, performed entirely by New York City Ballet dancers; children from the company's crack training ground, the School of American Ballet; and starring none other than former student Macaulay Culkin, who settled for $10,000 (he recently made an $8 million deal with MGM) so that he could play the nutcracker prince...
Several appealing versions of The Nutcracker exist on film or videotape. An especially familiar one is the American Ballet Theatre's 1977 production, a TV holiday staple starring Mikhail Baryshnikov and Gelsey Kirkland, both in their radiant prime. But Balanchine's remains the standard. His hero and heroine are children, and the first act contains a party scene that is the heart of the piece. Deftly and smoothly, it teaches a timeless lesson in deportment: how a child's natural greed and anger are coaxed into poise and good manners...
Played annually at New York City's Lincoln Center, Balanchine's ballet is a classic, a casting-proof sellout that generations of children have grown up on. (After a year or two, they become members of the boisterous Nutcracker fraternity who ritually applaud the prince's victories, always at the same plot points.) The movie should have been a triumph, but somehow it falls short. Not because of the performances, which are fine. Culkin appears a little too camera-wise performing among relative amateurs, but he is an effective prince. Kistler dances with the tender grace of a fairy princess...
...this visual failure breaks the spell and blunts the ballet's appeal. The best solutions to filming dance were worked out in 1930s musicals. It's hard to fly to dreamland if you have to keep deciphering the signals. Fred Astaire -- who insisted on clarity above all else -- would groan...