The showman of 20th century choreography, Maurice Béjart, stages his distinctive rendering of the beloved Christmas ballet "The Nutcracker" using Tchaikovsky's entire score, supplemented with waltz and accordion music performed onstage by the renowned Yvette Horner. Béjart uses the original St. Petersburg tale as a launching point from which to evoke the recollections and feelings of his life's journey from childhood.
Bim
Elle
Petipa/Mephisto
Felix the Cat
Sugar Plum/Grand pas de deux
Don Quixote is a 19th century work, choreographed by Petipa in 1869. Rudolf Nureyev revived it in 1966 and it is his version in La Scala Ballet’s repertoire, much loved by ballet audiences for its winning mix of technical bravura, exuberance and comic touches. La Scala Ballet brought the world of a fantastical Spain brilliantly to life with their sophisticated dance, music, costumes and sets, energetically accompanied by the Queensland Symphony Orchestra, conducted by David Coleman.
Louis Jordan's Orchestra perform Jordan Jive. Setting is a canteen, with the orchestra and audience in US military uniform. The Swing Maniacs go through some extremely strenuous acrobatic dancing.
County Durham, England, 1984. The miners' strike has started and the police have started coming up from Bethnal Green, starting a class war with the lower classes suffering. Caught in the middle of the conflict is 11-year old Billy Elliot, who, after leaving his boxing club for the day, stumbles upon a ballet class and finds out that he's naturally talented. He practices with his teacher Mrs. Wilkinson for an upcoming audition in Newcastle-upon Tyne for the royal Ballet school in London.
A young boy accidentally squeezes his pet bird to death. At sunset the bird resurrects itself and confronts the boy with his actions.
From the rains of Japan, through threats of arrest for 'public indecency' in Canada, and a birthday tribute to her father in Detroit, this documentary follows Madonna on her 1990 'Blond Ambition' concert tour. Filmed in black and white, with the concert pieces in glittering MTV color, it is an intimate look at the work of the icon, from a prayer circle before each performance to bed games with the dance troupe afterwards.
A group of 12 teenagers from various backgrounds enroll at the American Ballet Academy in New York to make it as ballet dancers and each one deals with the problems and stress of training and getting ahead in the world of dance.
Part folklore, part opera-ballet, this féerie presents local pagan traditions on the day of the summer solstice and historical events from Cossack times to the more recent 2014 Ukrainian Revolution of Dignity.
Characters from Haitian folklore come to life telling their story of ritual, ceremony and celebration. All wait to be overcome by the female spirit Erzuli. Who will be chosen?
Two young lovers, offspring of the feuding Montague and Capulet families, value feelings above the past, pitting love and forgiveness against hatred and revenge.
In the early summer of 1980, eleven-year-old Hanna and the rest of her childhood band aim to bring criminals to justice when a threat to destroy the last dance of school comes their way. Their ensuing adventure pits good vs. evil and disco vs. punk, and ends with love and unity conquering all.
Jerome Robbins considered the Paris Opera Ballet as his second home after the New York City Ballet. This production in his honour brings together works displaying the infinite diversity of his sources of inspiration and his genius on stage. Be it in the energy of the large-scale Glass Pieces or the intimate sweetness of Afternoon of a Faun and A Suite of Dances, there emerges that rare capacity to make bodies follow the flow in a living comprehension of music. As the celebrated ballet Fancy Free, a veritable theatrical portrait of an era, enters the repertoire, Robbins reveals another facet of his talent.
With Tchaikovskys famous and lyrically poignant score, the beloved masterpiece Swan Lakes depiction of tragic love is performed to perfection by the unparalleled virtuosity of Russias great Bolshoi Ballet with the Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra. Recorded in early 2015, this live performance provides an opportunity to see the modern manifestation of this legendary ballet troupe with lead ballerina Svetlana Zakharova along with Denis Rodkin and Artemy Belyakov among others introducing us to the new generation at the Bolshoi.
After the death of her mother, Sara moves to the South Side of Chicago to live with her father and gets transferred to a majority-black school. Her life takes a turn for the better when befriends Chenille and her brother Derek, who helps her with her dancing skills.
Tyler Gage receives the opportunity of a lifetime after vandalizing a performing arts school, gaining him the chance to earn a scholarship and dance with an up and coming dancer, Nora.
A man enters a passage and must choose to embrace either the persistence of time or the will of nature. Through improvised movement and choreography, this short film is a playful meditation on the body, space, and the present moment. The film was shot as part of Cinemovement Laboratory VI: Solo in Studio Plesungan, an art space run by Indonesian artist Melati Suryodarmo in the northern part of Solo, Indonesia.
Written in 1865, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was a popular success. All British schoolchildren and their parents knew about the escapades of the young Alice. With a new score by Philip Glass, a figurehead of American minimalism, choreographers Amir Hosseinpour and Jonathan Lunn reimagine and reinvent Lewis Carroll's fantastical world. Freed from the original narrative, the dancers of the OnR Ballet play a new gallery of contemporary creatures and characters, joined by actress Sunnyi Melles.
The Gay Parisian is an American short film produced in 1941 by Warner Bros. featuring the Ballet Russe de Monte-Carlo and directed by Jean Negulesco. The film is a screen adaptation, in Technicolor, of the 1938 ballet Gaîté Parisienne, choreographed by Léonide Massine to music by Jacques Offenbach. It was nominated for an Academy Award at the 14th Academy Awards for Best Short Subject (Two-Reel).
The first of a series of six two-reel "Musical Parade" shorts produced in Technicolor for the Paramount 1943-44 production season. The series would continue into 1948, and then were reissued in the early 50's. Songs included "All the Way" and "At the Mardi Gras."
Ballroom dancers Veloz and Yolanda perform the various dance fads of the first half of the twentieth century.