Screen Offers Scope For Ballet

Wanganui Chronicle, 27 November 1948, Page 8

Screen Offers Scope For Ballet

“Dancing is rarely satisfactory in the cinema.’ writes the London film critic, Dilys Powell. “Serious dancing at any rate is somehow devitalised in translation to the new medium.’’

Reviewing the British ballet film “The Red Rose” she says it “gives grounds lor the belief that this is because a ballet composed for the strict limits of the stage is not suitable for the fluid background of the screen; the cinema, in fact, demands its own choreography. In ‘The Red Shoes we have a ballet, we have movements and groupings and spacings, designed expressly for the screen; and the reservations of the balletomanes may be forgotten. “A stage setting is of necessity a static setting. In this new film the rhythm of cutting and the movement of the camera give the impression of a background which is itself living and moving. And the ranging eye of the camera of course makes possible a variety and extent of background out of the reach of the theatre.”