October 17, 1999
'Center Stage': An Unfamiliar Pas de Deux as Camera Meets Tutu
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By LAURA LEIVICK
he movie," to some 150 dancers in New
York this summer, meant one thing: a $20
million feature film that Columbia Pictures
was making in the city. Indeed, as the
British director Nicholas Hytner and his crew claimed a
series of its outposts, the dance world seemed like a
conquered province. The Paul Taylor Dance Company
studios became the fictional Broadway Dance Studio;
the Kit Kat Klub, off Times Square, served as a salsa hot
spot; the Brooklyn Armory was reconfigured as ballet
studios, and New York State Theater became a makeshift sound stage.
| 
Paul Kolnik for The New York Times |
Director Nicholas Hytner, center, and the choreographer Christopher Wheeldon, at right.
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For two weeks, vans loaded with personnel, equipment and provisions flanked the stage entrance to the
State Theater. The orchestra pit was covered with a
platform that held video monitors, cameras and crew;
cables snaked across the forestage and into the wings;
huge silk panels were set up in the orchestra section to
diffuse the lighting. Legions of New York City Ballet and
American Ballet Theater dancers came in shifts. Some
600 extras showed up in evening clothes to play the
audience.
"I always wanted to do a realistic backstage movie," said Hytner, a slight, boyish-looking man of 43
with bright green eyes, over a late lunch during the
filming. "A romance, but without the ridiculous scene
where the carpenter is still knocking away at the
scenery as the curtain goes up.
"But were I to make a backstage musical, for
example, it could only be satire, because that world is
filled with monsters," continued Hytner, whose New
York theater work includes "Miss Saigon" on Broadway
and the Lincoln Center production of "Carousel."
"When the studio came to me with this script, I saw an
opportunity to make an honestly attractive film set
backstage.
About ballet I am dewy-eyed."
The picture, recently given the title "Center Stage,"
is about three teen-age girls, students at the American
Ballet Academy who hope to join the affiliated American Ballet Company. Both institutions are fictional, but the school is
modeled on the School of American
Ballet, City Ballet's academy,
while the company is a hybrid of
City Ballet and A.B.T. Hytner
said he used American dancers "to
avoid the stereotype of the exotic
foreign dancer," breaking the spell
of the films "The Red Shoes" and
"The Turning Point." But the daily,
subtle clash of cultures on the set
proved that ballet is more than
foreign; it is another world.
| 
Paul Kolnik for The New York Times |
On the set of "Center Stage."
|
Here, as in his films "The
Madness of King George" and "The Crucible,"
Hytner recreates an insular and fragile milieu. But the
new movie's world is living material, so Hytner had
to be sensitive to its concerns. He explained that, for
example, casting City Ballet dancers as students and
A.B.T. members as professional dancers was purely a
matter of company schedules. To tone down the rival
companies' stylistic differences, he hired the A.B.T.
ballet master and former principal dancer Kirk Peterson to coach ensemble scenes. And,
fortunately, one of the movie's stars,
Ethan Stiefel, is a crossover, a former City Ballet principal who defected to A.B.T.
The fictional company's repertory
is an amalgam of excerpts from both
real companies' productions. But the
ballets danced at the climactic student performance were choreographed specifically for the movie.
One is by Christopher Wheeldon, a
26-year-old City Ballet soloist recently named choreographer in residence at the Boston Ballet. The other
new ballet is by the Broadway veteran Susan Stroman, whose show
"Contact" just opened at the Mitzi E.
Newhouse Theater and whose first
New York City Ballet work had its
premiere last season.
Ms. Stroman's piece is presented
as the work of Cooper Nielson, the
fictional A.B.C.'s star dancer and upstart choreographer played by
Stiefel. The choice of Stiefel, 26,
an electrifying performer whose offstage trademark is his Harley-Davidson motorcycle, to play Cooper
wasn't really a choice. Hytner
said, "I didn't test anyone else."
The ballet opens with Cooper driving his Harley onstage and disrupting a "Nutcracker" sequence. "He's
saying there's more to life than 'The
Nutcracker,' " Ms. Stroman explained.
In another scene, Cooper and Jody,
an A.B.C. student he seduces (played
by Amanda Schull, a San Francisco
Ballet apprentice), blow off steam by
taking a pickup jazz class alongside
Broadway gypsies at the Broadway
Dance Studio. That number, set to a
Red Hot Chili Peppers song, is also
Ms. Stroman's work.
Wheeldon's much more conventional ballet, which "Center
Stage" presents as a work by the
company director, is set to the Rachmaninoff Second Piano Concerto.
Hytner said he wanted "a big,
unbelievably famous, unbelievably
popular romantic score."
Before making the ballet,
Wheeldon said, "I met with Nick and
the cinematographer and did it with
camera angles in mind." Seen from
the wings and the orchestra section,
the production, despite its detail,
seemed to lack coherence and true
richness. The backdrop is a starry
night with a gold crescent moon,
covered by a black mesh curtain; the
costumes have lace sleeves and flimsy skirts, and the choreography is
full of archaic massed movement
and unabashed Balanchinisms.
But viewed on the monitor, framed
as it would be on screen, in an overhead shot and a series of tracking
shots, the piece took on real glamour; the 24 dancers seemed numberless as they poured into the frame.
The results, Hytner said, justified his decision to shoot the film in
Super 35, the widest format currently in use.
"The ballet was designed to be
seen in wide shot," he said. "This is
what movies can do."
The real ballets -- Balanchine's
"Stars and Stripes" and "Theme and
Variations," for example -- resisted
the Hollywood treatment. "Ballet
choreographed for the stage is inherently uncinematic," Hytner said.
"You can't capture Balanchine's
genius on film. You can only do his
ballets justice by putting them on in
the theater."
In many ways, the two media often
seemed at odds. Late one day, during
a shoot of Ms. Stroman's ballet, Sam
Hoffman, the assistant director,
bounded out onto the stage. "Energy! Energy! Energy!" he shouted,
jumping up and down in front of a
dozen New York City Ballet women.
Immaculate in their white tutus and
identical maquillages, they silently
gave Hoffman the chilly look
that one crew member calls "City
Ballet face."
But then Hytner, from his folding chair stationed between two video monitors, nodded and said, "Action!" and Michael Jackson's song
"The Way You Make Me Feel"
blared out. Sure enough, with professional energy, the corps swept into
formation, two neat diagonal lines,
doing bourrées and stage smiles.
Two cameramen with a Steadicam
swooped in behind Stiefel, who
caught hold of Ms. Schull's tutu; she
fled in a swirl of chainé turns; he
held on and the tutu peeled away,
leaving her in a little red leotard and
skirt.
"The Stroman piece was just fun
dancing," said Pascal van Kipnis, a
City Ballet soloist who plays a student. "Not hard, hard steps like we
usually do. But the schedule, that
was hard."
The dancers were sometimes on
the set from 8 A.M. to 1 A.M., so their
snooty-looking "ballet face" may
have been plain fatigue, thanks to
what Hytner calls "the rhythm
of the film day": stop, start, wait
while the shot gets set up, repeat,
repeat, repeat.
The dance and nondance cultures
also collided on matters of politesse.
Before one take, Wheeldon was
coaching Ilia Kulik, the Olympic
skating champion, who plays a principal acting part, for a partnering
sequence with the actress Zoe Saldana. (The ballet was choreographed
to allow them to be briefly replaced
by body doubles.) As Kulik led
Ms. Saldana out through the ranks of
the corps and swept her up in a lift,
Wheeldon called out: "Stop! I
don't want you to bring her across."
"Why not?" Kulik asked, and
the dancers dissolved in laughter.
In ballet, as in the army, there is
no questioning a direct order. For
Hytner, this was a serious matter. He worked on the script with his
friend Wendy Wasserstein, who
wrote his last film, "The Object of
My Affection." Though they regularly go to the ballet, neither is an
expert on its culture. "I want the
script to be accurate," he said. "I
won't let the dancers say anything
that seems wrong to them. But their
training is to do something when
they are told to do it."
Stiefel slowly began re-entry
at A.B.T as filming neared completion.
At a September rehearsal for a
pas de trois in the company's sunny
studios, silent save for the pianist
playing Schubert, he was, after
months of gladiatorial work, just one
top-flight dancer among many.
Well, not quite. A company pinup,
he was front and center in its recent
Paris performances and leads "Le
Corsaire" in a telecast on Dec. 20.
"Ethan has unstoppable energy,"
said A.B.T.'s artistic director, Kevin
McKenzie, who was also artistic adviser on "Center Stage." As for the
dancer's place in the company's
60th-anniversary season, which
opens on Tuesday at City Center,
McKenzie said: "We've had to
pull back a little. There is new rep for
him -- the lead in 'Billy the Kid,'
Misha's part in 'Other Dances' -- but
had he not done the movie, he would
have had pieces created on him."
As Stiefel and his ballet colleagues reclaim their places onstage,
they leave behind a battalion of new
fans: the film crew. Knowing their
days among dancers were numbered, the crew posed for photos for
a special scrapbook. In the pictures,
each wears or manipulates a romantic-length tulle tutu, that talisman of
untouchable beauty. In Hytner's
photograph, he wears it over his face
like a veil.