Miami City Ballet Stars in Black Swan-Inspired Reality Show, En Pointe
Categories: Television
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And a success of that magnitude can only result in one thing: a reality show. Of course, when Dreamfly Productions started shooting En Pointe, the premiere of which centers on MCB's Paris debut, they had no idea the performances would be met with such widespread acclaim.
For the Les Etés de Danse Festival, the MBC is performing 14 ballets at Paris's Theatre du Chatelet through this Saturday. Much of the fanfare praises the company's skill with George Balanchine numbers, which makes sense considering Villella's own success with the choreographer's A Midsummer Night's Dream while with the New York City Ballet in the '50s/'60s. The company is also applauded for mixing in more modern numbers such as Twyla Tharp's In the Upper Room and Paul Taylor's Pomethrean Fire.
The FT, however, thinks the troupe should stick to classics from Balanchine, calling their interpretation of Taylor's 9/11-inspired Pomethrean Fire "heavy-handed" and some of their costumes from other performances "Disney-esque."
And although the reviews are mostly glowing, did anyone else cringe at the FT's phrase "all-American musicality"? Is that the Brits' passive aggress way of saying our dancers can twirl despite a diet of Big Macs? Does it mean they lapse into jazz hands from time to time? Does it mean they transform into the Black Swan by dousing themselves in another country's oil?
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En Pointe, which will eventually follow ballet companies in Austin and Atlanta among other U.S. cities, will undoubtedly capture the extreme physical and mental endurance it takes to perform on the tips of one's toes with grace. But without genius Aronofsky behind the camera (and say no one sprouts feathers from their shoulder blades or swaps spit with a Kunis lookalike), the series may indeed fall very short of the success of Black Swan. In fact, as of this posting, no channel has signed on to air the ballet reality series.
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