MOULIN ROUGE REBOOTS AS BALLET
Production a lusty but strange hybrid of stage and screen
Created specifically for the Royal Winnipeg Ballet by choreographer Jorden Morris, Moulin Rouge returns to the big screen in a decidedly different pair of shoes.
Tip- toeing and leaping across the frame in ballet slippers, the turn- of-the-century story about an ambitious artist, a beautiful seductress and a jealous paramour feels a little out of sync from the start — if only because classical ballet and bawdy cancans seem entirely at odds.
If one is buying a ticket to the ballet, these humps of expectation are easy to ride, but when buying a movie ticket, there’s an unspoken notion that we’re going to get something close to reality.
It takes effort to suspend disbelief, which is why a lot of consumers prefer seeing a motion picture over a stage play: We see pretty pictures that take us to exotic locales alongside beautiful people.
When watching a play, or a ballet, the laws of physics are impossible to ignore. We hear each footfall on the boards, we see the ropes and the rigging, and we see the players in real scale.
All of which makes these high- definition movie versions of stage productions such strange hybrids. The players appear larger than life, but the action is still contained by a physical proscenium.
It’s all a little weird, but Moulin Rouge — The Ballet works a weird magic thanks to the strange collision of dance styles because the defining force of the whole piece is sex, and nothing communicates sex better on screen than dancing.
Yes, we feel more lusty ache in an extended back arch than we do in a sweaty cinematic clutch because sex is about the psychological dance in our heads, and ballet can translate that throbbing tango without effort.
In fact, the tango scene in Moulin Rouge is one of the standouts, as is anything featuring the RWB’s own Amar Dhaliwal, who plays the villainous, and completely lecherous, club owner.
Dhaliwal actually outshines Atlanta ballet import Christian Clark, but this is mostly the result of the largerthanlife scale of the part itself; the rest is thanks to Dhaliwal’s incredible blend of physical presence and facial expression.
As a ballet, it’s easy to see why Moulin Rouge is one of the company’s most successful pieces to date, but as a movie, it feels slow — especially when the producers decided to include the intermission as part of the running time.
No one wants to see a clock wind down for 20 minutes, even if we’re game for a rather static two- hour filmed version of a live event.