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dancing with the star (mr. b, that is)

May 15, 2008 3:03 pm

Filmstill2_v2

George Balanchine’s impact on contemporary ballet can’t be overestimated, but the rigidity of his teaching is often criticized. Israeli-born and Los Angeles-based artist Elad Lassry’s untitled super 16mm film, which goes on view at John Connelly Presents in New York today, joins the debate on whether Mr. B liberated the medium, exploited his dancers, or did both. In Lassry’s video, New York City Ballet dancers Megan LeCrone and Ask La Cour perform the pas de deux from Balanchine’s 1957 “Agon.” The cameras remain fixed at specific points stipulated in dancer and choreographer Doris Humphrey’s diary of observations, which was published after her death in 1958, as “The Art of Making Dances.” As the two dancers move in and out of the frame, it seems as if Humphrey were a ghost watching the progression of dance under Balanchine.

—Ana Finel Honigman

Photo: Elad Lassry, still from “Untitled,” courtesy of John Connelly Presents

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