In Ballet 422, director Jody Lee Lipes does something remarkable: He cuts himself out of the equation entirely. He’s barely a fly on the wall in his own documentary, which chronicles New York City Ballet soloist and choreographer Justin Peck’s attempt to architect the company’s 422nd production. Lipes’ approach to capturing his subjects is about as modest as humanly possible, though describing his results as “modest” would be totally unfair. Ballet 422 lacks the traditional hallmarks of most standard documentary films, eschewing talking head interviews and recurring streams of title cards crafted to hand-hold the audience through learning, and that’s what makes it such a gem.
The film offers only the most basic context points necessary for the average viewer to latch on and stick with it for 70 minutes of running time. These basics are in fact so basic that the preceding paragraph addresses nearly all of them; all that remains are occasional black screens intended to keep us apace of Peck’s timeline as his troupe and his crew edge closer and closer to the premiere of the show. Everything else is fluid. Ballet 422 feels less like an actual documentary and more like a stream-of-consciousness depiction of what it’s like to create something as monumentally complex as a ballet from scratch. Peck’s piece, titled Paz De La Jolla, groups a trio of principals with a handful of backup dancers and is set to Sinfonietta La Jolla by Czech composer Bohuslav Martin?. Therein lies all the remaining background anyone requires to make odds or ends of Lipes’ work.
Between he and Peck, it’s clear who has the harder job. Peck is juggling torches, bowling pins and chainsaws as he oversees and advises on every element of the production from the actual dancing to costuming. Forget the physical challenges of arranging stage movements and instructing each dancer on how to perfect their form; balancing the dizzying array of managerial duties Peck takes on is enough of a feat. Ballet 422 doesn’t go out of its way to make a big fuss about the difficulty of spinning an original ballet out of thin air, but only because it doesn’t have to. The challenge speaks for itself. As months turn into weeks and weeks to days, pressure continuously mounts without requiring Lipes to draw attention to how much rests on Peck’s wary shoulders.
Be warned: There’s only a minimal payoff to the artistic struggle we see play out in Ballet 422’s slim frame. We see dancing, but much of what we see occurs during rehearsal. Lipes only grants us a glimpse of Peck’s Paz De La Jolla before the film ends, perhaps because giving away the young man’s genius in motion would be kind of a cheat. But the film’s true purpose is in its quiet articulations of the creative process. Lipes doesn’t have any interest in pursuing a grand finale in which the human form glides through the air. He’s too focused on the elbow grease that goes into organizing the cascade of pirouettes, sautés and revoltades. There’s a purity in Lipes’ endgame that makes Ballet 422 into a bravura effort in its own right; if you’re not taken in by its showcase of athletic grace, then you will at least be awed by the then-25 Peck’s accomplishments (or shamed by them). This is a film of taciturn loveliness.
Director: Jody Lee Lipes
Writer: N/A
Starring: Justin Peck, Tiler Peck, Amar Ramasar, Sterling Hyltin
Release Date: Feb. 27, 2015
Boston-based critic Andy Crump has been writing about film for the web since 2009, and has been scribbling for Paste Magazine since 2013. He also contributes to Screen Rant, Movie Mezzanine and Badass Digest. You can follow him on Twitter. Currently he has given up on shaving.