Ballet 422

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.