(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
The weight of the world's longest legs
"Look for the longest leg in the world!" The ballet teacher's voice screams through the underground white hall. "Make it beautiful, girls! Yesterday it was more beautiful. Express their individuality! ”
The skinny young girls are lined up as a row of nearly identical white spears, clinging to the bar and pushing the world's longest legs upward while balancing on trembling feet. The illusion of angels' weightlessness is maintained through militant, fluid movements. The music should feel with the heart, the passion expressed in lively features.
Inconveniently enough, even purse pipe sticks are subject to gravity. 12-year-old Nastya suppresses sniffing as she gets shut up because she doesn't lift her leg high enough. "You're flexible enough!" The teacher complains, pushing her thigh up against the girl's forehead. When Nastya fails to stop crying, the teacher strokes her as if to calm a frightened animal: "So, so, calm down now."
No motive. Victor Kossakovsky's graceful and well-composed short story varicella follows two sisters who dedicate their young lives to dance. The weird title, which means "chickenpox," refers to the opening sequence, where little sister Polina covers Nastia's chickenpox with a green drug. Nastya and her little sister Polina are preparing for the entrance exams for the next stage at Boris Eifman Dance Academy in St. Petersburg. The sisters are deeply confident, almost physically fused, busy at all times with dance moves as they scramble about small and large. Together, they fight the piercing fear of not being good enough.
Ballet is a frequently used motif in film and television, with its appealing combination of rigorous aesthetics and fanatically engaged performers. Kenneth Elvebak's documentary ballet boys (2014) and Robert Altman's documentary-like fiction films The Company (2003) both provide insights into the dancers' daily lives with impossible goals and personal sacrifices. There ballet boys addresses three comrades who are divided by different levels of ambition, focus The Company on how the creative process is affected by the dancers' relationship to each other and the people in power around them. Wim Wenders' tribute to the legendary Pina (2011) appears as a visual and sensory explosion on the canvas, where each sequence tops the previous one and replaces the need for narrative and character exploration.
The visual expression in Kossakovsky's varicella is characterized by symmetry and sharp lines as well as contrasts between standstill and fluid movements, between discipline and spontaneous, childlike expression. Ivan Bessonov's music arrangement with ballet classics performed on piano and electronic instruments effectively binds the sequences, often replacing natural sound. An occasional use of a visual filter that shows the dancers in glowing silhouette highlights the cutting clean lines towards the horizon.
Arouses respect. The film is seen as a somewhat predictable illustration of the artist's well-known mantra "you have to suffer for the dream". The lack of narrative and personal development is not justified by the sterile splendor of the images. Superb compositions, though, make up varicella no innovation in the genre, but the camera's caressing closeness to the two sisters arouses admiration and respect for the dedication the performers show. Most memorable is the chaotic scene from the break room, where some children are constantly practicing dance steps while others are involved in an unrestrained, ridiculous pillow war and trying to pull in those who work. The two sisters are leaning against the wall and watching their playful fellow students with serious eyes, facing the rest of the world.
The intimate conversations between the sisters give the film a neat, poetic pulse. Nastya admits that she prefers ballet stories with sad end, for such ballets are never forgotten. "I want to make my own ballet," she dreams aloud, "a woman suddenly appears in the land of death. She asks how she gets out, but the dead don't answer. Eventually, she goes crazy. ” So far, Nastya has the loving little sister as an antidote to the obligatory melancholy of the ballet. But what happens on the day of the Sisters' ways?
varicella will be shown in an exclusive special screening along with the movie Dance for life Saturday, March 12 at EuroDoc, and coming to the cinema for the fall as Dance Super.
varicella
Directed by Victor Kossakovsky
25 min.
