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The Company | |
---|---|
Directed by | Robert Altman |
Screenplay by | Barbara Turner |
Story by | Barbara Turner Neve Campbell |
Produced by | Robert Altman Joshua Astrachan Neve Campbell Pamela Koffler David Levy Christine Vachon |
Starring | Neve Campbell Malcolm McDowell James Franco |
Cinematography | Andrew Dunn |
Edited by | Geraldine Peroni |
Music by | Van Dyke Parks |
Distributed by | Sony Pictures Classics |
Release date |
|
Running time | 112 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $15 million [1] |
Box office | $6.4 million [1] |
The Company is a 2003 American drama film directed by Robert Altman with a screenplay by Barbara Turner from a story by Turner and star and co-producer Neve Campbell. The film also stars Malcolm McDowell and James Franco, and is set in the company of the Joffrey Ballet.
Without focusing on a single main character, the film depicts a season of rehearsals and performances at the Joffrey Ballet. Its artistic director is the warm yet demanding former dancer Alberto Antonelli, who steadily guides the company through the rigors of training, injuries, scheduling challenges, financial difficulties, and conflicts between dancers and choreographers. As the film begins, Antonelli has his eye on a talented dancer, Loretta 'Ry' Ryan, and chooses to grant her more and more prominent roles within the Ballet's performances in spite of her lack of cohesion with some of its members (one dancer requests to be removed from a number after his relationship with Ry ends acrimoniously).
Like many of the company's less senior members, Ry needs to work a second job. Against her mother's protests, she waitresses at a trendy bar. Ry meets Josh Williams, a young chef whose slowly ascending position in a restaurant's kitchen mirrors her own journey to stardom. The two begin a happy relationship after Josh sees Ry seductively playing pool to Elvis Costello's recording of "My Funny Valentine," a song which recurs throughout the movie.
One of the central threads of the film is the Joffrey Ballet's preparations to stage a new work by Robert Desrosiers based on Hindu mythology. (The performance depicted is Blue Snake, which Desrosiers had actually choreographed in 1989 with the National Ballet of Canada). Antonelli and Desrosiers quickly pick Ry to be the featured female dancer in the work after she impresses them by dancing Lar Lubovitch's My Funny Valentine outside during a thunderstorm. The work proves difficult to stage, with another dancer suffering a career-ending injury to her Achilles tendon in rehearsals; its demands also strain Ry's personal life, at one point causing her to miss a complicated dinner made for her by Josh. In between the preparations for Blue Snake, the company stages and rehearses many other pieces, including a dance on a swing set to Julee Cruise's "The World Spins." To release tension, many of the dancers host an impromptu "roast night" dance on Christmas Eve, in which Antonelli and Desrosiers' personalities are lampooned.
Blue Snake eventually premieres at the Kennedy Center. During the performance, Ry injures her arm at the end of a solo section, forcing Desrosiers to improvise until another dancer can be fitted into her elaborate costume. The work is still a resounding success. Josh, who has been similarly injured in a kitchen accident, sneaks onto the stage during bows to congratulate Ry. They celebrate as the main curtain descends.
The part of Alberto Antonelli was reportedly inspired by the real life dancer and choreographer Gerald Arpino. [2]
The Company was an idea of Campbell's for a long time—she began her career as a ballet dancer, having been a student at Canada's National Ballet School. [3] Altman was initially reluctant to direct the film, reportedly remarking, "Barbara, I read your script and I don't get it. I don't understand. I don't know what it is. I'm just the wrong guy for this." [2] The director eventually relented, and The Company turned out to be his penultimate film. Neve Campbell and James Franco prepared for their roles as restaurant workers by training under Mickaël Blais, the chef of Marche, an upscale bistro in Chicago. [4] [5]
Dance lighting for the Joffrey Ballet portions was composed by the dance lighting designer Kevin Dreyer.
Excerpts of the following dance pieces are included in the film:
The Company was given a limited release on December 25, 2003, earning $93,776 in eleven theaters over its opening weekend. The film ultimately grossed $2,283,914 in North America and $4,117,776 in foreign markets, bringing its worldwide box office total to $6,401,690—well below its estimated $15 million budget. [1]
On Rotten Tomatoes the film has a 71% rating based on reviews from 134 critics. The site's consensus states: "Its deliberately unfocused narrative may frustrate some viewers, but The Company finds Altman gracefully applying his distinctive eye to the world of dance." [9] On Metacritic it has a score of 73% based on reviews from 32 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". [10]
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times praised the film, awarding it 3+1⁄2 stars out of four. [2] Ed Gonzalez of Slant Magazine similarly declared it the best movie of 2003. [11] Elvis Mitchell of The New York Times called the film "enjoyably lithe and droll" and attributed a "great deal of the film's appeal" to McDowell's performance, while opining that the film "doesn't stick with you as a whole." [12]
Lar Lubovitch Dance Company is a dance company based in New York City and founded by Lar Lubovitch in the late 1960s. They have performed at Carnegie Hall, and worldwide.
Lar Lubovitch is an American choreographer. He founded his own dance company, the Lar Lubovitch Dance Company in 1968. Based in New York City, the company has performed in all 50 American states as well as in more than 30 countries. As of 2005, he had choreographed more than 100 dances for the company. In addition to the company, Lubovitch has also done creative work in ballet, ice-skating venues, and musical theater, notably Into the Woods. He has played a key role in raising funds to fight AIDS.
The Joffrey Ballet is an American dance company and training institution in Chicago, Illinois. The Joffrey regularly performs classical and contemporary ballets during its annual performance season at the Civic Opera House, including its annual presentation of The Nutcracker.
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Gerald Arpino was an American dancer and choreographer. He was the co-founder of the Joffrey Ballet and succeeded Robert Joffrey as its artistic director in 1988.
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Patrick Corbin, is an American dancer and founder of CorbinDances.
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Tina LeBlanc is an American ballet dancer, teacher and ballet master. She joined the Joffrey Ballet in 1988. In 1992, she joined the San Francisco Ballet as a principal dancer. She retired in 2009, then joined the faculty of the San Francisco Ballet School, before returning to the San Francisco Ballet as a ballet master in 2019.
The Harkness Ballet (1964–1975) was a New ballet company named after its founder Rebekah Harkness. Harkness inherited her husband's fortune in Standard Oil holdings, and was a dance lover. Harkness funded Joffrey Ballet, but when they refused to rename the company in her honor, she withdrew funding and hired most of the Joffrey dancers for her new company. Joffrey Ballet later moved to Chicago, and continues to function.
Ann Marie DeAngelo is an American choreographer, director, producer, teacher, consultant and former dancer - an expert in all areas of dance. She was leading ballerina with the Joffrey Ballet, where early on she was pegged by Time magazine as "one of America's most outstanding ballerinas" and where she later served as associate director at the time of the company's move to Chicago in 1995.
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Kevin Dreyer is an American lighting designer of dance, theatre, opera and film, Full professor of Theatre at the University of Notre Dame and resident lighting designer for the Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival. Dreyer is also a dance lighting reconstructor for the works of Gerald Arpino, Moses Pendleton and Kurt Jooss.
Robert Guy Desrosiers is a Canadian dancer and choreographer. After a brief dance career, he founded the Desrosiers Dance Theatre and choreographed surreal and theatrical dances. After the company’s disbandment, he pursued a variety of artistic professions before returning as a freelance choreographer.
Maia Wilkins is an American ballerina. She was a principal dancer for the Joffrey Ballet from 1991 until 2008. She was the principal of Sacramento Ballet School and is currently the Associate Director of Ballet at Northern California Dance Conservatory. She used to teach ballet and re-stages Joffrey and Arpino works for the Arpino Foundation.
Fabrice Calmels is a French ballet dancer and model who performed as a lead dancer with the Joffrey Ballet in Chicago, Illinois.
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