LGM Film Club, Part 97: La Valse

Dance is not really my thing, but it is of course an important art form so tonight’s Film Club selection is this 1951 recording of Balanchine’s ballet La Valse, which was brand new at the time of the filming at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in the Berkshires. The dancers are Tanaquil Le Clercq, who married Balanchine shortly after this but who a few years later had her career ended by polio, and Nicholas Magallanes, who was a Mexican dancer based in New York. There’s a good short description of the film at the National Film Preservation Foundation.