Photo by Erik Ostling/CW
This is what is known in journalism an “inviting lead”:
Breaking Pointe, a reality-television show about Ballet West, is breaking my heart. So You Think You Can Dance is as feckless as ever. And Amy Sherman-Palladino’s wise, snappy Bunheads was canceled. When it comes to dance on television, the best move is to reach for the remote.
Now that dance on TV is beginning to rival NFL jousts and cooking shows, but not doing justice to ballet, Gia Kourlas of the New York Times is taking a jaundiced but precise survey of the scene, from which we’ll quote only a few references to what’s breaking the writer's heart (with a personal note from This Column — I am fond of Ballet West, the company that's a sort of cousin to the San Francisco Ballet, if not at all of the TV show):
There’s more football on Friday Night Lights than there is ballet on Breaking Pointe. Even when it’s shown, it’s virtually ignored. Last season, the company worked on George Balanchine’s haunting ballet Emeralds, but I can’t recall having heard his name mentioned once. This time, the company is gearing up to perform Frederick Ashton’s Cinderella.” I’m fairly sure that a dancer mentioned “Ashton” under her breath, but that’s about it for context.Unfortunately, there are many things I do know, as they are repeated to the breaking point of nausea. The marriage between Christiana Bennett and Christopher Rudd, two principals, is on the rocks. Allison DeBona is struggling with her decision between moving to Detroit to join her doctor-boyfriend or continuing to perform and possibly getting back together with Rex Tilton, a dancer whose monotone pining for Ms. DeBona is disturbing to witness.
The current season also unveiled a rivalry between two dancers in Ballet West 2 competing for contracts in the main company. Zachary Prentice, the shorter, stockier of the two, got the job. A born busybody, he is the Perez Hilton of Ballet West. “I love petty drama,” he said once with his usual assurance of knowing that the line would make the cut.
Yet most of the drama in Breaking Pointe is conveyed through a series of recaps with a sparkly line thrown in here and there. “Ballerinas are crazy,” Mr. Tilton said in the last episode. Nice. He had just been talking about Ms. DeBona, who, relationship choices aside, seems to have more wits about her than most. In a recent Facebook post, she even defended her decision to appear on the program: “I hope I don’t offend anyone, but we are human and not glass dolls.”
She has a point, but where is the art? Sometime in the late fall, the reality-ballet bug will bite closer to home with city.ballet, a Web series for AOL about the New York City Ballet, produced by the actress Sarah Jessica Parker, a board member. Until then, there is great pleasure to be had in re-watching the dances of Bunheads on YouTube.