Slow-moving '422' ballet docu stumbles

A LOVELY new ballet is followed from creation to rehearsals to opening night in "Ballet 422," a documentary that celebrates the rising star that is choreographer/dancer Justin Peck.

It's an intimate movie, with the camera so close it's as if it's having a whispered conversation with one and all. Everybody speaks in the calm, quiet voices of a well-behaved golf tournament gallery. No one loses his or her temper, no one weeps at criticism or some last-minute injury. No one has to give that lump-in-the-throat speech that "the show must go on." There's no drama, no conflict, and apparently no one told director Jody Lee Lipes that even documentaries require some of that to be rendered watchable.

What she delivers instead is a narrow-focused look at professional dancers and a professional company putting on its 422nd new ballet.

We look in on rehearsals, overhear conversations between "the girls" and "the boys," see them practice and discuss movements, see costumes proposed and then produced and watch the lighting designer figure out the desired effect.

None of these talented artists is identified by name. Mostly, the camera just gawks as lithe, muscular young people do run-throughs, over and over, mastering a physically demanding art form and a reasonably difficult new work.

Maybe everyone was on his best behavior because the camera was around. And no one is suggesting that the shrill over-dramatics of reality TV or stereotypical "ballet movie" melodrama should intrude here. But something more needs to happen to justify our investment in time (the whole ballet is not shown in performance) or a studio's decision to release "Ballet 422."