By Doug Cummings and Debra Levine
AFI FEST Daily News

Three documentaries at AFI FEST this year focus on rehearsal and performance, and all three shun many usual documentary conventions (seen nightly on PBS)–such as identifying text or an omniscient narrator–to create more immersive, observational, ambiguous portraits of their subjects. Far from unloading theses and exposition, these films invite the viewer to interpret the sounds and images on display and participate in the creation of meaning.

A major theme that emerges is the fine line that exists between the rehearsal of art forms and the performance of them for audiences, particularly when rehearsals are captured on film, and then edited and projected for audiences in a movie theater. Serious rehearsals are psychologically framed as performances, anyway, but a number of elements arise—such as repetition and the search for perfection, intense collaborations with fellow performers and directors, and a transparency with technical props and processes—that offer fascinating aural, visual and thematic interests in their own right.

Many of the 158 minutes of LA DANSE, Frederick Wiseman’s documentary on the Paris Opera Ballet, are devoted to intimate rehearsal sessions between ballet dancers and their coaches. Former company members kept in the organization to maintain quality control à la française (their waistlines nicely thickened by good French food), the oldsters impart wisdom to some the world’s most exquisitely trained young ballet technicians.

“Vas y, vas y, vas y!” or “Go, go, go!” cries a coach, shrilly, above the cacophony of pointe shoes pounding a wooden floor and a rehearsal pianist pounding Tchaikovsky’s “Snowflake” waltz from “The Nutcracker.” The harried Snowflakes skitter in circles, then settle into the tight clusters that form the architecture of this great group dance.

In this highly visual film—the sound is mainly muted—most of the voices cajole dancers to raise an arm, tighten a queue, or reposition on the stage. In return, the dancers toil wordlessly; enveloped in sweat, the sound of music, and the ever-present voice of their coach. The level of critical feedback they endure would send any normal human being (viz., not a dancer) screaming from the room.

These rehearsals—the nexus of transferring dance artistry—are Wiseman’s focal point in the film. In conversation with the veteran documentarian (this is his 37th film and his second about classical ballet), he admits that “the rehearsal was often even better than the performance.”

Wiseman was captivated and impressed: “I didn’t feel that the coaches were arbitrary or mean. No. They were precise. There was never anything personal, vindictive, or punishing. No art form is democratic; there is simply the way the choreographer wants it done.”

Wiseman’s favorite moment comes during the rehearsal of British choreographer Wayne McGregor’s ballet “Genus.” He marvels at the way dancer Benjamin Pech places his ballerina on the floor. “It is so extraordinary,” he says, “it begs the question of what really is the performance.”

Eduardo Coutinho’s MOSCOW may be the most radically conceived of the three films. Appearing on camera, he explains his intentions to the Brazilian Galpão Theater Company: “We definitely don’t intend to stage [Anton Chekhov's] The Three Sisters. . . We’re going to try to rehearse [while filming] at least parts of this play . . . in three weeks.”

Enrique Diaz, the Company’s chosen director, continues: “There’s this thing that Coutinho says it must have. A kind of commitment. We can’t just play around. We have to work.” And Coutinho’s film juxtaposes the rehearsals—staged informally in various backstage locations—with confessional acting workshops. It’s not always clear whether a dialogue is spontaneous or scripted, and just as scripted scenes are replayed with different staging, the confessions are traded around and recited by various actors, creating an ever-shifting dramatic terrain of personas, stories, and impressions that resist easy categorizations of fiction or reality.

NE CHANGE RIEN, Pedro Costa’s tribute to French singer/actress Jeanne Balibar (VA SAVOIR, THE DUCHESS OF LANGEAIS) merges her dimly lit rehearsals with moody concert footage through his equalizing use of black-and-white chiaroscuro cinematography and undifferentiated montage. His long takes and visual monumentalism nearly transforms Balibar into an object of worship—or at least an object of contemplation—but he also captures the subtle interplay between the singer and her accompanying musicians, a quiet drama of interpersonal synergy.

Added to the mix, virtually as counterpoint, are scenes of Balibar rehearsing for a production of Offenbach’s comic opera, “La Perichole,” complete with an exacting and hypercritical director barking syllable-by-syllable instructions. Costa chooses to record Balibar’s public performance from behind the stage in a way that emphasizes her timing and synchronization with her fellow performers rather than her presentation.

Each of these experiential films is interested in bypassing labels commonly used to simplify and tame the complex process of art-making, and by emphasizing the spectacle of rehearsal over performance they discover opportunities to reveal and explore the people, sounds, and movements that exist before the curtain rises.

Doug Cummings writes about world cinema at filmjourney.org and Debra Levine writes about dance and film at artsmeme.com.