When Ballet Memphis ended its 2019 season with A Midsummer Night’s Dream, everyone involved knew it was a moment of change. It was the last show for dancer Crystal Brothers, a 23-year veteran of the stage, and for Dorothy Gunther Pugh, the CEO and artistic director who founded the company 30 years ago. But little did they know how much things were about to change. The coronavirus pandemic shuttered Ballet Memphis and other performing arts organizations all over the country, and consigned them to an uncertain future.
That’s why it was lucky that Steve J. Ross and David Goodman decided to film their documentary, A Ballet Season, when they did. The University of Memphis faculty members have created an invaluable portrait of artistic camaraderie and struggle, and a reminder of what we have lost in the past year.
“When we pitched it to Ballet Memphis, neither one of us really knew Dorothy Gunther Pugh very well,” Ross says. “It was her company, but she had a strong group of people surrounding her. The idea was, look, we admire you. We’re not doing some sort of horrific tell-all about the royal family or anything. But at the same time, this would be our film. We want to make a film about a year in the life of a company, and what it means to be a ballet company in all aspects of the word. That they agreed to it was a great act of trust on their part and her part.”
If you go into A Ballet Season looking for diva behavior or backstage drama, you won’t find it. These artists compose a group of disciplined professionals working to make the best shows they can under the constraints of time and budget. Before the company takes to the stage to perform Gisele for a half-full house, Pugh tells the dancers that though there may not be as many people in the audience as they would like, “The ones that bought their tickets, by God, we’re going to give them the best our hearts can do.”
David Goodman says this generosity of spirit is the essence of the company. In the board meeting that opens the film, it is pointed out that Ballet Memphis is the most diverse company in the country. “Something that also drew us to Ballet Memphis was they have a real connection to this city. They put that on the stage, and they’re very intentional in how they do that. They don’t want to feel like, in their own words, a palace dropped into the middle of the city that’s inaccessible.”
Goodman was behind the camera for more than 80 hours as a fly on the wall in the rehearsal hall and meeting rooms, even accompanying the dancers to their annual physicals. “David is a really great observational documentary cinematographer,” Ross says. “Some of the dancers were a little hesitant about this whole process, but after a couple of months, they didn’t even notice.”
“Repeat visits are really the key,” Goodman says. “It was particularly important to be there at the beginning.”
The earned trust pays off with intimate scenes of the dancers and choreographers working on their moves. Revealing the repetition and pain of their process was a big leap for the dancers. “That’s the key to ballet, right? It has to look effortless,” says Ross. “A big part of this film was trying to be with the company for a whole year. Can we grasp this creative process? And I think that’s one of the things about dance is if you’re filming the same thing several times over, you can see that process.”
This is particularly striking late in the film, when Ross and Goodman intercut between rehearsals and performance footage. You can hear Brothers groan in pain as she does a particularly bendy move, then see her repeat the same move onstage with a broad smile on her face. Injury constantly stalks the dancers. By February, everyone is fighting through some kind of pain.
But the show, as always, must go on. The performance sequences are beautiful and compelling. They highlight just how much we have missed in the last year as live performances have been curtailed by the coronavirus. A Ballet Season reminds us of what we had and took for granted — and what can be again.
A Ballet Season airs on WKNO-TV on Friday, March 26th, at 8 p.m. and Sunday, March 28th, at 4 p.m.
Karen Pulfer Focht 
Michael Donahue