USA
, 87 min
Shown in 1981
CREDITS
- dir
-
Robert Dornhelm
- prod
-
Federico DeLaurentiis, Earle Mack, Marion Hunt
- scr
-
Paul Davids
- cam
-
Karl Kofler
- cast
-
Bud Cort, Kyra Nijinsky, Patrick Dupond, Max von Sydow, Walter Kent, Sauncey Le Sueur, Rosine Bena, Jeanette Etheridge
The name, Nijinsky—the symbol of classical ballet—his only child, Kyra, living in San Francisco, and a Viennese film director best known for an Academy Award winning documentary about Soviet ballet students, The Children of Theater Street: Mix these ingredients. The result is a fascinating drama, mixing documentary with the remnants of a muse. She Dances Alone describes the experiences of a young film director (Bud Cort) who comes to San Francisco to meet Nijinsky’s daughter and explore, through her recollections, the genius of her father. His expectations regarding Kyra Nijinsky as a consultant are turned around, indeed, for she is a star herself, a woman whose life is dominated by bright reveries of dance. She is temperamental and a vibrant actress who is able to play all of the parts. A glorious artificer in her sequined beret, Kyra Nijinsky’s exuberance dominates the film entirely: She is herself, her mother, her teacher and at times Nijinsky, too. There are flashbacks, in which we see Max von Sydow, enacting the mad dancer in his later years, the ethereal-looking inmate of an asylum, and in the form of young Patrick Dupond, premier danseur of the Paris Opera Ballet, the young Nijinsky dances flawlessly from a world of reveries. She Dances Alone is unique in film history. Robert Dornhelm had to organize the components of his story piece-by-piece, for the character of Kyra is so much larger-than-life and unpredictable. A child dancer, Sauncey Le Sueur was chosen from the San Francisco Ballet School because of her resemblance to Kyra at the same age. The quest of the young director to delve into Nijinsky’s past is shown through memorabilia, dance interludes and, most of all, through Kyra. The dark night of her soul is illuminated when Dupond, recreating Le Spectre de la Rose, leaps through the windows of time. Dornhelm has said that he did not intend to find a specific category for She Dances Alone. It was an effort to capture Kyra Nijinsky’s world on film, to convey her recurrent dream of hearing an inner voice saying out loud, “I am alive. I am alive. I am alive!”
—Albert Johnson
FACTOID #343
Director Sally Potter was the first person to be honored with the Festival’s Satyajit Ray Award. In 1993 she was interviewed onstage and her new film Orlando was screened. In 2005, she turned the tables by interviewing Peter J. Owens Award recipient Joan Allen.
