Tout près des étoiles - Les Danseurs de l'Opéra de Paris

In 1999, Niels Tavernier spent several months with the ballet of the Paris Opera. The director talks with dancers about essential topics : choice of the job, discipline, physical effort etc…

In 1999, Niels Tavernier shared for several months the life of the Opéra de Paris corps de ballet. With extracts from performances and warm-ups in the wings, classes and rehearsals, the camera gradually enters into the intimacy of this special world. The director questions the dancers, and essential themes emerge: the choice of this profession, discipline, the physical effort, the mirror, solitude, retirement… 

The title of this first full-length film shot backstage in the Opéra Garnier states what is to come: the corps de ballet of the Opéra de Paris is filmed close-up at an often breathless pace, through which it renders the unremitting work of the interpreters. Niels Tavernier’s project was to show this perpetual movement and how the emotion of bodies is expressed. Tours, rehearsals, performances of various ballets one after the other, wardrobe and make-up sessions, these scenes from everyday life pay tribute to the dream of the dancers and to their commitment in this exacting discipline. Thanks to the many testimonies, the difficult and highly hierarchical world of ballet becomes here a space where we meet strong and endearing personalities. A film which, in the director’s words, seeks to understand the inexplicable: grace.