Dream ballet

Dream ballets also provide the opportunity to impress the audience with advanced dancing techniques and elaborate staging that would otherwise be impossible or dramatically inappropriate.

[1] It is difficult to say how or why dream ballets, as agents of plot development or as devices of theatrical artifice, became so widespread in the twentieth century, but its appeal had a lot to do with opportunities it provided writers to forgo the laws of reality and creative imaginative and dream-like plot arcs that would otherwise be unrealistic or impossible.

Directed by Vincente Minnelli and choreographed by both Minnelli and Gene Kelly to George Gershwin's composition, the last twenty minutes of the movie is a dream ballet where Kelly's character Jerry Mulligan examines his relationship with Lise Bouvier, played by Leslie Caron.

Based on the musical of the same name, the dream ballet number "Dancing in the Dark" featured choreography by Michael Kidd.

Many additional musicals made the transformation from stage to the big screen including Brigadoon (1954), Guys and Dolls (1955), Carousel (1956), West Side Story (1961), and The Wiz (1978).

These film versions tended to have big names as stars such as Gene Kelly, Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra, Rita Moreno, and Diana Ross.

Since then other films have used the concept of a dream ballet including the Coen Brothers' The Hudsucker Proxy (1994) which has an unexpected dream ballet number choreographed by Wesley Fata and performed by Tim Robbins and Pamela Everett,[4] The Big Lebowski (1998) featuring Jeff Bridges, and I'm Thinking of Ending Things (2020).

In an episode of the musical television show Schmigadoon!, when a character senses a dream ballet is about to begin, she immediately halts it, as she believes "nobody likes them and they slow everything down."

She used solo dance recitals as a way to perform, refine her choreographic style, and garnered the interest of fellow theater makers.

In 1940 she helped found American Ballet Theatre back in the United States and choreographed some of their early work.

[9] Her big breakthrough, however, came when she choreographed and danced the lead role for "Rodeo" for Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo in 1942.