Ballet Adagio (1972)

Music by Albinoni

If you were to ever hear someone mentioning the names of famous ballet dancers like Nijinski, Makarova, Baryshnikov, Nureyev, Fonteyn… you probably won’t hear them mention the names David and Anna Marie Holmes but you probably should. This seldom seen but no-less famous 10 minute slow-motion study is why. Courtesy of the Canadian Film Board, David and Anna-Marie are two of the best dancers Canada has ever had. There may not be a more renowned piece of short dance film in the world.

Remo Giozotto composed the Adagio in 1945 using a fragment of a trio sonata that he found in the ruins of the State Library in Dresden, German, which was destroyed during WWII. The fragment was believed to be part of a church sonata in G-minor composed by Albinoni around 1708 (Brave AI).

David and Anna-Marie were the first North American dancers to be invited to dance with the Kirov Ballet of St. Petersburg. Embarking on a two year residency, they were some the first artists to cross the Iron Curtain in a cultural exchange of the early 1960s when cold-war relations had began to thaw. They later helped Nureyev and other artists to defect from Russia. These events are presented in the documentary Tour en l’air (1973). The reasons for the Russian dancers defecting from the Soviet Union had more to do with freedom of artistic expression than it did with political ideology. The Russian people have traditionally held their dancers in high esteem and accorded them a correspondingly lavish lifestyle.

This short film by Norman McLaren is a slow-motion study of the pas de deux adagio, one of the most exacting dances of classical ballet. A ballet originally choreographed by the Russian ballet master Asaf Messerer is performed for this film by the internationally known Canadian pair David and Anna Marie Holmes, to the music of Albinoni's Adagio (NFB).