Movies

When he last made a movie in Paris, master documentarian Frederick Wiseman created a delicate ode to the art of ballet with 2009's "La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet." Now he's back in the City of Light and he's crossed the street, as it were: "Crazy Horse" finds art in a rather different form of dance — the sort that's practiced while wearing only a G-string and heels.

In business since 1951, the legendary Crazy Horse cabaret (whose endless-limbed dancers perform a grueling 15 shows a week) has long been a tourist mecca.

Wiseman, himself a legend (he's been making documentaries since the 1960s), applies his now-familiar methods to find out what makes the place tick: no title cards, no outside music, no talking-head interviews — just time spent watching rehearsals, meetings and backstage lounging, while perpetually listening and recording. What he found was a theater dedicated to meticulous perfection; a wildly inventive show that takes lights, mirrors and legs to new heights; and a tense creative team busily staging a new extravaganza, called "Désirs."

We see artistic director Philippe Decouflé running through his choreography on stage alone, early on; his arms and legs are so deliciously slinky they seem to swim in unseen liquid. And we hear a wardrobe woman explaining earnestly to a dancer that a new kind of fabric will make her buttocks look much better — "more elegant, like a woman CEO."

It's a fascinating behind-the-scenes view, right down to the delivery man who blandly deposits a bag of takeout backstage. But disappointingly, one crucial group remains anonymous. We don't hear much from the actual women performing at "the Crazy"; though we see them executing marvelous feats (one trapeze dance is a tangled, strangely mesmerizing wonder), we don't get a sense of who they are. These "soldiers of the erotic army," as one speaker describes them, remain toplessly enigmatic, creating a fantasy on stage, then disappearing, quietly, into the night.

Moira Macdonald: 206-464-2725 or mmacdonald@seattletimes.com