Educational Media Reviews Online

This feature-length documentary film about a phenomenally talented ballerina is skillfully structured in three nearly equal parts. Act 1: 14-year old girl ‘kicked out’ of ballet class meets New York City Ballet’s George Balanchine, later becomes his muse and wife, and has a fabulous career to age 27. Act 2: Tragedy cruelly strikes in the worst way for a dancer at the top of her form. Act 3: A willful, witty, strong personality overcomes midlife limits, is helped by and remains popular with friends, becomes an influential teacher at the Dance Theatre of Harlem, and proves herself to be a woman who is stunningly worth remembering.

Buirski tells the story beguilingly, foreshadowing the awful blow awaiting “Tanny” but lingering generously on footage that shows her on stage in ballets created by both Balanchine and Jerome Robbins, who also loved her. Tanny decided not to avail herself of the newly-introduced Salk vaccine before a 1956 company tour of Europe and fans of ballet know what happened to her in Copenhagen: polio that left her in a wheelchair for life (she died in 2000 at age 71). Footage of her rehabilitation at Warm Springs, Georgia, and of people in iron lungs are sobering. Americans of a certain age who also contracted the disease or know people who did will be reminded of terrible times. Via letters from her and from Jerome Robbins (narrated by actors), interviews with people who knew Le Clercq (especially dancers Patricia McBride, Jacques d'Amboise, and Arthur Mitchell and Balanchine’s assistant Barbara Horgan), rare TV appearances, and home movies made during Act 3 of her life, Tanny emerges as someone you would have cherished as a friend. Perhaps repetitions of Debussy’s music could have been fewer in this film, but not if that would have meant decreasing the amount of time we get to see beautiful dancing. This is an American Masters co-production and will probably one day appear on PBS. Highly recommended to dance history classes and all balletomanes.