Dancer's wedding plays role in film of Joffrey Ballet

Star of screen, if not stage
Dancer's wedding plays role in film of Joffrey Ballet
By Dan Craft pantagraph.com 4/8/04

    Suzanne Lopez never dreamed that the most important day of her life would one day become the stuff of dreams. Literally. But that's exactly what happened, and she has lived, and married, to tell about it.     A nearly 13-year member of the world-famous Joffrey Ballet, Lopez had already adjusted her schedule to the demands of a major feature film when famed director Robert Altman and crew came to Chicago in late 2002 to make a movie about ballet. But not just any old ballet.
    It was to be about the Joffrey itself, the very same Chicago troupe coming to the stage of Illinois State University's Braden Auditorium at 8 p.m. Wednesday. And it was to be filmed at the company's Chicago studios, with a script based on true Joffrey stories and featuring the entire 40-dancer company alongside actors playing dancers, including Neve Campbell and James Franco. Filling in as a thinly disguised version of Joffrey artistic director Gerald Arpino was veteran British actor Malcolm McDowell.
    Lopez and the rest of the dancers were excited to be involved in the project with the man who made "M*A*S*H," "Nashville" and Gosford Park. "Who wouldn't want to be in a movie that is only going to bring audiences to every (dance) company in Chicago?" she says. But would anyone want their wedding day made a part of it, too, on relatively short notice? Well ..."In the original script, there was a wedding," Lopez notes. "So it wasn't like the idea of a marriage in the movie was a complete surprise to anyone."
    Coincidentally, Lopez's life was reflecting her art as filming preparations began in August 2002. Her previously set wedding day was Sept. 14. With Altman having ingratiated himself with the dancers, Lopez sent him a wedding invitation. About a week before the nuptials, Altman sent Lopez an invitation of his own: Would Suzanne and her husband-to-be mind if he brought a camera to the wedding?
    You know, the director of "The Player" just hanging out with a camera? So a week before the wedding, the bride and groom find out they and their marriage are needed for a movie. As she gave her equally impromptu consent, "I was kind of laughing," Lopez recalls.
    The groom, meanwhile, "was fine with it and probably more excited and accepting of it than I was," she adds.
    After talking with the producer about several of Altman's ideas for the wedding shoot, the producer told the bride-to-be, "Let's remember, it's your wedding day, not a filming day."
    To that end, Altman and crew were kept discreet and, at Lopez's request, none of the guests were told they were being used as extras for a movie starring the heroine of "Scream."
    "We didn't want them looking like they were 'acting,' and it worked out well for them as well as me," she says. "Nobody was distracted by the cameras."
    The latter fact was helped by the army of standard wedding videographers milling about. In the final cut of the movie, the bulk of the footage used was that filmed in and around the post-wedding reception line outside Fourth Presbyterian Church on Michigan Avenue.
    Beyond her wedding winding up immortalized on film by Robert Altman, "The Company" is important to Lopez and her peers for its accurate portrayal of the ballet world.
    The only two previous films to capture the essence of their art, she says, are 1948's "The Red Shoes," set in Europe, and 1977's "The Turning Point," set in New York.
    Though nothing, she notes, can replicate the immediacy and excitement of the kind of live dance to be seen on the Braden Auditorium stage Wednesday night, Altman and his crew have come as close as a camera can (the camera's results can be seen April 22 through 25 several blocks away at the Normal Theater).
    "Ballet has never been seen before as it is seen in this movie," Lopez says. "The cinematography is one of the beautiful things about it, and I was frankly surprised it was nominated (for an Oscar). It's exquisite, and the camera angles are not distracting."
    Equally important, she adds, is the film's portrait of the life of a dancer
    "It's not glamorized. It shows our everyday lives, and the repetition of what we do, and how it consumes our lives."
    The big number from the film - "Light Rain" - also will be among the four disparate pieces performed at ISU, which range from classical to a simple pas de deux.
    "It's probably recognized as our signature piece," Lopez promises. "Very exotic and sensual, with the full company -- which is a lot of people - in it. It's about high energy, but in a sort of sexier, understated tone."
    Will Lopez be easily singled out during the number?
    "The Joffrey is a kind of all-star/no-star company," she says of the concept founded in New York by the late Robert Joffrey and transplanted to Chicago in the '90s. "There is no rank. There are no principal soloists. Everybody does everything." In short, she says, "Divas don't last long with the Joffrey."