Cinema: Soft Shoe

THE CHILDREN OF THEATER STREET

Directed by Robert Dornhelm.

The Children of Theater Street are, in fact, the students of Leningrad's Vaganova Institute, perhaps the most distinguished school of the dance in the world (its graduates include Pavlova, Nijinsky, Balanchine, Nureyev, Makarova and Baryshnikov). This earnest documentary, which never quite gets up on point, offers a comprehensive view of the life and hard work of present-day students at the institute. Along the way there are trots through the school's history and considerable crosscutting to onstage performances by the great Kirov company, for which...

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