Eldorado

A dance about a piece of music within a film about dance. From celebrated film director, screenwriter, and Cahiers du cin ma critic Olivier Assayas (Paris, je t'aime, Boarding Gate) comes Eldorado / Preljocaj, a riveting, two-part documentary chronicling the efforts of Ballet Preljocaj to choreograph an otherworldly icon of 21st century music: Karlheinz Stockhausen's ethereal Sonntags-Abschied. With a camera both patient and obsessive, as determined to translate gesture into film as Ballet Preljocaj is to turn tone into gesture, Mr. Assayas uses a voyeur's eye to transform the private rituals of the rehearsal process into a public drama of human perseverance. If at times the audience sees the dancers' bodies at one with Stockhausen's electronic soundscape, at other moments, the audience sees the all-too-human flesh beautifully lost in translation. What results is a riveting testament to three arts in dialogue-and to the ineluctable human desire to translate one into another. ...Eldorado (Dance Film) ( Eldorado/Preljocaj )