In the event you come into Jason Bergh’s The Symphony of Dance with a pre-existing funding in Derek Hough and Hayley Erbert’s love story, the health-related derailment of their 2023 touring present and her subsequent restoration and return, it’s seemingly that the documentary will cut back you to a blubbering puddle.
It’s greater than seemingly that even in the event you’ve by no means watched Hough’s aggressive dancing, his Emmy-winning Dancing With the Stars contributions or Erbert’s So You Assume You Can Dance run, The Symphony of Dance will generate at the least some tears. It’s undeniably emotional stuff. But it surely’s much less a love story than a business for a love story, with a working time — 110 minutes — that’s a minimal of 20 minutes too lengthy and one self-indulgent triumphant sentimental climax after one other. The movie evades addressing so many bodily and psychological problems that it makes one thing that was clearly extremely tough come throughout as unsatisfyingly straightforward in locations.
The Symphony of Dance
The Backside Line
Full of sentiment, solely a few of it earned.
Venue: Tribeca Pageant (Highlight+)
Director: Jason Bergh
1 hour 50 minutes
The documentary’s title is taken from the 2023 present that Hough and Erbert, his new spouse, conceived collectively indirectly that the film doesn’t wish to clarify past giving her numerous credit score. The present hit the highway simply months after their wedding ceremony, with all concerned viewing it as a triumph that Hough was deeply invested in each creatively and financially.
Then, at a December 2023 efficiency, Hough and Erbert bumped heads through the present. No one thought something of it instantly, however Erbert progressed from a extreme headache to collapsing backstage. She was rushed to a hospital, recognized with a subdural hematoma and a craniotomy was instantly carried out, saving her life.
4 months later, Hayley was prepared to bop once more and Derek was able to have his present resume once more, however no person was fairly certain if she actually ought to be returning to carry out so quickly after mind surgical procedure.
In the event you’re considering The Symphony of Dance is a few complicated and gritty exploration of rehabilitation, trauma and uncertainty, it most absolutely just isn’t. It’s all in regards to the energy of affection and the ability of dance. That signifies that regardless that Hayley’s surgeon reveals as much as clarify “subdural hematoma” to any viewer who has by no means watched a single episode of The Pitt, Home, ER, St. Elsewhere, Scrubs, Gray’s Anatomy or some other medical drama, no person stops to place a health care provider on-camera to handle whether or not or not Hayley really ought to be resuming dance 4 months after a near-death expertise, as if “We’ll have EMTs backstage” solutions any and all issues.
This isn’t a documentary that desires you to have follow-up questions. Truly, it isn’t a documentary that desires you to have preliminary questions. It’s about religion and emotions, and in the event you’re considering, “What about the healing power of actual medical treatment and recovery?” these are tertiary and quaternary elements of the method.
There’s a nice documentary about an inventive genius whose life is turned the wrong way up by his spouse’s medical disaster, constructing to a magnum opus with the phrase “Symphony” in its title — however that documentary is American Symphony, Matthew Heineman’s movie about Jon Batiste, set in opposition to the twin backdrops of spouse Suleika Jaouad’s leukemia therapies and Batiste’s preparations for a one-night-only efficiency referred to as “American Symphony” at Carnegie Corridor.
Whereas Heineman’s movie used its unbelievable entry to the central couple to seize moments that come throughout as superbly and uncomfortably intimate and unstaged, Bergh (The Biggest Love Story By no means Informed) makes use of his entry to make the whole lot fairly and completely too contrived.
It’s a selection to focus on how beautiful and youthful the principle couple is, to affix the restoration already properly in progress, and never dwell within the near-tragedy. Although there are scenes within the hospital which can be robust to observe, scenes of disorientation and ache, Bergh needs to get by that as rapidly as doable, to get to the purpose the place Hayley’s hair has grown again into an endearing pixie reduce and he can shoot her solely from the facet on which you’d by no means know what she’d gone by. Had been there factors in her restoration when she was gradual or clumsy or her dancing lacked grace? That’s not what Bergh needs to indicate.
Some viewers will likely be greater than a bit of appreciative at how rapidly Symphony leaps from “scary” to “basically fine,” even when it felt bizarre and disingenuous to me. Sure, Derek experiences guilt at failing his associate, who was injured below his wing. She retains reassuring him. Something imperfect (together with whether or not their relationship, which began as considered one of employer/worker, is problematic in any approach) is rushed by and made to look commercial-glossy and magazine-ready. Loads of actuality is misplaced within the up-close-and-personal scenes during which Hayley and Derek expound on the documentary’s themes so completely it feels mainly scripted, or in a number of scenes of Hayley taking sentimental baths or showers in a approach so synthetic that the aim will need to have been a cleaning of her soul somewhat than her physique.
Would that fairly as a lot care have been taken in filming the precise dance. If the final half-hour of The Symphony of Dance had been gorgeously photographed and edited footage of the present itself, with Derek and Hayley entrance and middle, I’d have forgiven the tasteless biographical sketches of every dancer, the variety of occasions Derek says that the theme of the present — and, unstated however painfully apparent, the documentary — is “love,” and the schmaltzy climactic beats during which platitudes and the sentiment of Ali Helnwein’s rating made me assume, “Well, at least we reached the happy ending.” As a substitute, there’s extra discuss in regards to the therapeutic energy of dance than footage of those healed and therapeutic folks dancing.
It’s a complementary and complimentary documentary, able to making even cynics teary however in the end greatest suited to viewers who’ve already seen the present and already know these folks, their story and its completely happy ending.
