The film opens this Friday, April 2, at the Village Square 18.

It's a shame that so many people in this town, including the RJ and Sun reviewers, are so easily taken in by the watered-down Arpino-esque stylings of hack company director James Canfield. This wasn't the first time I had seen his tritely repetitive Jungle piece; I saw it years before while he was busily driving Oregon Ballet Theatre into the ground, and it hasn't improved with age or relocation to Las Vegas. The man simply has no capacity for moving more than two dancers around on the stage at a time, a failing which was cruelly highlighted by the same program's opener of Balanchine's masterpiece of interlocking movement. Not that the newly Canfield-ized troupe could pull that off, either: the corps was ragged and uncoordinated to the point of confusion. That's probably the real reason that Canfield isn't doing any story ballets: he doesn't have the choreographic chops for it. Kudos to the Weekly's reviewer for pointing out that this particular emperor doesn't exactly have his tights on.