Hulu's 'Ballet Now' trailer: Producer Elisabeth Moss's dance documentary follows Tiler Peck as she prepares for 'BalletNOW'
After working with Hulu as a producer for dystopian drama series 'The Handmaid's Tale,' actress Elisabeth Moss will once again partner with the network for her first incursion into documentaries with 'Ballet Now.' Moss's role as Offred in the show saw her walk away with two Primetime Emmy Awards — one for Outstanding Lead Actress in Drama Series and the other for Outstanding Drama Series as producer — and she will hope that her latest venture, for which she will serve as executive producer, will have the same success.
According to IndieWire, the 75-minute documentary is directed by the Oscar-nominated Steven Cantor of 'Blood Ties: The Life and Work of Sally Mann' fame and stars Moss's friend and Broadway veteran Tiler Peck, who is a principal dancer at the NYC Ballet. Vulcan Productions and Cantor's own Stick Figure Production backed the project.
'Ballet Now' reportedly borrows its name from BalletNOW, a three-night series of stage performances that showcased at the Los Angles' The Music Center in July 2015 and 2017. The documentary will see Cantor follow Peck behind-the-scenes the week before the second show as she painstakingly made preparations, assembling an international assortment of dancers skilled in varied arts such as tap, hip-hop, ballet, and even clown artistry.
It screened at the Seattle International Film Festival and Nantucket Film Festival and a brief 1:56 trailer gives audiences a glimpse of what they can expect from Cantor's latest project. As it begins, the viewers are greeted with the voice of Jeri Gaile, the co-director for 'BalletNow', who expresses her awe and incredulity at how Peck juggles all her responsibilities.
"It's hard to describe what she brings to the table," she exclaims. "But for her to take on the magnitude of being the dancer, being the curator, assembling the dancers, knowing who should be doing what. And then, she'll put down the clipboard, run in, and start dancing. It's overwhelming."
In a statement, Peck, who also serves as co-producer for the film, revealed her thoughts. "To have each up and down of the whole experience captured on camera for the documentary added an additional level of pressure — and excitement," she said. "I can look back now and say directing and curating these performances, and not only as a professional dancer but as a woman in the fine arts, has been one of the proudest moments of my career thus far."
'Ballet Now' will mark Moss's second involvement in a woman-centric undertaking after 'Handmaid's Tale,' which revolved around a dystopian future following a Second American Civil War wherein a totalitarian society subjects fertile women, called 'Handmaids,' into child-bearing servitude. She will next act and produce Alex Ross Perry's 'Her Smell' as well as Josephine Decker's 'Shirley.'