What is the Significance Behind “Ballet 422’s” Title?
The documentary Ballet 422 (2014) shows us what a tremendous production creating an original ballet is for one of America’s most prestigious ballet companies. It’s absolutely a labor of love that requires intense devotion and focus from countless people to come together in such a short time. Initial conception to opening night is only two months, a timeline likely common for New York City Ballet given the number of original ballets they’ve created in the time they’ve existed.
Justin Peck’s ballet, Paz de la Jolla, is a pretty big deal - yet in the grand scheme of NYCB’s catalog and daily operations, it’s just ballet 422 in an ongoing torrent of creativity. Another statistic. As soon as opening night ended, Justin Peck was on stage performing in another piece. The title very creatively reflects the nature of professional ballet, and calls to attention the number of creative pieces a renowned company like NYCB has produced in its years of existence. They churn them out with regularity, yet each one is a beautiful, original thing that betters the culture of America.
About the film, NPR says “Where’s the excitement? It’s there for those of us who love good movies about the process of collaborative work done for the love of it. In principle, I suppose, you could make an equally enthralling film about a Tesla assembly line, or for that matter a Ford. The enchanting thing about Ballet 422 is that all this hard labor over these two wild, prosaic months of working separately and together is done for impossibly quixotic reasons — for love of the medium, and a beautiful, gossamer dance that will exist for half an hour at most, and then vanish until or unless it’s brought to life again. Isn’t it romantic?”
The AV Club summarizes it well, too, saying “That title is no accident—Peck’s project, as Lipes presents it, is just another number in a perpetual cycle, ultimately more of a statistic than it is a statement.”