On stage, a ballerina's feet are visions of beauty and grace, clad in pretty pink satin shoes with ribbons and supporting dazzling moves. Once you take off the slippers, however, the sight is often "pretty devastating," says Lorna Geddes, pointe shoe manager for the National Ballet of Canada.

Any company must be encouraged, when it can present a masterpiece like choreographer Christopher Wheeldon’s 2002 ballet "Continuum," while also commissioning new works and performing with live music — played thrillingly by the Philharmonic Orchestra of the Americas under Alondra de la Parra. And in this appearance, the company even performed a two-part program.

Yet the strain of this undertaking was also visible, especially on opening night, when the premiere of Australian choreographer Tim Harbour’s imaginative ballet, "Leaving Songs," supplied the only relief from a turgid, theatrical ordeal.

How she finds new choreographers— “I travel a lot, in France and in Europe in general. But also, many choreographers bring their work to Paris, so I have an opportunity to see new people.

“I don’t seek a particular type of choreographer. Most important, he or she must combine the poetic and pragmatic, must be unique and different. He or she must have a good dance technique and a strong human connection with dancers. I want to see something individualistic. I also use my intuition when making my choices.”

As artistic director, she must plan a repertory three years in advance.

La Danse finds him applying his familiar tactics: He opens by placing the institution he's scrutinizing in context. We see a stunning series of freeze-frame shots of Paris, moving closer and closer to the opulent Palais Garnier, where the phantom of the opera held sway, at least fictionally, and which the Paris Opera Ballet has long made its home. (Now it has a second home at the Bastille, about which the less said, the better, and Wiseman says nothing.) Throughout the film, these shots of the city and the Palais Garnier's dark, claustrophobic underground corridors are repeated, but not as a respite from intense emotion, while giving emotion a wider and more natural vein, as Ozu used shots of wind-stirred trees and the like, but instead--well, why actually? La Danse has no easily discernable drama or intention. It just goes on "forever" (158 minutes, to be exact), then peters out.