Queen + Béjart: Ballet for Life

In the mid-1990s, renowned French choreographer Maurice Béjart asked the remaining members of Queen for permission to use recordings of the band’s classic songs in a ballet to honor dancer Jorge Donn. Like the band’s lead singer, Freddie Mercury, Donn—a star in Béjart’s troupe—had also died of AIDS at the age of 45. The result was Ballet for Life, which premiered in 1996, and featured music by Mozart and Queen, as well as costumes by renowned designer Gianni Versace. The centerpiece of this release is the titular 2017 documentary by Lynne Wake about the ballet’s creation and enduring popularity, featuring newly-shot interviews and archival footage from two sources included as extras: a complete 1997 performance, featuring Gil Roman (now artistic director of the Béjart Ballet) in a lead role, and a "making-of" featurette. Béjart, who died in 2007, is esteemed by many as a visionary, although also criticized by others as more of a showman. And Ballet for Life, which exuberantly encapsulates the passionate vitality of youth but with forebodings of pain and death, is a combination of rock concert, fashion show, and modern dance that can be seen as something of a stunt. But in the wake of the Oscar-nominated movie Bohemian Rhapsody it also adds to the Freddie Mercury renaissance. Presented in PCM stereo, the title is packaged in a handsome book-style case illustrated with glossy photos. Recommended. (F. Swietek)