Dance in Film · 2000
The King Is Dancing (2000)
Béatrice Massin’s muscular, camera-aware Baroque choreography turns Louis XIV’s court into moving architecture: Apollo entrances, a twelve-man passacaille, and rehearsal bodies that make sovereignty visible.
The King Is Dancing is a 2000 dance feature film centred on Historic Baroque Court. For dancers, it's a chance to see the style performed on screen — the phrasing, partnering, and musicality that the same dances carry onto a real floor.
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Dance styles featured
Where to watch: Unknown
The dance sequences in The King Is Dancing
6 sequences — what is danced, by whom, and where to find it.
Ballet royal de la nuit — Apollo entrance
Choreography Béatrice Massin
The adolescent king appearing as Apollo while the court circles him.
The young king is placed at the center of a cosmic court formation, so spatial hierarchy becomes political argument. The ensemble’s orbiting geometry turns the Apollo image into embodied sovereignty.
Closing tragédies lyriques dances
Choreography Béatrice Massin
Dancers flashing through the closing operatic spectacles in formal group patterns.
Brief ensemble passages restore the dance-music architecture of Baroque lyric tragedy without pulling focus from the drama. Their economy makes the court spectacle feel like an operating institution rather than decorative background.
Idylle sur la Paix — Air pour Madame la Dauphine
Choreography Béatrice Massin
The ensemble’s courtly lines resolving into a charged communal image.
Massin balances historically informed carriage with a more contemporary group pulse. The sequence lets ceremony feel lived and kinetic instead of becoming static pageantry.
Le Malade imaginaire — danse macabre
Choreography Béatrice Massin
A stage dance becoming a macabre frame for Molière’s death.
More contemporary movement enters Massin’s Baroque frame as Molière collapses, binding theatrical fiction to death onstage. The grotesque ensemble energy makes comedy, ritual, and mortality collide.
Les Amants Magnifiques — Entrée d’Apollon rehearsal and performance
Choreography Béatrice Massin
The Sun King’s airborne turn faltering under the gaze of the court.
A repeated tour en l’air shifts from virtuoso proof to visible strain. Cutting between rehearsal and performance turns a failing body into a precise metaphor for political instability.
Passacaille d’Armide rehearsal for twelve men
PassacailleChoreography Béatrice Massin
Twelve male bodies revolving like planets around the royal sun.
Massin recasts music written for a female solo as a circular dance for twelve men, building force through repetition and collective weight. Its planetary design makes the king’s desire for centrality physically legible.
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