Rating: 
Summary: Amazing blend of music and visuals
Review: Although I agree with a previous reviewer that I could have done without the Bach impersonation, otherwise I couldn't disagree more with the negative reviews. As a fan of both figure skating and classical music, I feel that this is a perfect synthesis of both, with the addition of some exciting and innovative cinematography. It is a joy both to view and to hear; I will probably keep returning to it for years.
Rating: 
Summary: Region error
Review: As a newbie to this site and buying DVDs over the Internet, it is not at all apparent that these DVDs will not work in my region of AUSTRALIA. There should be a CLEAR notification that these are region 1 only for the USA. In fact, it ought to be easy to have the software automatically issue a warning to purchasers outside the DVD region that the discs may not operate in other regions!
Rating: 
Summary: Bitter dissapointment: no respect for skating or music
Review: Following the stellar reviews posted here I had hoped for a video showing Torvill and Dean working their magic on ice while Yo Yo Ma played Bach on the cello. Sadly, tape this jumps about between photos of Yo Yo playing on city streets and Torvill and Dean glimpsed in brief snippets through a usually distorted camera lense. Often the camera work is so close that one cannot see their magical footwork at all. Occasionally an actor pretending to be Bach recites some of his literary musings while using a modern lighter to enjoy a smoke at our expense. The action shifts back and forth sometimes quite rapidly, so that one has no time to settle in and enjoy either the music or the skating before another intrusion from a depressed Mr. Bach and/or Yo Yo - who is for no apparent reason shown wandering about the city with his cello.Oh for what this video could have been! It seems the producers could not believe that the public would be capable of sitting back and simply watching the incomparable Torvill and Dean skate to the music of Bach interpreted on the cello by the genius of Yo Yo Ma -- and just let it speak for itself! Instead we are treated to shifting, odd and blurry camera work and brilliant playing cruelly interrupted by silly theatrics. Yo Yo Ma's is much better served by his Bach cello suites on CD, while Torvill and Dean get an honest chance to skate on video elsewhere. (Try their video with the Russian All Stars, but read the reviews as my high opinion of that tape is not shared by all). This video is a terrible disappointment.. It respects neither the skating nor the music it claims to celebrate. Sadly it highlights once again the need for a comprehensive collection of Torvill and Dean's brilliant work on ice.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Music covers up for a lackluster movie
Review: I am a huge fan of Bach's 6 cello suite and have played it for years, and I thought Yo-yo Ma's performance was probably the best I've heard/seen since the legendary Pablo Cassal released it in the early 1900s. I liked the way Yo-yo was put into various places and interacted with things around him.
Unfortunately, the greateness about the Sixth Suite was destroyed by using J.S. Bach as "counterpoint." If they were going to use Bach, they should have just used a guy who really looks like Bach, not like some guy with just long hair. It would had been much better if they just ignored the whole Bach thing and go straight to music. However, my biggest disappointment comes with the Fifth Suite. I couldn't believe that they didn't have a translation when the Japanese Kabuko dancer was talking! Sometimes, he would be talking solo for a few minutes and there wouldn't even be an option for subtitle. Perhaps, VHS version has that. My DVD version didn't. Anyway, I thought the Japanese dance was cool except that I kept thinking that the guy playing a woman wasn't actually a woman. I felt kind of uncomfortable when he (or she) touched Yo-yo's hand. Lastly, although Yo-yo is a GREAT musician, I think he talks like a woman, which is not necessarily bad as long as you are one. Does anybody else think that way?
Rating:
Summary: Art as Rorschach Test of an Artist
Review: I came to this after seeing Bando in Seijun Suzuki's YUMEJI (1991.) If the great filmmaker adores kabuki enough to get its biggest onnagata (male performer in female roles) star into a male role, what's Bando like in his natural habitat?
After the mutual admiration/love-fest in the beginning, Yo-yo ma and Bando get down to work. Ma has a personal agenda of reliving the tie he had with his deceased father through the Bach piece, with another prestigious artist. Bando wants to personalize the collaboration only as far as it frees him from the usual narrative constraints of his kabuki plays (this is apparent when Ma tries to link Bando's adoption by the prestigious kabuki community to loss of his own father, and Bando saw it -- like his collaboration with Ma -- as fulfilling his destiny of kabuki actor, not a family tragedy.)
Even though director Fichman sets it up as another divisive "East vs. West", "Male vs. Woman" piece of "art", soon we see the real show is in Bando translating Bach through his emotive movements that use gender as expression, not as a set biological fact. Meanwhile, Ma is suspended in his own intact world of cello-playing, ending his interaction with Bando (including eye contact!) at the development stage.
This is fascinating for anyone interested in the creative process: Ma seizes on a set idea and doesn't let go; he even interprets Bando's "performing for the heavens" not as the idea of human-universe unity, but as the Greco-Roman concept of Dionysian. At that point Bando "snaps" back "Don't think too much", and we see artists retreating back to their individual corners, out of their initial love affair-through-interpreter!
Bando truly is a fearless artist, unafraid to use what he already knows walking into unfamiliar territory of solo performance to someone else's emotional objectives. He comes up with a basic, technical pattern of movements for each piece in the 6-part suite, but goes above them to add the instinctive, emotional qualities of each theme. The most brilliant accomplishments of the 6 are the Bresson/Tarkovsky-like intensity of piece #4, "Prayer", and the amusing & lively #5 "Dream" -- which Dali & the Surrealists could learn from. Bando's "Dream" is neither a good one, nor a nightmare. It's just dreaming itself as rollicking, delicate motions like striking memories without control over the direction & speed of its consciousness. Brilliant stuff that pushes an art form beyond the usual level.
Rating:
Summary: Six Gestures, One Star
Review: I wasn't sure how many stars to give for "Six Gestures." The music played by Yo-Yo Ma is fabulous, however, I was dissapointed by the way the film was made. The whole film is cut up and put back into sort of an odd arrangement. There is Yo-Yo Ma playing in Times Square, which I thought was pretty cool, but then there is this guy who plays some sort of a "modern" Bach. Weird. And the skating - you could hardly see it - kinda blurry. I was hoping they would show how they choregraphed the skating or maybe more interaction between the musician and the skaters (like the third Suite). Overall, "Six Gestures" was a dissapointment.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Music, Bad Film
Review: I wasn't sure how many stars to give for "Six Gestures." The music played by Yo-Yo Ma is fabulous, however, I was dissapointed by the way the film was made. The whole film is cut up and put back into sort of an odd arrangement. There is Yo-Yo Ma playing in Times Square, which I thought was pretty cool, but then there is this guy who plays some sort of a "modern" Bach. Weird. And the skating - you could hardly see it - kinda blurry. I was hoping they would show how they choregraphed the skating or maybe more interaction between the musician and the skaters (like the third Suite). Overall, "Six Gestures" was a dissapointment.
Rating:
Summary: Bitter dissapointment: no respect for skating or music
Review: No one could have thought that figure skating routines could go so well with a solo instrumental piece, especially when skaters prefer to skate nowadays to songs. The lost artistry is revived by Torvill and Dean in this video, and ice skating has never been so graceful.
Rating:
Summary: Perfection Combination of Music and Movement
Review: No one could have thought that figure skating routines could go so well with a solo instrumental piece, especially when skaters prefer to skate nowadays to songs. The lost artistry is revived by Torvill and Dean in this video, and ice skating has never been so graceful.
Rating:
Summary: Perfect primer for Bach at any age!!!!!
Review: Of all the films in this series by Yo-Yo Ma, this is the one I think that is the most watchable and listenable. It is a history lesson, a tour de force of solo acting, ice skating, and cello artistry...all under one elegant roof crafted by director Patricia Rozema. And it all works poetically in a sublime and sophisticated manner. It is handsomely done. It is as creative as the latest MTV video...treating this great music as being approachable and setting Bach's music in several contexts. This is a free flowing, thoughtful, ironic, humorous, and vital masterpiece. Not being an ice skating enthusiast, except for a few days during the Winter Olympics every four years, I have watched this film with wall-to-wall ice skating over and over again. I never realized that ice skating can be more than the conventional acrobatic sporting event that we are used to seeing on ABC when there are no other traditional team sporting events available. Plus, there is no idiot jock-skate commentator to interfere with you and the skaters, trying to convince everybody that .3 should be deducted for the bad execution of some esoteric manuver. Not this time. It's just you, Jayne Torvill, Christopher Dean and J.S. Bach. What a concept!!!!!!!! You are permitted to leave the convention and commercialization of all that ice skating competition stuff out on Madison Avenue somewhere. So, I play Six Gestures while I am working on my computer...over and over again. It is a friendly sound and picture that fills my office in the evenings from time to time. This specific video in the series is the one to buy!!! You will never be disappointed in this film. Also, an elementary school teacher would have an extraordinary and engaging 45 minutes or so if you showed this film. This film will inform, mesmerize, relax, inspire, educate plus lure you back..again and again. YOU MUST purchase Six Gestures!!!!
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