Ever since Palinode tipped me to the trailer for Darren Aronofsky’s new film, Black Swan, I’ve been eagerly waiting for its release. In the meantime, I’ve been thinking about ballet movies that I’ve known and loved or loathed.
For those who don’t know me that well: I was a ballet dancer. I started lessons when I was 4 and finally hung up my pointe shoes when I was 18 after an extremely upsetting and eye-opening first year as a professional. Ballet was perhaps the biggest part of my life up to that point, so jumping into adulthood without it was, pardon my French, a total mindfuck. But over the years, I’ve attained some peace about the whole thing.
While I no longer ache (too much) for the stage or the movement, I’ve retained my love for movies about ballet. I don’t think I’ve ever met a dancer who hadn’t seen every cinematic homage to the art form to ever be produced.
The problem with many ballet movies is that their target audience is so specific and contains so many depictions of the odd nuances and quirks of the ballet world (and it really is a whole other world) that mainstream audiences don’t totally get them. So while I can watch Center Stage, which is objectively a pretty bad movie, countless times, I can’t really blame anyone for not having any interest whatsoever.
Black Swan sounds like it might actually crossover and be appealing to both dancers and non-dancers since it has more of a global focus. According to Wikipedia:
Aronofsky conceived the premise by connecting his viewings of Swan Lake with an unrealized screenplay about understudies and the notion of being haunted by a double. The director also considered Black Swan a companion piece to his previous film The Wrestler, with both films’ worlds involving demanding performances for different kinds of art.
Intriguing, no? I like that Aronofsky has picked up on this. The relationship between a dancer and her understudy can get a little weird if there is tension and competition between the two. Dancers, like many artists and athletes, are superstitious and would be wary of an understudy that they thought was praying for her downfall.
Also, Swan Lake the ballet, and specifically the lead female role of Odette/Odile (the White Swan and the Black Swan), is one of the most demanding roles and is one that most dancers never attain. Any ballet dancer can tell you the ultimate challenge of Odette/Odile: the 32 fouettes.
But anyway, back to ballet movies. They’re an odd sub-genre. We’ve already touched on Center Stage, which is a fairly realistic, though melodramatic, portrayal of the year leading up to a dancer’s entry into the professional level. The only parts that make me roll my eyes at their absurdity are the school’s tolerance of Eva’s mouthiness (seriously, in real life, she would have had her ass beat) and the final show’s inclusion of a motorcycle on stage, a depiction of a student in a sex scene, and the way too rapid costume changes.
A ballet movie that I’ve always kind of hated was Save the Last Dance. If it’s on, I always seem to watch it, but I can’t get past the fact that Julia Stiles can’t dance and the trite racial themes of the plot.
The ultimate ballet movie is, of course, The Turning Point. This 1977 film was showered with Oscar nominations and featured Mikhail Baryshnikov who was akin to a rock star in the dance world at that time. It was also a fairly realistic depiction of the dance world, with only some details over-dramatized for effect. Plus, it contains probably the best fight scene ever (sorry for the crappy video quality).
If you are or were a dancer, is there a dance movie that you hold particularly dear? If you aren’t a dancer, are there any dance movies that you find interesting?
About kdiddy
