Category: dance

“A host of ballet-inspired films, among them the Hollywood hit Black Swan, with the help of dance-based television shows, has sparked a rush for all things ballet-related, from catwalk fashion and its high-street equivalent, to dance lessons and tickets for The Nutcracker.”

Says one: “I didn’t want to go into another [conventional] company and do corps work where you’re standing in the background waving a rose.” Says another: “I’ve been dancing 40-week years for 16 years and never had to worry about the next paycheck. And how many people in this business can say that?”

“At first, we had a really hard time getting into the ballet world because it is very insular, and they like being secretive. Also they’re very serious about what they do, so, if you get in the way, they’re not interested. Eventually, when they realised we weren’t just making a romantic coming-of-age story set in the ballet world, but that we were actually taking one of the great ballets and turning it into a movie, they got really excited.”

The New Brunswick-based company Atlantic Ballet Theatre is creating a dance, titled Ghosts of Violence, that (according to the company) “brings to life stories inspired by women who have died at the hands of a partner.” The plan is to perform the work for women’s groups across Canada.

“Far from subcultural, it’s a high-profile movie that strains for respectability, a barefaced Oscar grab. Despite some diva catfights and lesbian sex, there’s not a queer bone in its body: Its derisive view of female ambition, its crude linking of art and madness, and the leering frenzy of its girl-on-girl fantasies are as familiar and banal – as straight – as can be. … If Black Swan barely resembles camp as many of Sontag’s ‘notes’ would have it, is it then … anti-camp? Post-camp? Failed camp?”

Dance movies of all varieties occassionally break through to the mainstream — “The Red Shoes,” “White Nights” and “Center Stage,” to name just a few. But for every popular hit like “Black Swan,” many more fly under the radar and are barely noticed by the general moviegoing public.

“An artist who is anti-art, an activist who is also an aesthete, Yvonne Rainer is a combative, contrarian and confounding figure whose work has crossed from choreography to cinema and back again. She has never been popular but she has, for a very long time, been influential.”

Sarah Kaufman offers a different sort of critic’s year-end list – one which features Kanye West and US soldiers in Afghanistan.

“Some Canadian ballet dancers are unhappy about the depiction of the dance world in the psychological thriller Black Swan.”

“Flying in the face of every gloomy prediction about personal spending, last season Sadler’s Wells reported its biggest audiences ever, with 600,000 people turning out to see 136 shows – predominantly of contemporary dance.”