Ballet captures the public imagination in a way unlike other art forms. The analogy of the swan – furious activity belied by poise and insouciant beauty – is implicit to ballet, and is equally analogous of life. Perhaps this is why film makers and the movie going public are as fascinated with ballet as dance aficionados themselves.
Director Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan is the latest. The film stars Natalie Portman as a ballerina consumed by the ambition to play the Black Swan in Swan Lake. A psychological thriller as much as an expose of the pressures exerted upon ballet dancers, by themselves as well as by their profession, Black Swan has already sparked a flurry of online interest, despite being yet to open in cinemas (the UK release date is 21 January, 2011).
The obsession that prima ballerinas are suspected of requiring is the backbone of many a ballet film. Perhaps the best known (and arguably best) of them all is The Red Shoes, a dance film delicately weaving in tropes of the horror genre. The filmmaking duo Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, otherwise known as The Archers, portrayed a tale of a woman driven to destruction through her love of ballet – it is perhaps not surprising that the storyline comes from a fairytale by Hans Christian Anderson.
Some ballet films have gone further still, bypassing the delicate suggestion that dance itself is the villain of the piece, and journeying straight into the horror genre: Dario Argento’s Suspiria, for instance. An Italian horror film set within the confines of a ballet school, the film deals with themes of witchcraft and murder. In Suspiria, ballet is not so much an analogy for the self-destructive qualities of obsession but an all out plot device to lure an ambitious student into the clutches of an evil coven.
But, of course, it is not all death and encroaching madness – there is Billy Elliot to be considered! Perhaps there is a thesis in why the ballet ambitions of a working class boy are subject to celebration and triumph whereas those of professional women are the stuff of nightmare... but that is not for me to write (not here, anyway). The heart-warming film and later musical featuring Elton John’s music has become a worldwide hit and still plays to packed audiences in theatres across the globe.
Moreover, successful franchises such as the Step Up series show that the popularity of street dance and hip hop dancing also extends to ballet dancing among young people – and that the blurring of the disciplines is acting as an incentive to young people who wish to dance themselves. This may be a world away from the classical forms of Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov’s Swan Lake choreography, but it provides yet another access point to a discipline which has transfixed both rich and poor, young and old – and will undoubtedly continue to do so.