Leaps of faith

DANCE:Does Black Swan's depiction of dance have more to do with pleasing the box office than accurately portraying ballet behind the scenes? Former dancer RUTH BURKE-KENNEDYdisabuses a few dancing myths and gets to the heart of what drives dancers

JUST WHEN I thought the alarming vision of Anne Widdecombe being hauled across a dance floor on her rear end would haunt me for the rest of my days, news comes that Black Swan, Darren Aronofsky's new film starring Natalie Portman, is opening in cinemas next Friday.

Portman plays Nina, a ballerina who discovers competition in a new colleague (Lily, played by Mila Kunis). Rivalry develops until Nina’s paranoia drowns her dreams of perfection and drags her into madness.

Complete with the stereotypical “ballet mum” and a foreign-sounding choreographer, Black Swan is sprinkled with the usual myths: starving, tortured dancers, who dance on injuries, make themselves sick and feed on spite. Nonetheless, glimpses of the dancers in class and on stage, along with Portman’s tiny figure and beautiful face, appeal immediately to the ballerina dream many of us had as young girls. All those performances we inflicted on our siblings. How we flung ourselves into death-defying pirouettes and jumps, the embodiment of the little twirling music-box dancer. How the siblings’ heads wobbled about as they tried to stay awake.

As we grew older and our ballet classes became more demanding, what many of us came to realise was that behind the dream lies rigorous discipline, constant hard work and incredible determination. A few hours are needed to practise good toes; naughty toes won't help you to realise your ballerina fantasy. It takes a certain kind of person. The Sugar Plum Fairyis no push over, she's one tough cookie.

There are thousands of people who want to be dancers. Like actors, there are at least four in every restaurant. Those who succeed are uniquely determined. They don’t tolerate distraction. To get noticed, to get work and ultimately get to dance, you’ve got to be at the top of your game. And this is why ballet’s most popular myths are risible. If dancers were these starving, humiliated people, in constant pain, who’d want to be one? And how could they do it?

Most artists suffer for their art to some extent and dancers are no exception but they are not all dancing on broken bones. Georgina May and Josh Barwick are dancers with Northern Ballet. She is a first soloist and he is an apprentice who has recently joined the company. She is injured and can’t perform, nor is she expected to, but she’s doing what classes and exercises she can while her arm recovers from surgery.

“Dancers are not as fragile as footballers I reckon. We don’t have ice buckets lying everywhere. Sometimes we do dance on injuries – not breaks, obviously – but the kinds of injuries where it’s actually better to work through it. I don’t think anybody goes through a career in dance without one but we’re not in agony all the time,” says May.

Barwick puts it plainly: “If it was that hard and that painful, people wouldn’t do it.”

Second, dancers are not all starving or suffering from eating disorders. They simply couldn’t be. They are supreme athletes. They need to be in good mental and physical health. You’re not going to deliver spell-binding performances of Swan Lake night after night on nothing but a low-fat Cuppa Soup.

There is pressure about size in the ballet world, that can’t be denied. Both the aesthetic and physical aspects require and develop a certain physique. But May believes this is not exclusive to dancers, and that they’re not under as much pressure to be thin as singers, actors or TV presenters. “Like anyone else we try to be healthy,” she says. “We all want to have full lives beyond our dance careers.” Barwick has a theory that the obsession with weight is worse in dance school than it is as a professional. “You develop a pattern as a dancer; you know what you need to do and what works for you.”

Lastly, dancers don’t hate each other. While venomous rivalry makes a great story on celluloid, it doesn’t make for a practical working life.

“There is always competition and that’s important,” May says, “but it doesn’t necessarily turn into meanness. In a company you spend so much time together training, rehearsing and performing, we go on tour together, share dressing rooms. Your company is like your family. You learn a lot from other dancers, and you need to be open to doing that.”

These myths not only misrepresent ballet but worse, they omit something crucial. Sure, there are hardships, but what about the highs? Why do dancers do it? “If you’re a dancer at a professional level you’re only doing it because you love it,” Barwick says. “You couldn’t get that far otherwise, it has to be your passion. Taking a curtain call and listening to an audience applaud you is something really special. Not everyone can experience that.”

“We do it because we adore it,” May agrees. “When you dance that role you’ve wanted to dance or you’ve given a great performance, it’s exhilarating. There is just nothing like it in the world.”

My own career as a dancer was short-lived and it took many years of professional training before I finally realised I didn’t have the stele and hung up my pointe shoes. However, the ballet world is one I still inhabit and dancers continue to amaze and inspire me. I have never encountered harder working people. What they ask of their bodies is incredible, subverting nature to create an embodiment of human emotion and experience that is truly sublime, that astounds and moves us in equal measure. And they make it look easy – as though human flight were natural.

Perhaps Black Swan doesn’t lift the lid on the true life of a ballet dancer, but then it is a thriller, not a dance documentary, and this time ballet, alas, is merely a plot device.

Ruth Burke-Kennedy is head of communications at Northern Ballet, which performs Cleopatra at the Grand Opera House, Belfast, from May 11th to 14th. goh.co.uk. Black Swanis on general release from next Friday.

Dance on film

If Black Swandoesn't get you dancing in the aisles, here are a few other movies that should move you

The Red Shoes(1948). Dir: Michael Powell

The film that reputedly inspired Black Swan, Oscar-winning The Red Shoesbrought Moira Shearer (a contemporary of Margot Fonteyn at the Sadler's Wells ballet) to the screen. Shearer plays a young ballerina who has to choose between the demands of her dance career and the man she loves.

Singin' in the Rain(1952). Dirs: Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly

Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds and the gravity-defying Donald O'Connor perform some of the most charming choreography ever seen on screen. Kelly reputedly had a raging temperature when the titular scene was recorded and apparently Reynolds's feet bled after the Good Morning number. It's worth suffering for your art when the result is this good.

Strictly Ballroom(1992). Dir: Baz Luhrmann

A fantastically entertaining and moving film about amateur ballroom dancers in Australia, this cannot fail to make anyone smile. It's not all fake tan and glitter balls (but don't worry, you can expect them). The dancing is superb especially from Flamenco star Antonio Vargas and lead actor/dancer Paul Mercurio.

Billy Elliot(2000). Dir: Stephen Daldry

"Just because I like ballet, doesn't mean I'm a poof." Jamie Bell plays a young Yorkshire boy trying to escape the grim north of 1984's miners' strike through a growing love for ballet. A delightful story in which expression through dance triumphs over oppression, and the film that got the boys to the barre.

The Company(2003). Dir: Robert Altman.

Altman turns his hand to ballet in this documentary-style drama. The narrative isn't hugely compelling but the scenes in rehearsal and class are interesting. Filmed with the Chicago-based Joffrey Ballet, it stars Neve Campbell, a trained dancer perhaps better known as an actor who was in fact the driving force behind the making of the film.

La Danse: Le ballet de l'Opéra de Paris(2009). Dir: Frederick Wiseman

One for hardcore ballet lovers, Patrick Wiseman's lengthy documentary is a behind-the-scenes look at the life of a Parisian ballet company as they produce seven ballets. If you want to see what hard work really looks like, this is for you.