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ballet portrayed in movies and tv-shows


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Is it still worth watching? 

Oh, I forgot one movie I absolutely loved watching as a kid and haven't seen since: Billy Elliot.

I remember watching this on repeat when I was younger, but I have absolutely no clue what I would think of it now as a 23-year old adult. 

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Am I alone in hating Black Swan? I don't think it did the world of ballet any favours, providing a very jaundiced view of what life is like in a ballet company.

 

 

No you aren't; I hate it too and so do just about every dancer and ballet fan with whom I have discussed it!

I found one at a car boot sale, watched some of it, and chucked it in the wheelie bin.

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I recently bought I Was An Adventuress with Vera Zorina, I haven't seen it yet but the back cover pictures show some ballet poses so it might fit.

It was £3 at Fopp in Seven Dials, the promotion might still be on.

Sounds interesting! If you plan on watching it, please share your opinion on it afterwards! :)

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I have only ever seen Black Swan once and I got really impatient with it (for all that Natalie Portman was extremely good).  I thought it was beyond ludicrous but then an ex BRB dancer friend of mine put a comment on Facebook that it did make him think of some of the ballet Mums he had met over the years and he didn't think it was quite so exaggerated after that.

Edited by Two Pigeons
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I have only ever seen Black Swan once and I got really impatient with it (for all that Natalie Portman was extremely good).  I thought it was beyond ludicrous but then an ex BRB dancer friend of mine put a comment on Facebook that it did make him think of some of the ballet Mums he had met over the years and he didn't think it was quite so exaggerated after that.

 

I watched it (eventually, on TV) under the misapprehension that it was a 'ballet film'; it took me a lot longer than it should have to clock that it was in fact a kind of shlock-horror black psycho drama (comedy?) about an increasingly disturbed individual and it wasn't really about ballet at all. In so far as it was serious at all, it seemed to me to caricature and ridiculise (if there's such a word) mental health issues, and although the setting bore a superficial resemblance to the real world of ballet it could in fact have been set in any milieu where demands are made on people or people compete with each other. But mercifully I've now forgotten the details (Blacked out this Swan).

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I watched it (eventually, on TV) under the misapprehension that it was a 'ballet film'; it took me a lot longer than it should have to clock that it was in fact a kind of shlock-horror black psycho drama (comedy?) about an increasingly disturbed individual and it wasn't really about ballet at all. In so far as it was serious at all, it seemed to me to caricature and ridiculise (if there's such a word) mental health issues, and although the setting bore a superficial resemblance to the real world of ballet it could in fact have been set in any milieu where demands are made on people or people compete with each other. But mercifully I've now forgotten the details (Blacked out this Swan).

 

I feel the exact same way about this movie. You took the words right out of my mouth. 

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I was watching the film 'Passion' the other day and was very pleasantly surprised to find a lengthy sequence where they split the screen between events in the film on the right, and a performance of Afternoon of a Fawn on the left.  I lost track of the what was going on in the film itself as I was engrossed in watching the stunning Polina Semionova.  The ballet sequence is on Youtube - I'd advise against watching the whole film as it's otherwise rubbish!

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I think Vivienne Leigh was a ballet dancer in Waterloo Bridge - a favourite film of my dear, long departed, Mum - and a good old fashioned black and white tear jerker if you're in the mood for that sort of thing on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

 

Hated Black Swan!

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On 07/01/2018 at 18:29, BMC said:

I think Vivienne Leigh was a ballet dancer in Waterloo Bridge - a favourite film of my dear, long departed, Mum - and a good old fashioned black and white tear jerker if you're in the mood for that sort of thing on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

 

Hated Black Swan!

 

Nobody ever airs Waterloo Bridge any more; such a shame! It's so sad, but a classic weepie.  

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At the moment my favourite is Ballerina (2016).

A delightful cartoon. I bought it for my niece and ended up loving it myself. A lovely fairytale of a poor orphan wanting to join the Paris Opera School. I know, I know - but at least it's not pretending to be a serious ballet film. 😉

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On 24/02/2017 at 13:36, Grand Tier Left said:

Dramatic licence gets in the way of crediblity in so many, I think you would have to look for a documentary - try Frederick Wiseman's 2009 "La Danse", beautifully filmed over a long period at Paris Opera Ballet. 

He also did a wonderful documentary about the American Ballet Theatre in the mid 90s.

 

A fascinating look at both the artistic, and practical side of the life of a ballet company. And some extended clips of their performances in a Greek outdoor venue.

 

Director Frederick Wiseman seems to have a genuine love of dance. His documentary about the National Gallery also includes scenes of ballet performed with the Titian exhibition.

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Thanks to this thread I discovered the 1966 film Ballerina and have just finished watching it on YouTube.Very enjoyable. I quite liked the recent cartoon too, but I found it annoying that the final big performance ostensibly at the Paris Opera had some rubbishy pop music. Surely it couldn't have hurt to put in some Delibes/Tchaikovsky/any real ballet music?

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On 08/01/2018 at 23:24, MargaretN7 said:

I found "The Intelligence Men" on Talking Pictures TV (Freeview 81) the other day. Morecambe and Wise caught up in a performance of Swan Lake, hilarity and real ballet combined.

Even today, I find it difficult to get that film out of my mind when the cygnets dance in any performance of Swan Lake.

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There was a significant bit of ballet at the start of a film I saw a couple of years ago (featuring some ex-ENBs, I seem to recall): I'm trying to remember what it was.  I was wondering if it was a James Bond, because the (Russian) family came out after the performance and drove home and most of them got assassinated by gunmen en route.

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If someone loves ballet so much that is even ready to watch a foreign film without English subtitles, here is a link to the 1946 film “A Ballet Soloist”. There is plenty of dancing there: performances, rehearsals, etc. Somewhere between 7-12 min. Ulanova is dancing Adagio from Swan Lake:
Click the black rectangular box in the top right corner and enlarge:
https://yandex.ru/video/запрос/сериалы?redircnt=1471035939.1&reqid=1515619497671860-644493050455008364716745-man1-3586-V&top=0&letter=М&letter_page=6&text=солистка балета фильм 1947&source=relquery&autoplay=1&forcePlay=1

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On 08/01/2018 at 21:02, Anna C said:

 

Nobody ever airs Waterloo Bridge any more; such a shame! It's so sad, but a classic weepie.  

 

I am sure it saw it on TV maybe 10 years ago. Very few black and white films on now anyway. When Feud started all my friends were excited and I was just oh I have seen all those films when I was small.

 

No movie or tv ever captures anything accurately because its a snaphoot of life and therefore is doing well if it gets the essense across. No one wants to see courts ajourned for points of law to be discussed, or see surgerys last 18 hours, or teachers doing paper work etc.

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16 hours ago, alison said:

There was a significant bit of ballet at the start of a film I saw a couple of years ago (featuring some ex-ENBs, I seem to recall): I'm trying to remember what it was.  I was wondering if it was a James Bond, because the (Russian) family came out after the performance and drove home and most of them got assassinated by gunmen en route.

That’s  ‘Our Kind of Traitor’; Bella Brouwers was one of the dancers - I remember it taking me by surprise!

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Suspiria is a wonderful film about a ballerina - not much dancing though! I has just been re-released in a limited edition box set, which is supposed to be very good. Argento has remade it and the new version should be out this year. I can't see how he can improve on perfection.

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The Man Who Loved Redheads was on telly last night starring Moira Shearer in a number of roles.  In one sequence she plays a Russian dancer and you get to see her dance Sleeping Beauty Act III pas de deux almost in its entirety.  It is less than perfect as Florimund clearly isn't the best of partners and the errors suggest just one take, however Ms Shearer is breathtakingly beautiful as Aurora, the ultra fast tempo of the ensemble number must shock modern day ballet goers though.   I think a DVD might exist.

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What channel was it on, please?  Was it Talking Pictures (Sky 343)?   I often watch this.  Most of the films are in black and white and reflect a totally different, much gentler, UK back in the 50s.  They showed one recently about a dancer torn between her career and her husband and daughter.  Wish I could remember the title.

 

Linda

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My daughter went to watch "The Greatest Showman" recently and came home rather outraged at the ballet element.  I haven't seen it yet but apparently Barnum's daughter was desperate to dance ballet, so Barnum bought his daughter her first pair of ballet shoes, which were pointe shoes. :mellow: 

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On 2/24/2017 at 13:58, zxDaveM said:

NOTHING is portrayed accurately in movies (or TV for that matter) when looked at through anything approaching expert eyes. Sport is at times laughable, ballet as we know is lamentable, science gets mangled (CSI - hang your head in shame!), police/hospital procedures make the professionals wince and many won't watch, etc etc. To anyone that doesn't know anything about whatever being shown, it probably looks fine and helps the story along.


or when they start  out  as good  and accurate , but lose their  accuracy as new producers marginalise  the role of the   expert advisors ... 

the reason   early  Charlie Fairhead  in  Casualty  is deemed  so accurate  is that  Charlie is for the  first 15  or so years of casualty a thinly  disguised  version of Peter Salt  who was the original Nursing and A+E dept  advisor  to the series  - and the  original production team  ( inc Geraint Morris ) spent months  following  Pete  at work  and then  once they realised they needed to do research o n the ambulance stuff following Clive Hadrell ... 

while there aren;t the named  Names  to Link the Police advisors and LFB  advisors to the The bill and London;s Buring  respectively   - again the respect  they had within the   relevant professional communities was because  the producers listened to ' this is how we HAVE to do it  becasue the  of the law ' ... 
 

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