One of the movie requests made on my Strange Horizons post was Center Stage. This is a movie about a bunch of teens who want to be ballet dancers, which is good news for most of them, since they certainly won’t get very far as actors. There are a few exceptions, including a young Zoe Saldana (who studied ballet as a girl), Eion Bailey (who went on to Band of Brothers) and Peter Gallagher (giving us his best Hostage Eyes), but nobody watches this movie for the acting.

You can just hear the wind whistling, can’t you?

The only reason people watch this movie is for the ten-minute ballet at the end that includes a motorcycle and the moment where we pan up from her pink shoes to see she has a new outfit and hairstyle, then we cut to a full-shot and she’s got red shoes on, even though no movie-time has passed. This is also the ballet that assumes movie logic, so people are constantly riding up out of the frame as if there is no audience who would have noticed the five hundred backup ballerinas scuttling, crouched, around the set. (It’s genius.)

The movie is what you would expect; the shy girl gets her moment in the sun, the bad boy loses the girl to the Nice Guy, the sassy “streetwise” ballerina gets to prove she can hack classical ballet, the overachiever with the stage mom abandons ballet because it’s Not Her Dream, But Her Mom’s Dream. It’s the glimpse into ballet culture that sets this movie apart from any other movie about a bunch of insufferable teenagers.

Hint: ballet culture is MEAN.

So, my favorite moments in the movie are the glimpses into one of the world’s most demanding disciplines. A girl gets sent home halfway through for being too heavy. The overachiever is proudly bulimic. The heroine is criticized for her shitty turnout so often that you wonder how she possibly made it into the school. (Hint: she has Heart, dammit, and THAT is what makes a dancer!)

Basically, the world of ballet dance consists of a bunch of young people repeatedly walking into a room and saying, “Hey, my feet are too intact. Can we do something about this?”

This, my favorite part of the movie, is students beating the shit out of their shoes in the hopes that the shoes will be comfortable enough not to give them stress fractures or knock their toenails off.

The weirdest part of this movie is the idea that ballet is some kind of sisterhood of supportive girls all working together and just hoping for the best, and one overachieving underminer. I’m sure that in some places and with some people, it’s certainly like that. But a two-minute search for girls doing en pointe exercises on YouTube is pretty telling: most of the girls doing it are too young to drive, and most of the girls giving them shit about their sickling are 12 or 13 and got to go en pointe early because their teachers said they were ready.

A lot of comments are sweet. A lot have constructive criticism. A lot have backhanded compliments. Some are just stone cold.

A random sampling:

“your feet look strong and have great flexibility. I wonder if you can do the “floorpoint”.
That is when you sit on the floor, legs straight out and point your toes down to the floor. some people can do it,but not many.
Would like to see a video of that.”

“you tend to lean toward your pinky toes when you releve/achappe (sorry bad spelling) on both feet, but alot on your left foot. but you have really pretty feet im sure with more work (like any of us dancers) you could be good”

“Coupe does NOT wrap around your leg. Absolutely not. You should NEVER touch the floor with your hand when doing grande plies. Take the time to actually dance. Don’t just fling yourself around acros the floor. I know you want to look cool going fast, but it just looks sloppy. And I hope you never want to go on pointe because it will NEVER happen.

-Real dancer. On pointe.”

“You don’t even have calf muscle
that means that you are not at all working hard enough

and your showing off is really stupid
because there are allot better ballet dancers out there that can dance way better then you
so go and work harder
because you need it.”

Oh, you kids and your hobbies!

Below is a video of a girl practicing. Click twice to see it in YT, with all the comments. It’s a fascinating subculture that I’m really, really happy not to be invested in.