In this absorbing behind-the-scenes documentary executive-produced by Neve Campbell, the celebrated former ballerina Karen Kain prepares to retire as artistic director of the National Ballet of Canada. Her parting gift will be a new, definitive production of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. There are several immediate complications. Kain, who has performed with Rudolf Nureyev and was once painted by Andy Warhol, has never directed a ballet. “I’ve always been at the side of the choreographers who came to work with us,” she says. “I’ve never been responsible for it before, and that’s a big difference.”
Then Covid happened.
There is nothing dainty about Chelsea McMullan’s immersive, tactile portrait, a chronicle that adds thrills and grit to such comprehensive delves as Frederick Wiseman’s La Danse or Robert Altman’s The Company. The National Ballet of Canada’s Russian principal, Jurgita Dronina, struggles with pain and a nerve injury as she prepares for Swan Lake’s dual main roles as Princess Odette and the trickster black swan, Odile.
“Ballet is f-cking punk rock,” says the corps-de-ballet hoofer Shaelynn Estrada. A home-schooled former army brat who began ballet lessons as her mother cleaned the studio, Estrada makes for frank company. Her dark religious past finds dangerous expression in self-harm, eating disorders and mental health issues. Ballet saved her, she says.
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A dazzling array of camerawork – the cinematographers Tess Girard and Shady Hanna are joined by an additional six cameras for opening night – captures small dramas, jangling nerves, jokes about Advil consumption and, mostly, stoicism. The film’s editor, Brendan Mills, who filleted 450 or so hours of footage, surely knows all about the latter.
Amid a swirl of engaging characters – including Robert Binet, a patient choreographer, and Gabriela Tylesova, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s favoured set and costume designer – the real star of Swan Lake is, as ever, the corps de ballet. In Swan Song, feathers, synchronicity and sheer graft define the world’s most popular ballet.
Swan Song is available to stream and on limited release from Friday, August 16th
