Fifi Leigh
I watched this movie a couple of times on the independent channel already, and I think it is an interesting movie about ballet students struggling to ballet dancers at an American Ballet Company. The movie starts out with certain dancers being accepted into the company, and it follows for particular dancers as they compete to be the best. I thought this dancer movie is realistic because it displays the hardships and struggles as well as some issues that many dancers face. One girl is cute but she doesn’t have a ballerina’s body as well as she is an average ballerina. Two girls have the perfect ballerina body as well as they are considered the best. They are always competing to outdo each other. One girl has anorexia and bulimia issues to keep down her weight. One guy is gay. One doesn’t really want to be a ballerina, but she is only doing it for her mother, who is like an obsessive stage mother. It is an interesting drama that follows these twelve dancers. There is also some romance, which affects the dancers’ performance.
The only familiar celebrities that I recognized are Peter Gallagher, Zoe Saldana, Ilia Kulik, and Susan May Pratt. I didn’t know Ilia Kulik was an actor. I remember him as a figure skater with Katia Gordeeva, when her husband Sergei Grinkov died at 28 from a heart attack, and Ilia later married Katia. I liked watching Gordeeva and Grinkov on the ice as a figure skating couple because they used to skate as one in their own Russian Romantic Fairy Tale.
I think this movie would have made a good TV drama series for young adults, kind of like Beverly Hills 90210 and Melrose Place, but this series would take place at a Ballet Company in the city, and it would mostly focus on the lives of 12 ballet dancers and their issues. It is also similar to Fame, All That Jazz, and Flashdance.
I like this movie, and great review on it!