Dark Dancers

Recently I went to see Black Swan.... recently, I mean the day that it opened, I did not walk, but RAN to the theater because I couldn't BEAR to not have a bit of Darren Arronovsky (a fellow Edward R. Murrow HS alum) in my life as soon as humanly possible. Basically, two weeks later and I'm still thinking about it, or, more accurately, haunted by it.

I'm always fascinated by the frothy notion of dancers that we carry around. Perhaps it's the nearly ubiquitous ballet school experience that most American girls have, including the pink tights and the ballet box and the recitals with the really awful costumes. Perhaps because it's something that so few people travel with it past the Saturday morning phase into the "wow, my legs hurt, my feet are hideous and I have no life outside ballet" phase.

I was really intrigued at how clearly this male director was able to see past a largely female romanticized fantasy about ballet into the much more dark, competitive and, physically wretching world of professional dance. It got me thinking to another man who was able to see the darkness of this world, Edgar Degas.

For most people, Degas' ballerina drawings are actually a buttress for the myth of the charming, romantic world of dance... since it was drawings and sculptures of young, teeny girls in big, pastelly costumes that were simply as light as air.... and after all, isn't that the fantasy of every young girl who studies dance (until it's time to take it super seriously?).

But, in all reality, the work is actually a bit darker. Very rarely did we see his little dancers on the stage once he truly "owned" the little dancers as a subject. They were stretching and massaging limbs and practicing and, in short devoting their lives and days and bodies to ballet.

And, they were, by the way, very, very little girls. Think 11 to 14 for the most part. Wealthy, older male subscribers (which Degas eventually became) paid handsomely for the privilage of gettng back stage access to watch rehearsals and get to know these young girls. (Ew.) The girls, largely from poor backgrounds, relied on patronage and "emotional appeals" by these patrons to the directors of the ballet for "promotion" and "notice" since their fortunes largely depended on "making it big" in the ballet. Actually, in truly a sad story, apparently the girl who posed for the famous and beloved Ballerina with Tutu sculpture (one of which is at the Met), eventually was pimped out by her Mama and ended up in a Bordello in Montparnasse. Triste, indeed!

One of my overwhelming takeaways from Black Swan was how rare in today's world we see artists completely, utterly, devoted to their art. This dedication is historic and I suspect it has always been tinged with a bit of desperation and working against the clock... before you get too old, or too fat or too whatever. I think that this desperate devotion to the ballet had to have been one of Degas' main attractions, it certainly seemed to be Aronofsky's. (Dancers, Pink and Green 1890 and The Little 14 Year Old Dancer Age 14 both at the Metropolitan Museum of Art)