The Cranes Dance

Kate Crane is by herself for the first time ever. Her constant companion and sister Gwen is back home, recovering from a self inflicted injury and an undiagnosed mental illness. Her boyfriend just broke up with her and she now lives in her sister's apartment. She has plenty to occupy her time as a soloist in a New York ballet company. She has rehearsals, performances, and classes to fill her time, but even though her sister isn't there, she constantly lives in her shadow. Gwen surpassed her in the company and Kate now wears the costumes she would wear and essentially lives Gwen's leftover life. Through flashback and inner dialog, we get to know Kate and see her journey during the months of her sister's recovery.

I am a sucker for all things involving ballet. I find it infinitely interesting because of the physical demands, the ability, the dedication, and the grace involved to really be successful. Plus the music is phenomenal. The Cranes Dance is an interesting look into the world of top tier dancers with a decent into madness similar to the film Black Swan. I enjoyed the dancing aspects of the book. The descriptions of dancing gestures, conventions, and the plot of Swan Lake at the beginning of the novel are hilarious. I laughed out loud a lot, much to the interest of the random people around me at school. I loved learning the French technical terms and the descriptions of the dance. I honestly wish there was a little more detail about Kate's performances later in the novel. As the novel goes on, they get a little glossed over, but her mental state is more important then. The schedule these dancers adhere to is insane with practice and classes every day, rehearsals, performances, in addition to trying to have some semblance of a social life. I also never really thought about the physical toll of a high level of dance and the short careers of top ballet dancers.

Kate is an interesting character because she never tries to hide her insecurities or her crazy or petty thoughts. I actually really liked her because of her honesty and sense of humor. She lives within the shadow of her absent sister and, even though she isn't present for most of the book, Gwen has a marked presence. Kate wears Gwen's clothes, sleeps in her bed, plays the roles she would have played, and the list goes on. It's no wonder that she becomes obsessed with comparing herself to her sister and their past. They have a toxic relationship where Gwen falls apart and Kate covers it up and picks up the pieces. Kate is jealous of Gwen's dancing ability despite her mental illness. She has to come to terms with the reasons why she called her parents about Gwen's behavior. They may be more selfish than she is willing to admit. Over the course of the book, Kate injures her neck, becomes addicted to Vicodin, and suffers a mental decline throughout the novel. The mental part kind of sneaks up on her because she doesn't acknowledge her addiction or the things that really bother her. She struggles to appear completely happy and normal to those around her, even when they offer her help.

The Cranes Dance is a dark, funny, and honest book written by a former dancer Meg Howrey. She integrates her knowledge of dance very well and gives the novel a dose of realism. I found myself staying up late and forgetting to do other things to finish this book. I highly recommend it to fans of Black Swan and ballet dancing in general.

My rating: 5/5 fishmuffins

Various Positions

Georgia is a teenage ballet dancer who is largely unhappy with her life outside of ballet. She doesn't have any true friends and her dysfunctional family grates on her nerves. After being accepted to the Royal Ballet Academy, her world is thrown into turmoil. Roderick, the unforgiving and harsh ballet instructor, expects absolute perfection and isn't afraid to point out the harsh realities to his students. He singles out Georgia as a star and someone to emulate for the other students. As a result, Georgia starts to interpret attraction from his actions and she fantasizes constantly about what their relationship would be like in her head. Is Georgia's fantasy real or is she completely delusional? How will the repercussions of her actions effect her future?

The description for Various Positions read kind of like a Black Swan for teens, but it was actually a lot different. I had a lot of problems with the book, but there were some things I liked. The writing was engaging and kept me reading despite the problems I had with the novel. Georgia was an interesting character with very little connection to others in her life. I really felt for her in the first half of the novel because of her abusive, horrible friends and her constantly fighting parents. The way she thought about her sexuality and the way she explored it is something I haven't seen before in teen fiction. Typically, girls in YA novels don't seem to be interested in their own sexuality outside of a relationship, which I don't find very realistic. As in Black Swan, Georgia viewed sexuality as horrible and thought ballet was ideal without it until she met her ballet teacher. She believed he wanted her to be completely virginal while dancing and outside of dance he wanted the opposite extreme. This aspect never really developed into anything meaningful, which was disappointing.

The rest of the book was a disappointment. Ballet wasn't featured in the book very much despite the marketing and back cover description. In the latter half of the novel, Georgia was simply an unapologetically horrible person. She put a girl with body image issues on a very strict diet, contributing to and worsening the girl's anorexia. Afterwards, Georgia's only concern was for people finding out her own part in it instead of having concern for the girl who became practically skeletal with her help. Her imagined relationship with her teacher was horribly damaging to everyone involved in the end. She tried to seduce him and left suggestive pictures in his desk. Roderick was a harsh and blunt teacher, but not a sexual predator and never gave her any indication that he was sexually interested in her. Her actions and the photos that were found of her made everyone assume that the teacher had raped her or traded better ballet roles for sexual favors. Even if the situation was cleared in the end, irreparable damage was done to his reputation and career that wasn't deserved. Georgia only really cared that she was rejected by the man she was interested in and nothing more. She also was never really punished for her horrible actions and didn't seem to learn much from the experiences at all. By the end of the book, I was really angry.

Various Positions was a strange read with some interesting concepts and good narrative, but was overall disappointing and maddening.

My rating: 1/5 fishmuffins

Black Swan

Nina Sayers is an intense ballet dancer intent on attaining perfection. She practices hours a day and doesn't have much of a life outside of her dancing. She lives at home with her overbearing, controlling mother, who is a former ballet dancer, and doesn't have many friends. Her dream is to dance the role of the Swan Queen in the ballet Swan Lake. However, the director of her company thinks she doesn't have what it takes to be both the delicate, fragile White Swan and the seductive, evil Black Swan. She is the embodiment of the White Swan and is technically a very good dancer, but she lacks the passion and ability to let go of her carefully constructed control. The director sees a glimpse of the Black Swan within her, so he casts her in the role. However, he alternates between berating her for her shortcomings and abusing her sexually. In addition, Lily, a new dancer, seems to be perfect for the Black Swan part and seems to be constantly trying to beat Nina in any way possible. Despite their rivalry, Nina is drawn to Lily in an inexplicable way. All of this combined with Nina's quest to get in touch with her dark side are wearing on Nina. She starts to hallucinate and has difficulty discerning fantasy from reality. Can she achieve the level of performance she wants for the lead role while still retaining her sanity or will this role destroy her?

I was afraid I wasn't going to get to see this film in the theater because it wasn't playing in any mainstream theaters and it was slowly leaving the indie ones around LA. It was deservedly nominated for 4 Golden Globes and is now showing at just about every theater. I went to see it with my family on Christmas day because nothing says holiday quite like a psychosexual thriller. My entire family and I were blown away by it. I think the film's success is owed to the characters, the direction, and the music.

The characters in the film are utterly believable and drive the film forward. Natalie Portman bears the bulk of the film on her shoulders, since she's the main character, and does a beautiful job of portraying a ballet dancer in her descent into madness. Nina at the beginning of the film is a little girl living in a grown woman's body. Her mother treats her like a child and she lives in a room fit for a young girl, filled with stuffed animals and pink butterfly wallpaper. She seems to be stunted emotionally with no other friends or family. Her only love and her only life is dancing. This is called into question when the director insists that she is too virginal and innocent to play the lead in Swan Lake. Her fragility and neuroses are uncomfortable to watch. As she tries desperately to impress the director and tries to attain perfection, she starts to mentally break down, but breaks through the childish facade she had been living in. She has to give in to emotion instead of the well practiced control she has. I know from experience that a performer that is technically good, but has no passion or emotion in the performance, is pretty dull to watch or listen to. The destruction of her whole self is needed for her to attain perfection as a dancer in her mind. As she descends into madness, the film gets more and more violent and unpredictable. When she finally dances the coveted role of the Swan Queen in front of an audience, it's absolutely beautiful to watch. The events that go on behind the scenes, real or imagined, give her the perfect state of mind in which to dance either the White or Black Swan roles. Her Black Swan was the opposite of everything that Nina was throughout the rest of the film: predatory, seductive, and almost snakelike. She was almost unrecognizable. At the end of the film, it's almost impossible to tell which events actually happened and which are the product of Nina's fractured mind.

The other characters just add to the film. Vincent Cassel as the director is a kind of hybrid mentor and villain. He pushes her to become a better and greater dancer while using his position of power to abuse her. He simultaneously pushes her forward and breaks her down. I really loved to hate his character. Mila Kunis played Lily, the physical manifestation of the Black Swan. She is the opposite of Lily in almost every way. She is uncontrolled and relies on emotion rather than control in her dancing. The rivalry and friendship between her and Nina is compelling to watch. Barbara Hershey as Nina's mother is extremely creepy and takes the stage mother to a new level. The cast as an ensemble worked brilliantly together.

Darren Aronofsky is a great director. I loved both Requiem for a Dream and The Fountain before Black Swan. In this film, he creates a small world inhabited by dancers that seems separate from the rest of the world. The atmosphere is tense and it seems as if someone could lose a part the minute they do or say the wrong thing. There are many things that aren't talked about in the open, but gossiped about quietly amongst the dancers. I loved the use of the handheld cameras and closeups. It gave the film an intimate, claustrophobic feeling as well as enhanced the off-kilter route of Nina's mind. The only part of the film that felt open and spacious was on the stage.

I have enjoyed many of Clint Mansell's film scores, including The Fountain, Requiem for a Dream, and Moon, but I think I enjoy Black Swan the most. It features, of course, Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake ballet music and Clint Mansell's unique ambient music with it. His music is largely repetitive and different from usual film scores, opting to use a more modern as opposed to classical approach. I thought the placement of the source music was perfect, as were his additions. The score is really what helped build up the tension in the film for me. I have been listening to the score pretty much nonstop since I saw the film. Here is one of my favorite tracks, Perfection, which is the music that Nina dances to as the Black Swan.

I really enjoyed this film. I like its feminist undertones, mainly that it deals with issues that plague primarily women, such as eating disorders, infantilization, objectification, self mutilation, etc. I think, to some extent, the film is about any woman's drive to be the ideal woman that is, for most women, unattainable without surgery. It's a unique, dark, and disturbing film. I would highly recommend this to everyone.

My rating: 10/10 fishmuffins