Senior Artist Juliet Burnett reflects on the cinematic Nina’s obsessive search for her ideal and wonders: are all ballet dancers perfectionists? While I don’t believe that Darren Aronofsky’s film Black Swan should be understood simply as ballet film, and certainly not as an accurate depiction of the ballet world, being familiar with the setting did make it easier for me to relate to some of its themes – and I’m not talking about the split toenails and bone crunching. It was during barre this morning, as I went through my daily negotiation of various kinks, knotted muscles and long-term physical imbalances, that I realised the extent to which Aronofsky probes and articulates a theme that is truly pertinent for ballet dancers: perfectionism. I wondered: what is perfection? Is the quest for perfection futile, or even worthwhile? How far will a perfectionist go to attain their ideal? I glanced around the studio at the 20-odd dancers in that class, and could safely say that every one of them, including yours truly, is a perfectionist. That would imply that each one of them believes in the existence of perfection. But each would perceive perfection differently. A good thing too; it would be destructive if each dancer, so completely distinct in their physical and artistic strengths, was aspiring to exactly the same ideal. Not superficial ideals, like becoming a principal artist and getting to danceGiselle, but a uniform ideal of the perfect dancer. Black Swan opens with the central character, Nina (Natalie Portman), a naive corps de ballet dancer, dreaming about dancing the Swan Queen in Swan Lake, as porcelain-perfect as the obediently twirling ballerina in her jewellery box. The presentation of this rigid, pre-conceived ideal almost devalues the idea of perfectionism. Sure, what aspiring young dancer wouldn’t want to dance an immaculate Swan Queen (especially in that stunning Rodarte costume)? I certainly had plenty of pictures of lone, pink-clad ballerinas in idealistic sun-dappled studios lining my childhood bedroom walls. But what a dancer learns very quickly, when they get to an age where they must take training seriously, is that the path to that jewellery box, pastel-perfect dream is stained with blood, sweat and tears. Aronofsky records with explicit, startling intimacy this side of ballet, with close-ups amplifying the heavy breathing, magnifying the perspiration, highlighting the physical exertion, at times, yes, exaggerating the painful aspects (dancer’s feet are an endless source of fascination for filmmakers), but portraying in a beautifully raw light the artist at work. But it is made apparent that Nina is never content – always solemn, frustrated and overly studious. Constantly at the mercy of her superficial ideal, her impressionability and external motivators, how can she even hope for happiness? She is clearly a troubled soul, out of touch with her inner self and a realistic ideal. With more experience and exposure to the work of different choreographers, performers and creative minds, a dancer’s ideal can, over time, shift and evolve. In the film, the artistic director of the company, Thomas (Vincent Cassel) gives Nina some sage advice: “Perfection is not just about control, it is also about letting go.” Letting go, becoming receptive to experience, stepping out of her comfort zone – ultimately, acknowledging her own humanness – are foreign notions to the pedantically vigilant Nina. Another dancer, Lily (Mila Kunis), embodies Nina’s antithesis: carefree, sensual, experienced and expressive. When Thomas becomes overtly approving of Lily’s dancing and taunts Nina’s frigidity, her ideal shifts to this enigmatic spirit. Aronofsky suggests that we all need to temper our search for perfection with reason and an acknowledgement of our own idiosyncrasies. My childhood fantasies of dancing nothing but the Sugar Plum Fairy were soon replaced by aspirations formed more pragmatically as I became aware of my strengths and weaknesses as a dancer. I became inspired by new experiences; I fell in love with the art of storytelling, of transcending mere acrobatics and moving hearts and minds. Performances by Sydney Dance Company in the 1990s, old videos of Margot Fonteyn and newer ones of Alessandra Ferri, along with my own realisation that I was never going to be a 32-fouette, technical-trickery type dancer, led me to a fresh pursuit for an ideal that, for me, is ultimately more attainable: in essence, a betterment of myself. It’s dangerous trying to be someone you’re not, and Black Swanillustrates this notion in its most extreme form: Nina doesn’t just let go, she spirals out of control. Every day we grind it out in the studio in a continual effort to perfect our technique. I’vewritten before about this constant striving for the ostensibly unattainable – for an intangible end product. It’s a source of frustration for all dancers, but paradoxically, it’s also what maintains our motivation and passion. Nina’s exploration of ‘letting go’ is dramatised as a series of nightmarish hallucinations; she becomes so deluded in the fanatical pursuit of this new ideal that facing these ‘demons’ isn’t enough: she has to inhabit them. She literally becomes the Black Swan onstage, starring in the climactic mad scene of her own distortion of the Swan Lake fairytale, realising a slanted vision of glory for all the wrong reasons. In such an insular world as ballet, and with such a relentless workload, there’s a danger of losing perspective; that’s why it’s important to maintain a balanced life. I’ve often discussed this with other dancers. It’s easy to imagine a less extreme version of Nina in our company. Many of us understand how working on a new role in a ballet can consume your thoughts, and how the constant pressure to perform at an elite level, with the weight of our own and others’ expectations, makes us susceptible to paranoid thinking. This is the potentially destructive flipside of perfectionism. In an artistic profession, extreme characters consumed by obsession are not such a wild imagining. And as continual refiners of our art, we all fear losing control of the steering wheel, especially when our goal posts are forever shifting, and when there are so many grey areas to navigate. I dare say not just dancers but anyone who has had perfectionist tendencies could see something of themselves in Nina. It’s just up to us how we drive that inner beast.
Film
