Ballet is an art form requiring rigorous discipline, skill, and physical endurance. The tortured ballerina is a popular trope in movies and TV shows — the dancer who sacrifices all for her art. She can be both painfully fragile — one little fall and her career is over — or ruthlessly determined.
Ballerinas with these attributes pop up in a range of movie and TV genres — from melodrama to horror to action flicks. To name an example, the upcomingJohn Wick franchise spin-off,Ballerina(2024), will starAna de Armasas a ballerina turned assassin. The beauty but hidden brutality of ballet — embodied in the form of a ballerina’s tragic story arc — is captivating.
The following article contains spoilers for the films discussed.
10‘Center Stage’ (2000)
Maureen Cummings (Susan May Pratt) is the best dancer at the American Ballet Company. But secretly, she struggles with an eating disorder and dances only to fulfill the dreams of her overbearing mother. Maureen has an epiphany about her life and withdraws from the final student concert. She is later seen — happier and healthier – building a new life at college.
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Snooty and judgmental, Maureen is initially the film’s antagonist. But the viewer’s opinion changes as it reveals how pressured and trapped Maureen is. Her happy ending feels well-earned and worth cheering for.
9‘Ballerina’ (2016)
Odette (voiced byCarly Rae Jepsen) is a mysterious, reclusive cleaner at the Paris ballet. She becomes Felicie’s mentor, teaching her the rigors of ballet (which she manages in about six days). It is later revealed Odette was a prima ballerina for the company before an injury destroyed her dance career.
It’s terrible that Odette’s allocated retirement plan – from the company for which she was a star dancer – was to become a penniless cleaner. At leastJepsen’s song “Cut to the Feeling,“written for this fun if somewhat forgettable kids' film, was a certified hit.
8‘Flesh and Bone’ (2015)
Mia (Emily Tyra) dreams of being a “prima” and shows considerable promise at the American Ballet School. Tragically, after problems with her vision, she is diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Adding to the sheer awfulness is that Mia already suffers from an eating disorder and is also sexually assaulted by her roommate’s brother.
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Flesh and Boneis awash with ballerina-angst, but Mia’s fate is particularly cruel. Her final appearance – dancing in her hospital room alone as her colleagues perform on stage – is heartbreaking.
7‘Avengers: Age of Ultron’ (2015)
InAvengers: Age of Ultron, Natasha (Scarlett Johansson) has a nightmare about the “Red Room’” — her assassin training that included ballet both as a front and for its strict discipline and precision. Brainwashing and an involuntary hysterectomy followed. Although Natasha escapes the Red Room and joins the Avengers, she dies after sacrificing herself in the quest for the soul stone in later installments.
Natasha’s death hits particularly hard afterBlack Widowshows her reconnecting with her surrogate family, including her sister Yelena. It’s clear to the viewer how much she suffered from losing them after Thanos’ snap and why she was ready to die to bring them back.
6‘Tiny Pretty Things’ (2020)
Tiny Pretty Thingsbegins with Cassie (Anna Maiche) — the star student of her ballet school — pushed off a building by a mysterious hooded figure. The fall shatters Cassie’s leg, leaving her in a coma for most of the season. She eventually wakes up, ready for revenge and to rebuild her dancing career.
Regardless of whether Cassie is a particularly nice person (in her own words, “Sleeping Beauty wakes up, and it turns out she’s a bitch”), she certainly didn’t deserve the assault on her life and dancing career.
5‘Suspiria’ (1977)
Patricia “Pat” Hingle (Eva Axén) is the first of the ill-fated ballerinas inDario Argento’siconic horror film. After discovering the school staff are actually a coven, Pat seeks refuge at a friend’s house. But that very night, she is dragged through a glass window, stabbed, and hung from the skylight.
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The viewer never gets the chance to know Pat properly, but her shocking (if very stylistic) murder sets the tone for the film to come. What’s clear is Pat was smart enough to discover her school’s secret, confide this information to a friend, and run (tragically, without success) for her life.
4‘Waterloo Bridge’ (1940)
Set in London during World War I, Myra is a ballet dancer fired from her company for dating Roy, a soldier. The pair become engaged, but Roy is mistakenly reported as killed in battle. A desperate, penniless Myra becomes a prostitute. But Roy is actually alive and returns from the war, keen to get married. Overcome with shame at her fallen women status, Myra commits suicide on the eponymous Waterloo Bridge.
Vivien Leighwas widely praised by critics for her portrayal of Myra, her first role sinceGone With the Wind.Her performance lends gravitas and real tragedy to what could otherwise have been a run-of-the-mill melodrama.
3Sara, ‘Suspiria’ (2018)
Ballet student Sara becomes suspicious of her teachers — who, unbeknownst to her (but revealed to the audience), is a coven of witches. Their spell causes Sara to break her leg and then dance, puppet-like, in the class ballet on her shattered limb. Later, when all Hell (quite literally) breaks loose, Sara is granted the mercy of death by her best friendSusie – revealed as Mother Suspiria.
There are many ballerinas to feel extremely sorry for in this excellent remake ofSuspiria. Sara, as a sympathetic main character, is particularly tragic. Her zombie-like state in the macabre ballet performance is pure nightmare fuel.
2‘Black Swan’ (2010)
Nina wins her dream role as Odette in Swan Lake but struggles to embody the dual part of Odile — the “black swan.” Under extreme pressure, Nina’s sanity deteriorates. On opening night, she stabs rival dancer, Lily, before giving a dazzling performance as the black swan. But Nina only hallucinated Lily and has actually wounded herself. She dies as the curtain falls, happy in the knowledge she was “perfect.”
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Natalie Portmanwon the Oscar for Best Actress for her performance as Nina. It’s deeply unsettling for the viewer to watch this already fragile, obsessive dancer have her mental health completely unravel.Black Swanis, in every sense, a psychological horror film.
1Vicky, ‘The Red Shoes’ (1948)
Victoria “Vicky” Page is forced to choose between love and dancing in this famous, critically acclaimed film byMichael PowellandEmeric Pressburger. She is driven to madness, leaping fatally onto train tracks just before her return performance in “The Ballet of the Red Shoes” — therole that made her famous.
Moira Sheareris stunning as Vicky, a female artist caught between the jealousy of two possessive, powerful men. Her tragic story arc mirrors that of the very role she plays in the ballet, based on the Hans Christian Andersen story. Vicky’s final words, like the dying wish of her stage character, is to beg the man she loves to “take off the red shoes.”
