With Swan Song (2024), documentarian Chelsea McMullan flawlessly humanizes one of the most difficult art forms to perfect.
Director: Chelsea McMullan
Genre: Documentary
Run Time: 100′
US Release: July 26, 2024
UK Release: TBA
Where to watch: in select US theaters & VOD
The world of ballet is innately linked with the concept of perfection. Dancers use their bodies to create precise lines, moving with complete discipline to strike each movement while allowing their faces the freedom to express the emotion of each scene. When you think of a professional ballerina, you think of a perfect human being. Chelsea McMullan, the director of Swan Song (2024), knows the allure and illusions that surround in the world of ballet.
However, with their newest documentary film, they masterfully and delicately shed light on the ugly parts of the professional ballerina industry and the measures we go to in the pursuit of perfection. McMullan emerges us in the world of dancing Titans and shows us the humans that lie under carefully crafted costumes and hot, harsh spotlights.
Swan Song follows the National Ballet of Canada as they set out on a legacy-defining new production of Swan Lake. The legacy in question is that of creative director Karen Kain, an icon in the world of ballet whose career has been chalked full of monumental performances and legendary dancing in places such as Moscow, France, London and Vienna. Her talents even caught the eye of Andy Warhol, who, after meeting her at a party, went on to make a piece with her as his muse. After 35 years dancing with the National Ballet of Canada, Kain stepped into her final role as the company’s creative director. In 2020 Kain was preparing to step down, her farewell production being a modernized take on the role that shot her into stardom, Swan Lake. When Covid-19 shut live performances down, Kain vowed she’d delay her retirement until the production could find its way to the stage as originally intended.
Two years later, Kain’s version of Swan Lake was brought back to life, as was the filming for Swan Song. The documentary follows the various ranks and positions with the National Ballet of Canada as the company prepares for a production that has had momentum mounting after being named the final production under creative director Kain, who is Canada’s most famous ballerina.
McMullan focuses on three ballerinas in particular. The first being Kain, a proven legend on the eve of her retirement feeling the pressure of leaving the company that has been her home for the past 50 years better than how she found it. The second, principal dancer Jurgita Dronina, a master of the lead role of Odette/Odile in Swan Lake who credits ballet for saving her life and giving her a purpose. The third is Shaelynn Estrada, a corps de ballet member who has just started with the company but has huge aspirations of one day being one of the company’s principal dancers.
Led by choreographer Robert Binet, a prodigy of Kain, the documentary shows the trials, successes and failures this company must face in the name of achieving a production that serves as a fitting farewell to a one-in-a-lifetime creative force. Swan Song expertly pulls back the curtain on the army it takes to create the illusion of perfection that lies within every ballet. Through its cinema verite approach, we as the audience feel completely submerged in the world of the National Ballet of Canada, feeling the pressure build as opening night approaches.
From the first shot of the documentary, McMullan tears down the glamour and poise that surrounds the world of ballet. The film opens on the young women in the corps de ballet preparing for opening night. The corps de ballet are permanent dances within the ballet company that work as a backdrop for the principal dancers. The corps (meaning body in French) dancers are the body of the company’s productions. They move in synchronicity and act as one. This is where all dancers start within a ballet company before going on to earn positions of soloists or principal dancers.
Multiple members of the leadership within the National Ballet of Canada say that Swan Lake is truly a production that is all about the corps: they act as the lifeblood of the show. Within this production, these dancers are the swans. They are the embodiment of light, class, and elegance while other times serving as a representation of repression and despair.
McMullan understands that, from the seats of the theater, these ballerinas look perfect, which is why they use their unbridled access to show the audience of this film what these dancers look like up close. Their eyeliner wings are smudged from sweat, their eyelash glue still white as it dries down and their nails are trimmed down for the show to uneven lengths. There is silence as they focus while putting on their makeup and tension within the dressing room that makes this moment feel ritualistic, like soldiers putting on war paint. Their eyes make it clear they are working on autopilot as they try to remember all the changes that were made just days before opening night. From the outset, McMullan makes it clear the beautiful end result we get to enjoy from an audience standpoint is something that is hard fought for.
While McMullan’s approach with Swan Song is to make a film that is of the cinema verité style, they achieve something that feels entirely unique to itself. Through their shooting style and playful use of sound, we as an audience get to experience the world of these dancers in both its generality and in its most minute details. There are shots of the corps mid-performance or rehearsal that show the dancers perfecting their movements as a whole, but if you look closer these shots also show the sweat beading down their perfectly manicured faces or their labored breaths moving their chests under their handcrafted costumes. Their shooting style allows the audience to experience both the beauty and the pain of creating a perfect performance.
There is a sense of immersion in the world of these dancers that makes you appreciate the art form and the sacrifices these artists make to build a career in an entirely different light. The women the documentary specifically focuses on accentuate this concept. While they are all successful in their own right, Swan Song shows the way in which ballet drives them to push themselves beyond their limits with the blind hope of one day reaching a new height.
Jurgita, dealing with an eight-year injury as a result of nerve damage, suffers through constant pain that is only exacerbated by her career as a principal ballerina. Shaelynn calls her relationship with ballet an unrequited love, she loves the sport with her entire being but feels like it doesn’t love her back in the same way. Kain in her youth left the world of dance for a period of time due to mental health struggles but returned with a determination to make this place better for others than it was for her.
For these women highlighted and the many other creatives in the documentary, this art form is responsible for their greatest achievements and, in equal part, their greatest struggles. These women have relied on ballet as a survival mechanism. McMullan weaves these three wildly different stories together in a way that solidifies the message that the only option in a world as beautiful and as cutthroat as this is to be a success.
In Swan Song, McMullan artfully deglamorizes the world of ballet. The film is able to do this with shots of tutus haphazardly lying on the floor and multiple dancers standing in one overflowing ice bath after a full out performance attempting to rehabilitate their bodies to do it all over again the next day.
The director allows us as an audience to see through the perfect facade and truly see the people who have devoted their life, love and health to this cause they see as bigger than themselves. The documentary expertly mirrors the mood and feeling of the corps in moments of joy as well as moments of turmoil.
Swan Song wants to deconstruct what a ballerina is because that is what Kain is doing with her attempt to modernize an intrinsically technical piece such as Swan Lake. Kain wants to balance the academic exercises the show is saturated in with the utter humanness of the ballet’s story. Similarly, McMullan wants to show the extraordinary skill of these performers but all pull back the romance surrounding ballerinas so we can see the love, strength and sacrifice given by the human beings behind the artists.
What McMullan is able to do through their filming style is nothing short of revolutionary. We as the audience become a part of the Swan Lake corps. With every breath, every grunt and every bead of sweat captured, McMullan immerses us in what it feels like to be one of the best athletes in the world in one of the biggest moments of their career. They handle the balance between the hardship and the beauty with an intensely delicate hand. With their final moments in the film, after all we have seen this company endure, they take the time to remind us that all this pain and sacrifice comes from a place of pure and absolute love.
Swan Song will be released at the IFC Center (NY), in select US theaters, and on VOD on July 26, 2024.
