"It's impossible not to think of The Red Shoes when you watch Black Swan - it casts a long shadow over every film about the dance. Even Centre Stage, an entertaining teen movie about ambition, love and pirouettes, cheerfully references it in a performance finale, when the heroine suddenly takes to the stage in scarlet pointe shoes and matching ensemble.
The audacity and reach of The Red Shoes still seems astonishing. It's about ballet, but it's also about creativity in general - about characters who make extreme sacrifices for their art, who live and die for it. There is a dancer at the centre, but there are other creative figures too: Boris Lermontov (Anton Walbrook), the brilliant, manipulative director of a ballet company, and Julian Craster (Marius Goring), a gifted young composer.
Moira Shearer, who was an up-and-coming star with London's Sadler's Wells Ballet, was cast as Victoria Page, the aspiring dancer who eventually becomes the lead in the Lermontov company's new ballet, The Red Shoes, based on the Hans Christian Andersen story. (Although there is a Swan Lake connection: it's when she appears in it in a small-scale matinee performance that she really catches Lermontov's eye for the first time.)
Alongside the luminous red-haired Shearer, there were celebrated dancers in the cast: such as Robert Helpmann, Leonide Massine and Ludmilla Tcherina. And for the extraordinary, extended ballet sequence of The Red Shoes, an immersive and magical vision of a stage production, Powell and Pressburger drew on the talents of a range of their usual collaborators, such as cinematographer Jack Cardiff and production designer Hein Heckroth. The painful drama that animates Victoria's life - all that is symbolised by the desire for the red shoes - is mirrored in the world of the ballet. In Andersen's story, the shoes are a sexual symbol; in the film, they also seem to stand for the world of art."
Like most little girls I wanted to be a ballerina except not for thier tutus or cute outfits, but for how I felt the morning of December 26, 1990. It was 5 am and I was 4 years old, so eager to play with my new 4 story barbie doll house made from cardboard that I ventured from my bedroom alone to the den. It was then I witnessed The Nutcracker for the first time. PBS was always showing ballets early in the morning but most of the time my father would be with me so he'd change it. But I was alone. So I watched. For several minutes I was engulfed by what was on the tv, only moving my eyes to watch the dancers as they moved from side of the stage to the other, taking in the music and the emotion. I later got up and began dancing around, pretending ( am I'm going to emphasize on PRETENDING) to be graceful and elegant....until I of course fell and went to sit by my doll house, embarrassed by my own clumsiness without an audience. From then on I secretly wanted to be a ballerina. I'd hint to my mother but since even ballet classes were still only for a "certain" type of child, I never joined. Then of course as I grew it was obvious my body was never going to be slender enough so I became realistic, yet still liked to pretend in my own time. Even in high school I'd be dancing around the living room at 3 am, pretending I was some beautiful ballerina. But always in the dark. Dreaming away in my own world, thats when I was introduced to The Red Shoes.
It was my junior year of high school when I came across the classic. As usual it was extremely late at night and I was sitting alone in the den/other half of the house watching TCM. I was entranced. The idea of this young women becoming so obsessed with her passion that she destroys her life was extremely powerful. It was tragic, romantic, and brilliant. I was at the time visiting schools because I knew I was going to start auditions the next year, and this movie fueled the ambition. Despite its warning of a passion gone too far, it was so beautiful that I felt wrong if I didn't pursue my own passion. And there the seed was planted. I was going to become a musician...the underbelly of my hidden choice of becoming a teacher. That was when the connection of Ballet, the impossible dream, met with my motivation for music. It continued with me watching the HORRRIBLE movie ( yet I will not deny loving) Center Stage winter break of my Freshman year and the Red Shoes again the summer after Sophomore year. Yet again, 3 in the morning..except this time crying, not knowing where I was going to go in life if music wasn't a part of it.
December of 2009. The decision had already been made in my mind that I was going to move to Chile, even if I had to find my own way of doing so. I was starting to plan things accordingly, knowing that everything was going to change so in a dramatic, yet at the same time realistic, manner, I made sure certain things were carried out. The first to this? Seeing The Nutcracker performed by the Richmond Ballet with my family . Ever since I was 4 I had wanted to see it. We were either too poor or too busy, I eventually got to the point I stopped asking ( though my mother still tried for years after). Well this winter I was going to make sure we saw it, and like how I imagined, it was spectacular. It was so beautiful I had tears that I made sure to hide to avoid embarrassment. It was magnificent. It was the first of many time before May that I knew I had made the right decision, and I found it fitting that it was with the first performance that ever emotionally intrigued me.
After watching Black Swan ( Which may I say is a true piece of art...not just a movie for the masses but ART) and making that connection with The Red Shoes, it makes me wonder if maybe thats why we're not suppose to have a passion for just one thing, or we'll get destroyed. Too much of something and that want for perfection in it brings only bittersweet gratitude. I only say this because watching this movie reminded me of all the times I doubted myself since my memory connects ballet with my moments of insecurities. If you read several blogs down I wrote something very similar concerning motivation when I watched Julie Kent perform Giselle among other pieces. The world is constantly telling us we need to excel in one thing, we should have one love. Yet most of the time someone or a mass destroys that love with specifics. Lets take Art to start off with. A musician, painter, actor are all artists yet we are told as studying performers to choose one . Now take it a little more specifically, A musician is told chose their instrument and from there to label his or herself even more by choosing a genre. Classical musicians are made to feel as if they must leap into the classical library and listen to only instrumental music. Luckily it usually ends there, we aren't told to listen to JUST baroque or romantic (etc.). Yet, that stream of thought isn't for everyone.
I enjoy knowing random knowledge of all art.I began reading Shakespeare when I was 7, Watching Bob Ross when I was 5, Reading a book about Vatican Art when I was 10,Taking Piano Lessons when I was 7, Singing Publicly when I was 9, Acting when I was 9, Obsessing over Beethoven when I was 6, Alanis Morrisette when I was 7, Judy Garland when I was 8.....and there is much much much more, but from the time I was 8 I knew what I wanted to be...an Artist. This doesn't mean I have to be trained in every subject, I just appreciate it, I will always have the yearning to learn more about the Arts. Though I have decided to chose the Universal Language...aka...Music..to be my primary guide in all this, I still have other interests. I'm that annoying person that knows the history of most movies, especially from the Golden Age of Film, and that girl that sing along to every song on 103.7. I see nothing wrong in this.
Sometimes I feel as if we're pressured to choose just one extremely specific path, have one mind set.Just because I know what I want to do in life doesn't mean I have to steer away from other passions. May I point out I didnt say hobby? Hobbies are what you put on the back burner and take out on a rainy day. Passion is Passion. Something that intrigues you and lights that fire and reminds you why you're here in the first place. Does anyone else feel this way? Or is there someone who thinks everything I'm saying is complete crap?
And all this...just because I watched a Brilliant movie that reminded me of The Red Shoes.....phew!
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