Perhaps because I had recently watched Mao’s Last Dancer and Only
When I Dance, and my 11-year-old daughter had recently watched the hit
Australian teen series Ocean Girl,
Netflix cunningly determined that I would like the hit Australian teen ballet series, Dance Academy. Because I was living on my own for two months and
evenings were a bit dull, I succumbed to the suggestion, and before I knew what
I was doing, I was deeply, irrevocably involved in the fictional lives of a
bunch of teenaged Aussie ballet students at the “National School of Ballet” in
Sydney (fact check: the real focus of Australian ballet education is Melbourne,
home to both the Australian Ballet and its professional school and the National
Theater Ballet School).
The series centers on a girl named Tara Webster who has
grown up on a sheep farm somewhere in the verdant hinterlands; our first
encounter with her is as she uses the fence of a sheep-pasture as a barre while
she does some preparatory warm-ups, concluding with a mindbogglingly limber
back-bending port-de-bras. She is apple cheeked and wide eyed, and a bit of a
rube; Xenia Goodwin, who plays her, is well cast as this earnest, “I just want
to fly” dreamer. After a near miss at the auditions, she is admitted somewhat
provisionally to “the National” where she has to wear a fairly ugly purple
leotard everyday and the ballet mistress routinely excoriates her and takes
away her pointe shoes. At the top of her class is her sour-puss roommate
Abigail, in whose mouth butter might well freeze, and somewhere in the middle
is Kat, basically Tara’s only friend, whose mother is a famous ballerina ,
whose father is a choreographer, and whose 17-year-old brother is a dreamboat for
whom poor, susceptible Tara falls with a very un-balletic thud. Sammy
Lieberman, a nice, smart Jewish kid, is her fellow sufferer in the “worst in
class” category (male), while the haughty Christian, another dreamboat,
constantly torments her, calling her “training bra” for reasons that don’t bear
going into here.
The first season involves all the usual goings-on of teen
dramas: Tara’s one-way romance with Kat’s brother is exposed by the nasty bit
of business that is Abigail, who has a terrible grasp of basic internet and
e-mail ethics. Sammy inexplicably falls for Abigail, though in his falling for
her, one comes to like her better, since he’s such a sweet and compelling
character that if he likes her there must be something redeemable. Kat
struggles with feelings of rejection and inferiority and rebellion and
everything else. She is a truly awesome hip-hop dancer. Christian is brooding
and troubled and sort of into Tara. Kat’s big brother Ethan finally notices
Tara. Some kissing ensues. That kind of thing. The second season focuses on the
build-up to a big international ballet competition, but it also involves, among
other things, the arrival of a new girl who is a sociopathic manipulator, and
all the joy she brings; a new boy who is a goof with a very somber past; new
romantic entanglements for all the major characters; motorcycles, long-lost
fathers, two funerals, a fringe musical, and an attempt at sexual blackmail. In
other words, it gets soapier.
Unlike American teen shows which are literally unbearable,
this show is quite engaging even for an adult. The kids are very real, down to
such details as occasionally having a visible pimple (not a plot device pimple,
a real pimple), and sometimes just acting confused and uncertain. Tara is not
such a simpleton that she doesn’t bridle at the mean ballet mistress’
criticisms or even, sometimes, openly object to the treatment. The actress who
plays her really nails the clueless, feckless teenager. Maybe she is one. The
teacher isn’t such a bad, unfeeling, bitter witch that she doesn’t have an
ulterior motive – she sees Tara’s natural ability and wants to push her past
the limitations imposed by her second-rate training. Even Abigail, who would in
a typical American show be an unredeemable Mean Girl turns out to be far more
fragile and unpredictable than one might expect, haunted by both her ambition and
her self-perception as not quite good enough and not very smart.
What makes Dance
Academy something of a sport among television dramas featuring dance (as if
this were a significant category – I can only think of that tiresome ABC Family
show, Bunheads, but maybe there are
others, and certainly this could be said of films about ballet, too) is that
you actually get to see a fair amount of real dancing by real dance students;
Xenia Goodwin is a serious ballet student – by the end of the first season it
seems entirely plausible that she has risen to the head of the class, partly as
a result of hard work, partly because she just “has it” – that uber-flexible
back, perfect feet, long legs, elegant neck, expressive torso… (the root of
Abigail’s dislike turns out to be this unfair natural advantage). Dena Kaplan,
the South African actress who plays Abigail, is probably the best dancer on the
show, in real terms; she can act her role as a self-absorbed, insecure,
controlling neurotic by executing a technically perfect but emotionally off-key
“Aurora” variation, and she is also physically impressive – compact and
explosive, but incredibly graceful and lyrical in turn. It turns out she is
also a talented singer, and has been cast in Broadway musicals, a skill that is
woven into the plot in season two, as she begins to question her singleminded
dedication to ballet. Some of the others are quite impressive, too: among the
men, the character Ben Tickle, who joins the class in season two, is
particularly watchable, especially as a tap dancer. Christian, dreamboat #2, is
an agile hip-hop dancer and well cast as the best male dancer in the class. He
has elegant lines and a kind of beau-tenebre
mien that is well suited to classical ballet.
However, my favorite scenes will always be Tara’s dream
sequences in which she is dancing the final solo from The Red Shoes (in the world of Dance
Academy this is an actual ballet, not a ballet-within-a-film, but it works
well thematically with the plot). The choreography is a bit dull, but Goodwin
very effectively interprets it as half-hopeless and half-joyful; when, in the
second season, she actually performs the piece (after much resistance), it
seems quite believable that she brings the audience to their feet – not only
has the significance of this particular solo variation been built up over 52
episodes (they’re short), but given the concatenation of plotlines and the real
grief that her character is experiencing, the way she throws herself into the music
and the (somewhat lame) choreography is really very moving. I won’t deny it: I
cried.
The most compelling character, however, is not one of the
girls, but Sammy; played by Tom Green, who is more of an actor than a dancer
(he’s great at hip-hop and contemporary, but the director has wisely chosen not
to give him much ballet screen time) but who makes this guy just so soulful you
want to adopt him and feed him and tell him he’s gonna be okay (he isn’t,
actually, but I won’t say more – that would spoil things). Sammy’s relationship
with his family – a high-achieving, religiously conservative father who doesn’t
understand his eldest son’s desire to dance, a loving but reserved mother, and
a younger brother as full of anger and aggression as Sammy is full of love and
kindness – is very subtly portrayed. When Sammy’s grandfather dies, we get to
see the full complexity of the parent-child tie as he comforts his father at
once for the loss of his own father and for the loss of the son he imagined (a
doctor, not a dancer). Sammy’s joy in dancing is palpable, and he manages to be
a really sympathetic, often comic character without being that annoying stock
figure from American teen drama, the best boy buddy, who comforts the female
protagonists in their romantic crises while pining after them with nerdy,
hopeless devotion. For one, Sammy’s sexuality is a little more complicated than
that (in the second season he actually comes out to his friends and has a
boyfriend, but at the same time you can see him wondering if this identity,
too, is a bit constrictive); and also, while he is a “buddy” it’s more because
he’s building around himself the protection of a new family, one that is more
positive and more accepting than his real family. When he says to Christian, in
season two, “These girls are my sisters,” it’s really not in the least corny;
he means it and we believe it.
Things don’t always go well for Sammy; of all the characters
he probably suffers the most angst, the most humiliation, and the most
failure. When triumph is in his grasp,
it is yanked away, cruelly. But I suppose that’s actually a fairly accurate
portrayal of the reality for kids at a professional ballet school. Actually,
Tara is also the victim of almost constant and often quite harsh and public
degradation, and like Sammy, she manages to bob to the surface again and again;
both characters are attractive because they represent the essential goodness
and steadiness that are needed to make a real professional artist – it’s such a
common sense view and so contrary to the romantic notion that the best artists
are the most tortured and self-absorbed. Indeed, one of the most poignant
scenes comes in the final episode of season two; it’s a flashback, and Tara is
sitting on the stairs outside the dormitory at night, looking pensive. Sammy
comes and sits beside her, asking “What’s wrong? Did anything happen?” She
smiles a little sadly, shrugs, and says, “Oh just the usual daily humiliations.
I’ll be alright.” Then they just sit there companionably. The thing is that
it’s not clear whether this took place early in their friendship or later,
whether it relates to any specific episode that has been seen by the viewer, or
whether it’s just a random night from their two years at the school; it’s
emblematic of their relationship as a whole – they are kindred spirits, united
by their outsider status, their love of their art, and their underlying
strength of character. I did some weeping about that scene too.
So, if you have approximately fifty hours to spare before Downton Abbey season 3 begins, and you’re
a sucker for ballet-themed entertainment, I recommend this sweet, but sometimes
tough, teen drama. It is equal parts silly, sober, and effervescent. There’s a
lot of fun dance (not all or even most of it classical ballet), some very pithy
moments that capture the competitive and rigorous nature of ballet training,
and some quite good acting and dancing.
I know I’ll be eagerly awaiting the stateside release of
Season 3, now in the making.
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