A Result of Watching Two Minutes of The Company

I don’t like the ballet movie. I would like it to stop being made. Because it is bad. Bad for ballet, bad for girls in general, and bad for movies.

Nice, economically challenged, beautiful girl wins scholarship/competition/audition to the world renowned Something Something Academy of the Dancing Something in the bustling city of Someplace. For some reason, everyone else is already there when she starts and everyone knows everything about everybody. Why is this? Why does NECB always arrive in the middle? We’ll never know because the people who have written this story twelve billion times now still haven’t figured that out. Frustrating.

NECB struggles struggles struggles to become the Best Dancer Ever but all of a sudden she sucks. This is NEVER explained well. Why is she so bad? How did she win her spot if she sucks so much? I think what these fools would have us believe is that her teachers push her SO hard because they know she is the Best Dancer Ever and they have to be extra tough. That is a bullshit teacher lie. You know how I know? Well, in 8th grade my Social Studies teacher tried to fail me…which, ok, several ensuing teachers did successfully (I’m a smarty, but I’m not so much for the doing of the work), but this fool did so with no warning! None! And I was little! And my mom was really not on board with the F so there was a meeting and the teacher actually pulled out the line, “Well, I didn’t send a warning letter because I was so surprised she was doing so badly.” Good one. His argument basically that was because I was SO smart and should be doing well, all his behavior was absolved. Not so much. I still wonder what would have happened if I had blown the whistle on the fact that he spent most of basically every class getting this kid to do George Bush impersonations. This isn’t to say that I wasn’t doing a slack ass job in that class. But let’s remember…I was little.

Anyway, back to NECB.

She meets Evil Dancer #1 who everyone knows already is the Best Dancer Ever and she tells NECB to go home or makes fun of her clothes or calls her poor or fat or all of the above. Her mother is very overbearing and loves her daughter’s career if not so much her daughter. Many scenes of pressure to be skinnier, dancier, or sluttier with the director, end with the mother exiting and the daughter staring wistfully at her back. Later we will learn that what she really wants to be? Is a regular girl. Bullshit right there, nobody wants that.

The Evil But It’s OK Because He’s an ARTIST Director of the school/company/production is a middle aged allegedly handsome man who everyone knows is sleeping with the World Famous Ballerina who never actually shows up in the movie (cover story, Mr. Ballet Guy? I think so). How do we hear this?

From Spunky Bad Dancer (a.k.a. Automatic Best Friend to NECB) who the teachers call fat and untalented all the time (which leads one to wonder why this school/company/production keeps letting in bad dancers--Is it just to fuck with them? Seems mean.) and she just kind of takes it and her friends never stand up for her. Lovely.

Washed Up Ballerina is always a teacher who serves no purpose other than to follow EBIOKBHAA Director and tell all the dancers how bad and fat and bad they are.

The Best Dancer Ever: Male Category is usually some sort of sensitive, all knowing, all understanding welder-turned-ballerina who rides a motorcycle and falls for NECB immediately and ballet dancers give it up awfully quick in these movies. He is superbly perfect because only girl ballerinas are evil and mean. I’m sure. Baryshnikov was a super bitch on Sex and the City and he hadn’t pulled on the tights for decades. And Evil Dancer #1 either is secretly in love with him or they’ve already gone out and broken up.

So, rehearsals start and Evil Dancer #1 gets the lead in the whatever it is they’re making of course and OF COURSE she either breaks something, overdoses on something, or throws up a whole bunch of something a whole bunch of times. She then must drop out, make peace with her mother who Surprise! realizes she’s been a little too hard and She (tears) Loves (tears) Her (sniffle sniffle hug!).

NECB is the star and becomes Best Dancer Ever, Best Dancer Ever: Male Category love love loves her, Spunky Best Friend decides ballet just isn’t her thing and her friends pretend to protest but are really thinking “Oh good, because she fucking sucked,” and Evil Dancer #1 and NECB automatically forge a new understanding and are the bestest best friends ever in the history of best friends. Then there’s a bow, and flowers, and Neve Campbell still really needs to deal with the fact that she ain’t no ballerina.