Black Swan is one of a vast number of dance films, but few give such an insight into the darker world of ballet, writes Jessica Holland
Dance movies are huge right now. You know the drill: a well-behaved girl - perhaps a ballerina, a stickler for the rules or someone who can't dance at all - meets a hunky guy who teaches her a more glamorous version of her art, and a little something about life along the way.
The British film StreetDance 3D, which came out earlier this year, is typical of its kind, although the gender roles are reversed. A street dance crew loses their rehearsal space and are forced to practise in a ballet school, on the condition that they incorporate five ballet dancers into their act. Mutual loathing turns into respect, the group win a competition with their hybrid act, and Thomas, a ballet dancer, finds romance with his hip-hop counterpart Carly.
We've seen this sort of story plenty of times before - the success of the 2006 street-dancer-meets-modern-dance student movie Step Up has already spawned two sequels, and a third has been planned for release in 2012. Before that there was Save the Last Dance, with Julia Stiles as a ballerina who teams up with hip-hop dancer Sean Patrick Thomas and eventually falls for him.
It's no surprise that dance movies are so popular: they've got elements of the classic underdog story, spectacular song-and-dance sequences, conflict and romance, and we all know that everything's going to be all right in the end.
While the street dance movie is relatively new, the 1980s was the time when dance movies ruled the world, with films such as Flashdance, Footloose, Dirty Dancing and Fame showing dance as a way to express yourself, realise big ambitions, find out who you really are and - yes - find love, too.
But alongside this tradition, there runs a darker, deeper seam of films about the world of dance that explore more ambiguous themes: the fragility of the human body; the agony, discipline and competitiveness; fear of ageing.
Darren Aronovsky's Black Swan, it should be made crystal clear, is no feel-good ballet flick, and it's unlikely to inspire hordes of young women to sign up for dance classes. Hitting screens around the world from mid-January, it stars Natalie Portman as Nina Sayers, an obsessively disciplined dancer who is promoted to prima ballerina and given the role of the Swan Queen in Swan Lake.
Caught between her own desire for perfection, the jealousy and mind-games of another dancer who wants her role and her choreographer's demands for more than she can give, she spirals into madness. Shot on claustrophobically close handheld cameras and with surreal hallucinated scenes of horror, it brings to the world of dance the same bleakness and violence that its director brought to his previous films Requiem for a Dream and The Wrestler.
This isn't dance as free expression or as a release from the tedium of life; this is dance as gruelling, repetitive rehearsals, bloody bandaged toes, backstabbing ambition and immense psychological strain. (If only there was a nice breakdancer from the wrong side of the tracks who could teach Nina to loosen up a little.)
While few have been as uncompromising as Black Swan, the dark dance movie has a history too. Powell and Pressburger's 1948 classic The Red Shoes ends in disaster, and shows the demands the strictly regulated work of ballet can make on a performer.
"A dancer who relies upon the doubtful comforts of human love will never be a great dancer. Never," says the choreographer Lermontov to his prima ballerina, who shuns love and eventually gives up her life in the struggle to be a perfect performer.
And, of course, there are some brilliant movies that are somewhere in the middle, without the gore and terror of Black Swan, or the perfectly predictable plot of Step Up 2: The Streets. At their best, dance movies are a metaphor for life, showing that if you put in a lot of boring, difficult work and take a few risks, you might achieve something that you're proud of.
Dance movies
Shall We Dance (1937)
One of 10 films starring Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire, this one is about a male ballet dancer who wants to incorporate jazz dance into his shows and the tap dancer he falls for.
The Red Shoes (1948)
A woman is torn between love and her ambition to become a prima ballerina in this Powell and Pressburger classic that borrows from Hans Christian Andersen.
Saturday Night Fever (1977)
John Travolta tears up the disco by night as a temporary escape from his deadbeat job and dire home life in the film that made him a star.
Flashdance (1983)
Jennifer Beals plays Alex: a welder by day and table dancer by night, who dreams of going to dance school.
Footloose (1984)
Kevin Bacon shakes things up when he moves to a small town where dancing has been banned. Ridiculous, but great fun.
White Nights (1985)
Gregory Hines as an African-American tap dancer and Mikhail Baryshnikov as a Soviet ballet dancer team up in this feel-good dance-a-thon.
Dirty Dancing (1987)
Patrick Swayze shows Jennifer Grey the moves in this coming-of-age film set in a summer camp.
Hairspray (1988)
John Waters directs Ricki Lake as the "pleasantly plump" Tracy Turnblad, queen of a TV teenage dance show. It's set in the 1960s so expect plenty of twisting and jiving.
Strictly Ballroom (1992)
Paul Mercurio shakes up the stuffy world of competitive ballroom dancing in Baz Luhrmann's first film.
Billy Elliot (2000)
Stephen Daldry's film about a young miner's son growing up in the 1980s with a passion for ballet was nominated for three Oscars and made a star of its lead, Jamie Bell.
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Blackpink World Tour [Born Pink] In Cinemas
Starring: Rose, Jisoo, Jennie, Lisa
Directors: Min Geun, Oh Yoon-Dong
Rating: 3/5
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THE SIXTH SENSE
Starring: Bruce Willis, Toni Collette, Hayley Joel Osment
Director: M. Night Shyamalan
Rating: 5/5
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
The specs
Engine: 1.5-litre 4-cylinder petrol
Power: 154bhp
Torque: 250Nm
Transmission: 7-speed automatic with 8-speed sports option
Price: From Dh79,600
On sale: Now
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Israel Palestine on Swedish TV 1958-1989
Director: Goran Hugo Olsson
Rating: 5/5
BORDERLANDS
Starring: Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart, Jamie Lee Curtis
Director: Eli Roth
Rating: 0/5
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GROUPS AND FIXTURES
Group A
UAE, Italy, Japan, Spain
Group B
Egypt, Iran, Mexico, Russia
Tuesday
4.15pm: Italy v Japan
5.30pm: Spain v UAE
6.45pm: Egypt v Russia
8pm: Iran v Mexico
More from Neighbourhood Watch:
More from Neighbourhood Watch:
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Cry Macho
Director: Clint Eastwood
Stars: Clint Eastwood, Dwight Yoakam
Rating:**
UPI facts
More than 2.2 million Indian tourists arrived in UAE in 2023
More than 3.5 million Indians reside in UAE
Indian tourists can make purchases in UAE using rupee accounts in India through QR-code-based UPI real-time payment systems
Indian residents in UAE can use their non-resident NRO and NRE accounts held in Indian banks linked to a UAE mobile number for UPI transactions
Heavily-sugared soft drinks slip through the tax net
Some popular drinks with high levels of sugar and caffeine have slipped through the fizz drink tax loophole, as they are not carbonated or classed as an energy drink.
Arizona Iced Tea with lemon is one of those beverages, with one 240 millilitre serving offering up 23 grams of sugar - about six teaspoons.
A 680ml can of Arizona Iced Tea costs just Dh6.
Most sports drinks sold in supermarkets were found to contain, on average, five teaspoons of sugar in a 500ml bottle.
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Saturday's results
Brighton 1-1 Leicester City
Everton 1-0 Cardiff City
Manchester United 0-0 Crystal Palace
Watford 0-3 Liverpool
West Ham United 0-4 Manchester City
TRAP
Starring: Josh Hartnett, Saleka Shyamalan, Ariel Donaghue
Director: M Night Shyamalan
Rating: 3/5
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
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Pox that threatens the Middle East's native species
Camelpox
Caused by a virus related to the one that causes human smallpox, camelpox typically causes fever, swelling of lymph nodes and skin lesions in camels aged over three, but the animal usually recovers after a month or so. Younger animals may develop a more acute form that causes internal lesions and diarrhoea, and is often fatal, especially when secondary infections result. It is found across the Middle East as well as in parts of Asia, Africa, Russia and India.
Falconpox
Falconpox can cause a variety of types of lesions, which can affect, for example, the eyelids, feet and the areas above and below the beak. It is a problem among captive falcons and is one of many types of avian pox or avipox diseases that together affect dozens of bird species across the world. Among the other forms are pigeonpox, turkeypox, starlingpox and canarypox. Avipox viruses are spread by mosquitoes and direct bird-to-bird contact.
Houbarapox
Houbarapox is, like falconpox, one of the many forms of avipox diseases. It exists in various forms, with a type that causes skin lesions being least likely to result in death. Other forms cause more severe lesions, including internal lesions, and are more likely to kill the bird, often because secondary infections develop. This summer the CVRL reported an outbreak of pox in houbaras after rains in spring led to an increase in mosquito numbers.
Long Shot
Director: Jonathan Levine
Starring: Charlize Theron, Seth Rogan
Four stars