In the overly broad documentary Ballerina are the beginnings
of five or six separate great documentaries. For instance: a movie
obsessively devoted to the legendarily expressive arms of Russian
ballerinas. Just the arms. Or a movie that compares two great living
primas, say, the lusty Diana Vishneva and the ethereal Uliana
Lopatkina. Or an opinionated ranking of primas going back to the 19th
century. Or a portrait of brand-new budding ballerinas—their
little shirtless bodies (they wear only underwear) bent every which way
by old men and women teachers—and the primas they idolize. Or a
portrait in the middle: of the aspirers, the dancers on the verge.
Ballerina, as you can surmise from the plain nounness of the
title, attempts to be all of these. It follows baby students and then
five Saint Petersburg ballerinas in various stages of their careers at
the Mariinski Theatre. Which means that just when you become absorbed
in one story line, you’re jolted into another.
Have you ever watched, for instance, Mikhail Baryshnikov dance
Prodigal Son on DVD? It barely matters that you’re not in the
theater; dance on film can be unbelievably powerful. That’s the
strength of Ballerina: footage of Vishneva’s La Bayadere,
of Lopatkina’s The Legend of Love.It’s worth the price of
a movie ticket.
But insights in Ballerina are slim (with the exception of the
always interesting music director Valery Gergiev). In interviews,
dancers talk about discipline and willpower—the ballet equivalent
of the vapid postgame TV sports interview. The filmmakers seem to skip
over strange moments: a young dancer’s hand freezing into an arthritic
fist just before curtain, a beginner crying with dread at the idea of a
day off, the sociology within the corps, the sudden aging of a dancer
as she walks onstage. Russian ballerinas are strange and wondrous: No
dullness can be tolerated. 
