Nope, this isn’t the Mahershala Ali Apple TV+ movie. It’s also not the indie starring Udo Kier in drag. Instead, this recently overused title has now been deployed for perhaps its most fitting use: a documentary about the final production of the Swan Lake ballet by a legendary retiring artistic director.
Buy Swan Song (2023) DVDKaren Kain has been involved with the National Ballet of Canada for over 50 years, gaining fame as a principal dancer before moving behind the scenes, first as part of the senior management team and eventually as artistic director. In 2020, she decided to bring her career to a close by acting as the director for a new production of Swan Lake. Sensing a defining documentary moment, director Chelsea McMullan and producer Sean O’Neill rolled cameras to capture the production process of the ballet. Unfortunately, the year was 2020.
Two years later, Kain and her dancers attempt to restart the ballet as the grand reopening production of their theater, fighting the extra nerves of the long layoff, questionable return of the audience, and Kain’s lingering self-doubt in her ability to realize her vision as a first-time frontline director. But here’s where things really start to get interesting: rather than solely focus on Kain, McMullan follows key members of the ballet as well, most notably the veteran principal ballerina and a sassy young ballerina, viewing the production process through the prism of three different generations of ballet talent. This is no mere puff piece; McMullan was granted incredibly intimate levels of access and took full advantage of them to paint a fascinating, complex picture of the backstage politics of theater.
Kain is so famous that she has a huge Warhol of herself hanging in her home from her formative time dancing with the legendary Rudolf Nureyev, as well as a Canadian postage stamp in her honor. Jurgita Dronina is the Russian principal dancer automatically cast in the lead role as the White Swan, but she has a secret she has hidden from the ballet: a debilitating chronic nerve injury in her back that requires constant treatment and risks collapse at any time.
And then there’s Shaelynn Estrada, the DVD cover star, clearly the most polarizing figure in the film, and consequently the most intriguing. She’s the kind of Gen Z kid all oldsters hate: all too eager to talk about her otherness and ailments (home-schooled, half-Latina, depressed, gay, cutter, eating disorders, pierced) but not quite as dedicated to just buckle down and do the work. There’s a pivotal scene where she pulls the choreographer aside to express her misgivings about the decision to dance the ballet bare-legged since she has some major recent cutting scars on her upper thighs. McMullan is right there with her camera inches from the confrontation, giving us a front-row seat to the drama.
McMullan also occasionally checks in with a mid-career Black dancer who only wants to talk about representation, including the cultural significance of the bare-legged decision, ultimately so intently one-note she lost my interest, as well as the choreographer who constantly worries the corps de ballet aren’t going to pull it together in time for the show. The added perspectives help to complete the picture of the production struggles, as do the hot mics capturing gloriously unfiltered comments by the dancers during rehearsals, but for my money, the film succeeds wholly because of the wildly divergent generational perspectives of the three principal leads, all working together to achieve a singular vision. McMullan closes the film with a generous amount of footage of the bravura opening night performance, capping off a spellbinding trip through the entire nerve-wracking process of Kain’s epic swan song.
Swan Song is available on DVD on August 6th. The DVD presents the film in its original 1.78:1 aspect ratio, with 5.1 surround and 2.0 stereo soundtrack options. No bonus features are included.
