BALLET BOYS (BALLETTGUTTENE) is a film about dreams and friendship, about passion and dedication … and about having a plan B. Plus there’s that bitter truth: every bit of success comes at a price. If you dedicate your time and energy to one thing there’s little left for other things and other people, be it family, girlfriends or school. A beautifully made Norwegian documentary (excellent cinematography by Torsten Nodland) written and directed by Kenneth Elvebakk, which has alerady garnered a couple of awards. We follow three teenage boys on their way to become ballet dancers. Nerves, pain, laughter, tears and all.
“Strong as a bear” say the physiotherapist about Torgeir Lund – and he is, the tallest of them all, a true Viking – but he’s not sure he really wants to become a dancer. After all, this passion ruins your body. Well, but – like nothing else – it makes any body look its very best: posture, balance and muscles.
“I wish those growth pains would stop” says Lukas Bjørneboe Brændsrød … he’s 180 cm tall … at the age of 15. And he’s a male beauty if I ever saw one, and a very hard working dancer. No wonder he got invited to audition for the Royal Balllet School in London, where other accomplished students might push him even further in his career. But will he dare leave home and friends for this?
Integration into a more or less foreign place is a central theme in this film. Syvert Lorenz Garcia says at a point that he wishes he was “just Norwegian” … he’ll never look the part, and he does drop the odd pun about “the Asian can’t get anything wrong”. Lukas on the other hand, “the odd Norwegian in England” is adapting to foreign London – he starts to even sound like a Brit. (Not to the British, to be blunt about that. But that’d be another story to tell.)
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