Center Stage
USA/Germany 2000
Reviewed by David Jays
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
New York, the present. Jody auditions for the exclusive American Ballet Academy, which is attached to a leading dance company, and is offered a place. She shares a room with students Eva and Maureen. In class, Jody struggles to hone her technique, while Eva resists the teachers' discipline. Maureen's vigilant weight-watching is turning into a serious eating disorder, as the medical student she dates realises.
Warned by Jonathan, the academy's artistic director, that she may not last the course, Jody explores less inhibited forms of dance, at a salsa club and a class in jazz dance, where she meets Cooper Nielsen, the star of the adult company. Cooper and Jody have a fling. Although he includes Jody in a piece he is choreographing for the end-of-year show, Cooper ends the relationship.
As the show approaches, Eva practises with greater determination, and Jody is encouraged by her fellow student Charlie. At the last moment, Maureen pulls out of her classical show-piece, allowing Eva to take her place, and Jody scores a triumph in Cooper's work. Jonathan offers her a place in the adult company, but she decides to join Cooper's new company instead.
Review
As in a classic school story, the ballet students in Center Stage are released from parental control from the start. After the opening audition, they join the alternative family of an exacting dance academy. Jody's parents are frumpy fuss-budgets who really don't get the lure of dance - they want her to study in Indiana, after all - and only Maureen's scheming mother, who works at the school, remains, a cold-blooded blood relative. Wolfish Peter Gallagher leads a faculty of near-parody adults, the men seductive cads, the women steely ("Eyes off the mirror, please") and glamorous - the prima ballerina swans around in a huge brimmed hat like a Gatsbyesque vision.
Nicholas Hytner's previous films, like his stage work, are polished but disengaged, as if they can't bear too much reality. The adolescent passions of Center Stage, nurtured in the academy's hothouse, suit him perfectly. Everyone is self-obsessed, intense and silly: dance and teen television both value a pubescent sheen, and this is Dawson's Creek in toe shoes. Fluffy bunny Jody bumbles through classes, flinching when the teachers demand, "Jody - flutter!" She is all soft pliancy, white swan to Maureen's brutally svelte black, and the film traces the loss of her emotional puppy fat.
Hytner has an eye for the process of theatre - the most moving scene in his debut film The Madness of King George shows the monarch fumbling for his wits while reading King Lear. The relentless grind that shapes the students' lives is not shirked - there are fascinating sequences of tenderising pointe shoes and bandaging vulnerable toes. Close up, the pointes are seen to be scuffed, the tendons raw. The spectre of eating disorders also haunts the film - this is a world where incautious snacking can push you out of the competition: a glistening spread of pizzas and fries tempts Maureen to go to the bad much as a case of jewels might have lured her Victorian counterpart.
Like Stage Door (1937), Center Stage presents a dream of New York, the school's vast windows giving on to gleaming skyscrapers, a backdrop of sunny aspiration. Attractively open, the studios also invite ceaseless scrutiny. Their wide vistas alternate with the gossipy clusters of dorm and bathroom, novices crammed in windowless cells. The school seems a panopticon of surveillance and mortification.
Ballet's rigours are counterpointed with the salsa club, rippling with Latino glitz, and the chat and tumble of the public class in jazz dance, where people munch muffins and hug. Hytner and screenwriter Carol Heikkinen register resistance to ballet's conventions and containment. Rebellious student Eva chews gum and talks sass, but dance is in her every movement - she even grinds out a cigarette with a perfectly pointed toe. Cooper, the adult company's arrogant star, also has his iconoclasm painfully signalled - open shirt, Harley storming through the sunset, choreographing appalling modern dance and urging everyone to keep it "real". His routine for the end-of-year show is the film's only big embarrassment: featuring leather trousers, a motorbike and scanty black underwear, it feels like a pelvis-pushing Pirelli calendar.
Non-naturalistic changes of costume and weaving camera nonetheless pay homage to Gene Kelly's choreographic fantasy sequences, and Center Stage also provides a cheerfully hackneyed compilation of iconic moments from backstage movies: wishful neophytes sneak on to the empty stage for a premonition of stardom; two girls who start out as nobodies end up as stars. Eva gets to swan in tulle against a starlit backdrop, and to vow, magnificently, "I'm not doing it for them - I'm doing it for me!" while Jody gets to bump and grind, a child no more.
Credits
- Director
- Nicholas Hytner
- Producer
- Laurence Mark
- Screenplay
- Carol Heikkinen
- Director of Photography
- Geoffrey Simpson
- Editor
- Tariq Anwar
- Production Designer
- David Gropman
- Music/Music Conductor
- George Fenton
- ©Global Entertainment Productions GmbH & Co. Movie KG
- Production Company
- Columbia Pictures presents a Laurence Mark production
- Co-producer
- Caroline Baron
- Production Co-ordinator
- Lori Johnson
- Unit Production Manager
- Kathleen McGill
- Location Manager
- Lyn Pinezich
- Post-production Supervisor
- Michael Saxton
- Assistant Directors
- Sam Hoffman
- Amy Lauritsen
- Jennifer Truelove
- Script Supervisor
- Sheila Paige
- Casting
- Daniel Swee
- Additional:
- Lisa Beach
- Associates:
- Heather Baird
- Karen Meisels
- Voice:
- Brendan Donnison
- Camera Operators
- Andrew Casey
- Bruce MacCallum
- Digital Effects
- Film Factory at VTR
- Art Director
- Peter Rogness
- Set Decorator
- Susan Bode
- Costume Designer
- Ruth Myers
- Key Wardrobe
- David Davenport
- Susan J. Wright
- Wardrobe
- Patricia Eiben
- Joni Huth
- Make-up
- Key Artist:
- Naomi Donne
- Artist:
- Luann Claps
- Hair
- Key Stylist:
- Lyndel Quiyou
- Stylist:
- Stephane Lempire
- Title Design/Opticals
- Peter Govey Film Opticals
- Additional Orchestrations
- Frank Bennett
- On-camera Music Supervisor
- Robin Urdang
- Music Supervision
- Ken Ross
- Music Editors
- Graham Sutton
- Stephanie Lowry
- Scoring Engineer
- John Richards
- Soundtrack
- "Adagio for a Ballet Class" - Dmitry Polischuk; "Cosmic Girl" - Jamiroquai; "First Kiss" - International Five; "Granada, Opus 47, No. 1" ; "La Bayadère"; "Le Corsaire"; "Swan Lake, Opus 20", "Don Quixote"; "Romeo and Juliet, Opus 64"; "Moonglow", "Mas que una caricia" - Elvis Crespo; "Get Used to This" - Cyrena; "A Girl Can Dream" - P.Y.T; "Come Baby Come" - Elvis Crespo and Gizelle D'Cole; "Candy", "I Wanna Be with You" - Mandy Moore; "Coppélia - Mazurka"; "Friends Forever" - Thunderbugs; "Stars and Stripes"; "Symphony No. 4 in A (Italian), Opus 90; "Piano Concerto No. 2 in C Minor, Opus 18"; "The Nutcracker, Opus 71"; "The Way You Make Me Feel" - Michael Jackson; "Sleeping Beauty, Opus 66"; "If I Was the One" - Ruff Endz; "Canned Heat" - Jamiroquai; "We're Dancing" - P.Y.T; "Don't Get Lost in the Crowd (from 'Center Stage')" - Ashley Ballard; "Higher Ground" - Red Hot Chili Peppers
- Choreography
- Susan Stroman
- Jonathan's Ballet:
- Christopher Wheeldon
- 'Swan Lake':
- Lev Ivanov
- 'Romeo and Juliet':
- Kenneth MacMillan
- 'Stars and Stripes':
- George Balanchine
- Sound Mixer
- Michael Barosky
- Re-recording Mixers
- Craig Irving
- Mark Lafbery
- Supervising Sound Editor
- Tim Hands
- Dialogue Editor
- Howard Halsall
- Foley
- Artists:
- Pauline Griffiths
- Jenny Lee-Wright
- Editor:
- Derek Trigg
- Ballet Consultant
- Kevin McKenzie
- Cast
- Amanda Schull
- Jody
- Zoë Saldana
- Eva
- Susan May Pratt
- Maureen
- Peter Gallagher
- Jonathan Reeves
- Donna Murphy
- Juliette
- Debra Monk
- Nancy
- Ethan Stiefel
- Cooper Nielsen
- Sascha Radetsky
- Charlie
- Julie Kent
- Kathleen
- Ilia Kulik
- Sergei
- Eion Bailey
- Jim
- Shakiem Evans
- Erik
- Elizabeth Hubbard
- Joan Miller
- Victor Anthony
- Thomas
- Christine Dunham
- audition teacher
- Stephen Stout
- Mr Sawyer
- Maryann Plunkett
- Mrs Sawyer
- Laura Hicks
- nervous mother
- Barbara Caruso
- Jeffrey Hayenga
- ABA scouts
- Karen Shallo
- mother at audition
- Carlo Alban
- Giselle Daly
- Eva's friends
- Lisa Leguillo
- ABA girls' class teacher
- Robert Montano
- ABA pas de deux class teacher
- Megan Pepin
- Anna
- Victoria Born
- Emily
- Kirk Peterson
- ABA boys' class teacher
- Sandra Brown
- Elizabeth Gaither
- Oksana Konobeyeva
- Ekaterina Shelkanova
- Swan Lake soloists
- Nancy McDoniel
- Sandy Hamilton
- gala patrons
- Olga Merediz
- ABA receptionist
- Elvis Crespo
- Giselle Tcherniak
- salsa singers
- Jamie Bonelli
- Micki Paley
- girl at salsa clubs
- Randy Pearlstein
- Jim's friend
- Nancy Hess
- Sergei's salsa partner
- Lovette George
- jazz class receptionist
- Priscilla Lopez
- jazz class teacher
- Brenda Thomas Denmark
- Jonathan's secretary
- Warren Carlyle
- Cooper's assistant
- Marcia Jean Kurtz
- Emily's mother
- Kari Thompson
- stage manager
- Aesha Ash
- Sean Stewart
- Jonathan's ballet soloists
- Ashley Anderson
- Ryan Kelly
- Jared Angle
- Renecca Krohn
- Aesha Ash
- Jessica Kusak
- Erin Baiano
- Ryan Lawrence
- Jennifer Balcerzak
- Riolama Lorenzo
- Ellen Bar
- Stephanie Lyons
- Tamara Barden
- Deanna Mcbrearty
- Sant'Gria Bello
- Eleena Melamed
- Dustin Brauneck
- Justin Morris
- Melissa Cabrera
- Gillian Murphy
- Martine Ciccone
- Laura Paulus
- Elena Diner
- Matt Pitcher
- Nicole Epstein
- Jonathan Porretta
- Alina Faye
- Carrie Lee Riggins
- Elizabeth Ford
- Emilie Schlegel
- Jason Fowler
- David Schneider
- Kurt Froman
- Chrissy Schultz
- Kyle Froman
- Aaron Severini
- Davena Gross
- Kristin Sloan
- Natalia Haigler
- Jonathan Stafford
- Craig Hall
- Ryan Stewart
- Stephen Hanna
- Janie Taylor
- Adam Hendrickson
- Pascale Van Kipnis
- Patrick Howell
- Jamie Wolf
- ABA students
- Julio Augustin
- Stephanie Michels
- Jim Borstelmann
- Lisa Nafegar
- Liam Burke
- Michael O'Donnell
- Chris Davis
- Angela Piccinni
- Nina Goldman
- Mimi Quillin
- Shannon Hammonds
- John Michael Schert
- Jack Hayes
- Lisa Shriver
- Sean Martin Hingston
- Scott Taylor
- Joann Hunter
- Endalyn Taylor-Shellman
- Violetta Klimczewska
- Rocker Verastique
- Keri Lee
- Robert Wersinger
- jazz class dancers
- Certificate
- 12
- Distributor
- Columbia Tristar Films (UK)
- 10,407 feet
- 115 minutes 39 seconds
- Dolby Digital/DTS/SDDS
- Colour by
- DeLuxe
- 2.35:1 [Panavision]