Ballerina is about what should be an intriguing topic: ballet in Russia. Unfortunately Ballerina is an extremely uneven documentary. Is Ballerina about the history of the Kirov Ballet Company? Is Ballerina about how ballerinas are developed from child hood to the stage using five different people at different stages of the process? Is Ballerina about he performance and the reemergence of the primaballerina in contrast to Nureyev and Baryshnikov? Is Ballerina about the history of the Bolshoi theatre?
Ballerina is about all of this, but it isn’t organized into a cohesive whole that smoothly transitions from one topic to the other. The audio and visual quality of clips from performances are poorly edited and filmed. It was as if Ballerina’s crew was not authorized to be there. The behind the scenes footage can be unintentionally cringeworthy: a grown man moving around naked prepubescent girls in panties and a teacher describing a move as “Oriental.” It was odd that Ballerina chose to use an English narrator when the majority of the documentary is in Russian or French.
I tried to watch Ballerina two times. The first time that I watched Ballerina, which is only 80 minutes long, I found it hard to focus. Second time, I fell asleep and gave up. Ballerina’s strongest moments are when it focuses on the ballerinas, who are unsurprisingly dedicated and generous to their fans. I usually love dance documentaries, but Ballerina’s eyes were bigger than its metaphorical stomach.