El ballet es tan punk rock: Neve Campbell y Karen Kain sobre presión, dolor – y asociarse con Nureyev | Ballet

“It’s a kind of addiction,” says Karen Kain, “to be in an art form like this. Sometimes you wonder why you’re doing it. You have to get past so much physical pain, sometimes emotional pain. But those of us who do it and love it know why.” And director Chelsea McMullan’s documentary Swan Song shows us what an addiction to ballet means, with all the sweat, scars and pill-popping (OK, just ibuprofen – the dancers keep a score chart in the dressing room of how many they’ve taken), as well as the beauty, artistry and exaltation.

Swan Song tells the story of Kain’s final production of Swan Lake in 2022, after 16 years as artistic director of the National Ballet of Canada. Kain is Canada’s most famous ballerina: she was a favourite of Rudolf Nureyev and danced all over the world; Andy Warhol made a screen print of her. McMullan follows her and the company on their mission to make a new ballet, and we see the daily quest for perfection of driven people pushing themselves to be their absolute best, often exhausted, frustrated or tearful. It is real and raw – and without descending into Black Swan-style melodrama, it shows the strains and discord, and the relentless daily battering the dancers’ bodies take.

“Ballet is punk rock as fuck,” says dancer Shaelynn Estrada in one scene, and it’s hard to disagree. Was Kain concerned about revealing too much? “No, because that is just the truth,” she says.

‘It’s a beautiful world to be part of’ … Karen Kain and Neve Campbell. Photograph: Zuma Press/Alamy

One of Swan Song’s executive producers is actor Neve Campbell, who studied at Canada’s National Ballet School from age nine to 14, and idolised Kain. Watching the footage McMullan would send her brought back a lot of memories. “It made me feel sorry for my young self,” she says over a group video call. “It’s a really challenging world to be a part of, and a beautiful world to be part of, and I did miss it desperately for years.” Campbell understands deeply what it is to want to dance. “I loved that I could express myself without words. I loved the magic of that. I loved moving my body. I loved technique. I loved the discipline. I loved the team atmosphere, the opportunity to push myself every day and improve on something that felt great.”

After I stopped dancing, I couldn’t listen to classical music again for  about 10 years

When injuries made it unfeasible for Campbell to pursue ballet, acting took over, but grief remained. “When I first stopped dancing, I couldn’t listen to classical music for about 10 years,” she says. “I couldn’t watch dance. It made me so deeply sad to not be a part of it.”

Actors and dancers are very different animals, says Campbell. “As a dancer, really you’re an athlete.” At school, she would do five and a half hours of dance each day, plus academic study. “Then you’re praying that you get into a company and your body holds up for you.” Plus, you have to make it all look easy. Campbell remembers one of the first things she learned was breathing out of the side of her ribs rather than her chest, so nobody could see the effort.

Campbell wants to get “butts in seats” in the theatre, so people can see exactly what dancers are capable of, and hopes the film might generate some hunger for that. “When you watch the Olympics, in the buildup you get these stories of what the athletes have been through and what they’ve sacrificed, and it makes the drama even more powerful.”

A common thread at this year’s Olympics has been athletes talking openly about their mental-health struggles, and that’s something the dancers in Swan Song certainly understand. Estrada especially talks frankly. “This is what it looks like to be actively overcoming your eating disorders,” she says cheerily in one scene while munching on a sandwich. But we also hear how she’s worried about having bare legs for a performance because she has scars on her thighs from self-harming. Still on the lowest rung of the company hierarchy, the corps de ballet, Estrada has pinned her self-worth on getting to the top and becoming a principal, and you root for her.

What could ballet companies be doing better to support their dancers’ mental health, I ask Kain, who herself suffered anxiety and quit dancing for a few years in the middle of her career. “There is a network of psychiatrists and psychologists you can see if you’re in trouble. The support system is there,” she says. And Campbell adds: “When I was at the school, you could have individual therapy. They have group counselling sessions for each class, so you could work out the dynamic – because it’s a very competitive atmosphere. We also had a nutritionist, they were really on top of it.”

When McMullan entered the ballet studio, the director felt like “an alien on a planet where everyone is speaking another language”. And with so many people in the studio during full company rehearsals, it was hard to know what was going on. “Even though you could feel there was a lot of drama, you couldn’t understand where it was coming from,” says McMullan. “There are so many things that are particular to that world. Of course there was the tights storyline, and we were like: ‘Who cares’, you know? It’s tights!” But in fact the tights storyline was a landmark moment for the company, who had always danced classical ballets in white or pale pink tights, regardless of the colour of the dancer’s own skin, and were deciding whether to jettison them in favour of bare legs, so everyone could be seen with their natural skin tone. “In ballet, everyone wants to honour tradition,” says dancer Tene Ward in the film. “But racism isn’t a good tradition.”

Elsewhere, the film-makers follow principal dancer Jurgita Dronina (who has also danced with English National Ballet), as she juggles parenthood and performances.

Ha estado luchando con una lesión nerviosa insoportable durante ocho años pero lo ha mantenido en silencio, y solo lo revela en cámara en la antesala del estreno.

‘No sé cómo lo hizo’ … Karen Kain y Rudolf Nureyev en La Bella Durmiente en el Metropolitan Opera de Nueva York, 1984. Fotografía: Carlos Rene Perez/AP

Así que hay mucha drama entre bastidores, pero toda la razón de la nueva producción fue que Kain sentía que faltaba drama en realidad en el escenario. Las muchas versiones de El Lago de los Cisnes disponibles eran demasiado académicas, no lo suficientemente desgarradoras; ella quería un ballet que la hiciera llorar. Un cambio del que habla es querer que las doncellas cisnes que son maldecidas por el hechicero Von Rothbart parezcan mujeres reales que han sido secuestradas y son víctimas de la violencia masculina, en lugar de solo criaturas de cuento de hadas.

Esta producción se basa en la versión de 1967 de Erik Bruhn, con nuevo material coreografiado por Robert Binet. Fue en El Lago de los Cisnes de Bruhn donde Kain hizo su debut, a los 19 años. Bruhn fue el gran amor de la vida de Nureyev, y Nureyev fue fundamental en la propia carrera de Kain. “Era demasiado alta para él pero a él no le importaba”, recuerda. “Él simplemente estaba decidido a que iba a tener una carrera. Él iba a hacerme una mejor bailarina”. Lo que aprendió de Nureyev fue el trabajo duro. “Su ética de trabajo era extraordinaria. No sé cómo hizo lo que hizo, no podíamos seguirle el ritmo”, se ríe. “Él hacía siete actuaciones a la semana de La Bella Durmiente, y añadió cinco nuevas variaciones [solos] para él mismo, y allí estaría en clase a la mañana siguiente, trabajando más duro que nadie”.

Kain aparece en la película como serena y sonriente, pero sabes que hay acero debajo. “No tengo paciencia para las personas a las que no les importa tanto lo que están haciendo como a mí”, dice. Pero está claro en Swan Song que nadie empuja a los bailarines más duro de lo que ellos mismos se empujan. Mientras las cosas se ponen tensas en la antesala del estreno, un podómetro de un bailarín muestra que han recorrido 5 km en un acto, y eso es solo uno de los muchos ensayos. Binet reflexiona sobre “esta cuestión de qué vale la pena y qué es demasiado”. Pero el ballet es una vocación para estos bailarines. “¿Por qué alguien querría trabajar tan duro y lastimarse tanto, como lo hacen los bailarines, si no fuera una vocación?”, dice Kain. “Si no lo amaran tanto, sería demasiado difícil”. Ella sonríe. “Pero no es tan difícil cuando lo amas”.