Death, Demons, Doppelgängers, and Dance: an Analysis of Ballet’s Inherent Horror
Content warning: mentions of blood/injury, eating disorders, and spoilers of “Black Swan” (Darren Aronofsky, 2010).
Image courtesy of filmschoolrejects.com.
When a ballerina walks on stage, all that the audience sees is elegance and control wrapped up in a sea of tulle, floating effortlessly across the stage. When a viewer begins watching a horror movie, they’re met with dark, jarring visuals and a sense of looming unease. At first, the pretty, pastel world of ballet seems antithetical to the dim, depressing atmosphere fostered by a typical horror film. Regardless of their outward disparities, though, these two “opposites” are nevertheless capable of coexisting and informing one another.
A testament to this seemingly unconventional pairing, Darren Aronofsky’s 2010 film Black Swan follows Nina (Natalie Portman), a ballerina whose obsession with dancing the lead in the ballet Swan Lake drives her into psychosis. As a self-proclaimed horror film nerd and ballerina of 18 years, it might be shocking to learn that I only first watched Black Swan a couple months ago. The truth is, I was too scared to. And not because of the horror, but because of the ballet. Knowing what I know about the dance community, the balletic aspect of Black Swan felt too close to home, too inescapable. My enrollment in an amazing horror film class last semester finally put an end to my avoidance of this confrontation, and I’ve now realized that when you really break it down, the sights, sounds, and spirit of a ballet rehearsal and a scary movie are not dissimilar.
ACT I: The Form & Fundamentals of Ballet
Imagine an expansive room lined with peeled, gray flooring. Mirrors cover the walls, and as you stand in the center of the room, all you can see is yourself drowning in your own reflection. The room is cold, but still stuffy. It’s dreary. It’s dirty. It’s a typical ballet studio. Taken on its own, this real-life mise-en-scène is disturbingly horrific.
When you add dancers to this shell of a room, the horror is only heightened. Ballerinas have a reputation of addressing ballet in a way that’s harsh in juxtaposition to their dainty sport. As an example of this idea for those unfamiliar with the ballet community, the ballet jargon used throughout the rehearsal sequences in Black Swan is surprisingly aggressive. When Nina is practicing the fouettés for her Black Swan choreography, for example, the choreographer yells, “attack it! Attack it!” This line wasn’t added to the movie for the sake of deeper horrific meaning; this is a phrase that choreographers often use when a dancer is working through fouettés and other demanding turns. “Attack it” is not the only example of a ballet phrase with aggressive connotations: ballerinas “kill” pirouettes, “snap” into relevés, and “gut” pointe shoes. In Black Swan, Nina’s pointe shoe gutting scene has profusely violent—albeit accurate—undertones. Nina roughly handles her pointes, cutting and puncturing the satin which arguably bears an eerie resemblance to flesh. In this moment, she transforms into a murderer, and the once-pretty pointe shoes which act as a tangible manifestation of dance are her victim.
Nina gutting her pointe shoes.
Despite its elegant exterior, it’s no secret that ballet is a highly dangerous sport, both physically and mentally. About 75% of dancers report struggling with mental health issues, and 82% report suffering between one and seven injuries in one year of dancing. The personal lives of ballerinas are riddled with instances of injuries, blood, and emotional turmoil: Black Swan and other examples of ballet-horror exploit the capabilities of the film camera to amplify this experience. We see tightly-framed shots of broken toenails, bleeding rashes, and extreme instances of pain and physical exertion, all paired with amplified sounds of bone-cracking, skin-tearing, and the screams of abusive ballet directors. Considering a theatrical ballet audience’s typical distance from the stage, the camera lens bridges the gap between the watcher and the watched, offering us a rare glimpse into sensory details that often go unnoticed in real life but become shockingly familiar once they’re brought to the foreground via film.
Mentally, ballet has a reputation of being all-consuming for dancers, just as the horrific “Other” often consumes a horror protagonist’s thoughts. Nina’s last words in Black Swan are a prime example of this idea: as she succumbs to her self-inflicted wound (a stab to her own gut with a shard of broken dressing-room mirror), she whispers, “perfect. It was perfect.” In her last moments of life, all that Nina can think about is her balletic execution. She’s content because, ultimately, she has killed the version of herself that was holding her back from mastering the essence of the Black Swan. Consumed by the internal turmoil and mental health issues that are so prevalent in many ballet communities, dancers often regard themselves as their worst enemy—or, in this case, scariest Other.
ACT II: The Uncanny
In horror films, the juxtaposition of the expected with the unexpected often creates a deeply disturbing audience experience. In Black Swan—among other horror films focusing on ballet—the intrinsic beauty of ballet is forced within generic conventions of horror. As an art form, ballet is poised and polished but, much like films within the horror genre, there’s more lurking beneath the surface. It’s this unexpected duality that reflects as well as elevates the suspense and shock so native to horror films.
In his influential essay “The Uncanny,” Sigmund Freud understands uncanniness as the feeling evoked when something is frightening due to its departure from familiarity. Ballet audiences are accustomed to maintaining a degree of separation between the performance and what goes on backstage—films like Black Swan, however, prevent audiences from controlling what they do and do not see. Aronofsky literally “zooms in” on Nina’s spiral into madness, depicting her life both on and off the stage in a way that’s unfamiliar for a theatrical ballet audience. The abundance of close-up shots throughout the film is upsetting and claustrophobic, and the viewer is met with uncanniness when their existing perception of ballet is changed and horror is suddenly introduced into the narrative.
Closeups in Black Swan.
Beyond the film lens, the more physical aspects of dance can sometimes inspire uncanniness. Especially in films such as Luca Guadagnino’s 2018 remake of Suspiria where the über-contemporary style of dancing reads as a stark departure from the body’s “natural” way of moving, more conservative viewers might feel a looming sense of uneasiness throughout the film. In Suspiria, protagonist Susie (Dakota Johnson) is accepted into a dance company that’s run by a coven of witches. Rather than moving in the graceful, flowing way that’s typically associated with ballet, Susie’s body creates sharp, jarring angles that simultaneously intrigue the diegetic coven and terrify the film’s audience.
ACT III: The Doppelgänger
Delving deeper into the idea of “self-induced” suffering, another subset of horror tropes that translates well to ballet culture is the horrific doppelgänger. The doppelgänger permeates horror from the genre’s very beginnings with 1920s German Expressionist films to recent horrific masterpieces, such as Jordan Peele’s Us (2019). While Us doesn’t overtly depict a ballerina’s experience, it does include a scene of main character Addy (Lupita Nyong’o) and her evil “tethered” doppelgänger (named Red) dancing simultaneously.
Just as duality frequently appears throughout the genre, partnership is often present in dance. Much of classical ballet choreography comes in the form of a Pas De Deux, which translates from French to “dance of two.” This partnered ballet demands two dancers in order to be complete, and is essential to the choreography of most famous ballets.
As a film, Black Swan strategically employs the doppelgänger trope by centering its narrative around the ballet Swan Lake. In this ballet, the parts of the virginal White Swan and abject Black Swan are traditionally danced by the same ballerina; thus, the ballet itself naturally perpetuates the idea of a “good” and “evil” persona. Nina falls victim to this trope when she fails to embody both characters at once, and the Black Swan ultimately rises victorious above both Nina and the White Swan. As viewers, we are horrified by this (uncanny!) split sense of self and the ultimate victory of the “evil” half.
It’s also important to note the significance of literal reflections in ballet. Traditionally, a ballet studio is equipped with mirrors lining most—if not all—of the walls, which forces the inhabiting ballerinas to constantly perceive a distorted version of themselves. In some ways, the omnipresence of mirrors throughout a ballerina’s training can act as the most terrifying enemy. While other horrific monsters have weaknesses, mirrors represent the one thing that you can never run away from: yourself. Apart from the more obvious shots of reflections in Nina’s studio rehearsal space, the reflection motif in Black Swan surfaces in subway windows, hospital doors, and dressing room vanities, with an ultimate build up to Nina’s death by none other than a shard of broken mirror.
Reflections outside of the dance studio in Black Swan.
This recurrence is an indication that even outside of the ballet studio, dancers are burdened by the weight of their own image; in other words, the effects of ballet body culture on dancers is suffocating and cannot be confined to just one room. A myriad of these shots create distorted reflections of Black Swan’s dancers. Again, in reference to Suspiria, Guadagnino makes an even clearer comment about distorted reflections by dressing one of the academy’s main dance studios with a permanently warped mirror.
Warped mirror in Suspiria.
This fixed warping acknowledges the perpetual prevalence of body dysmorphia and the distorted sense of self worth that plagues the ballet community. After hours of rehearsals where you’re doing nothing but staring at every minute detail of yourself in a mirror, your reflection becomes increasingly foreign, increasingly distorted.
ACT IV: The Balletic Body Horror
The physical and mental terror that many dancers endure can easily be depicted in the form of body horror. Nina’s chilling swan transformation, Susie’s inter-cult sacrifices, and Red’s battle with her double self all seem to reinforce a rejection of one’s own body, which feels similar to a ballerina’s battle with eating disorders and mental health issues. From a young age, dancers are constantly told that their body is not “right” for dancing. Ballerinas have to have perfectly arched feet, long necks, slender arms, and chiseled legs. In fact, growing up, I would tell myself that while I felt I was born to dance, I wasn’t born for dance. I rejected my own body because it wasn’t a doppelgänger of the professional ballerinas I had seen and admired.
In the world of film, Suspiria is particularly successful in pairing ballet with body horror. Ballerinas are trained to be controlled; when all of their body weight is concentrated on their toes and the goal is to avoid acute injury, they have to be. Movies like Suspiria, however, heighten this obsession with control to its highest octaves. Throughout the film, dance is understood as a vessel through which to dominate others—the directors of the dance company seemingly exploit their principal dancers to control other members of the company for their cultish agenda. In reference to Suspiria’s ending sacrifice scene, the dancers create a disturbingly beautiful picture with their bodies. In a similar way, students in elementary choreography classes are taught to make shapes with the performing dancers in order to create evocative visuals on stage. Ideas like these make the line between ballet and horror more and more blurry.
Body shapes in Suspiria.
ACT V: The Theatricality
Though certainly a form of dance, ballet also constitutes a subset of theater. This theatricality is especially prevalent in a text like Suspiria, where the film itself is divided by “acts.” More generally, the structure of ballet performances naturally relies on spectatorship, allowing for a smooth transition to film as a medium. At its roots, ballet is voyeuristic—it was created in 18th century Europe as male entertainment that would display the “ideal” feminine physique. Black Swan pays tribute to this history. Amidst her spiral into insanity, Nina fantasizes about a sexual affair with a rival ballerina from the company. The imagined relationship between these two beautiful women is riddled with sexual clichés, and feels catered toward the heterosexual male spectator (read more about this concept in “Debating Black Swan: Gender and Horror”). Even in rehearsals and classes, dancers are constantly told to pretend that they are being watched by an audience. This sentiment is reinforced by the documentary-style film form throughout Suspiria: on multiple occasions, Guadagnino uses shots with documentary-style zooming and shaky handheld camera work, which is critical in educating the audience about a dancer’s feeling of constant surveillance.
No analysis of theater would be complete without a discussion of choreography. Although it might not seem obvious at first, most horror films include choreography, even if they’re not centered around dance. This “choreography” is none other than a typical fight scene. Fight scenes are often accompanied by and synced to music; further, they often look and feel like choreography. They are, in many ways, a literal Pas De Deux. As an example of the similarities between dancing and fighting, we can consider the final moments of Us, where Red and Addy’s ultimate fight is seamlessly intercut with each character’s respective ballet performance (see their Pas De Deux battle here and here). Even the music in this scene is a remixed “double” of the same musical motif that has appeared throughout the film—again, an uncanny callback that is concurrently familiar and disturbing.
The versatility of dance styles can also speak volumes about the message being conveyed in a film. In Us, Addy’s tethered double (Red) showcases a more modern style of ballet, whereas untethered Addy’s performance is much more classical in nature: while Red crawls around and uses floorwork, Addy dances gracefully on a proper stage. These choreographic choices mirror the tethered’s desire to be current and have their time in modernity, whereas those living in the above world are perfectly complacent dancing (and living) as they have for decades.
ACT VI: The Finale
Ballet and horror share countless elements: the uncanny, body-horror, the doppelgänger, and deeper psychological reckoning. Not to mention, ballet and its inherent theatricality translate almost flawlessly to the movie screen. Made possible by the versatility of film as a medium and the magic of post-production, filmmakers have the tools to emphasize body horror’s organic existence in ballet. Despite a naïve belief that ballet and horror are opposites, the dance form’s fundamental aspects make it a surprisingly fruitful form of horrific expression.
After confronting the inescapable intersection between my ongoing ballet studies and favorite niche of my prospective Film major, I can finally say that I’ve conquered my fear of Black Swan. Ultimately, my suspicions were right: Aronofsky’s accurate depiction of ballet culture was truly uncanny. Like the mirrors I face every day, I saw myself in Nina, and the horror on the screen suddenly became all too immersive. Ballet is pretty, poised, and polished—the perfect setup for a horror film.