Horror Movies And Ballet: A Match Made In Hell

So, yeah, horror and ballet. They’re apparently a thing. Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan (2010)is probably the most famous example as it charts Natalie Portman’s downfall as she tries to master the titular role in a performance of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. Over time, her obsession drives her into madness, manifesting itself as hallucinations where she is transforming into a literal swan creature. She also fantasizes about sleeping with Mila Kunis, but I’d argue that not having those kinds of thoughts is proof of insanity.

The movie worked so well because ballet already deals so much with issues of transformation, from the performers having to be dance-actors to ballet plots, like how Swan Lake is all about humans being changed into animals. Horror similarly deals with transformations, but they are always frightening, whereas in ballet, they’re magical and beautiful, and it was a blast seeing the juxtaposition of the two in Black Swan. But the movie is far from the only production that made ballet scary.

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It all seems to have started with The Red Shoes (1948), which, though not outright horror, did feature possibly paranormal elements like the titular shoes, which might have driven a ballerina to suicide in the finale. But the movie was ultimately a story about the obsessive nature of ballet and how that obsession can destroy you in really weird ways, be they imaginary or real. Seriously, there’s probably no other activity that leads to health ailments that sound like Latin spells for summoning spike-dicked demons: Morton’s neuroma, Metatarsalgia, Cobolorum pedes, and Hallux rigidus are three real types of ballet-related feet injuries and one fake condition I just made up, and YOU HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA WHICH ONE IT IS.

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Horror Movies And Ballet: A Match Made In Hell
Source: Pinoy Daily News