Why filmmakers aren't tiptoeing around ballet

HONESTLY. You wait ages for a ballet film, then three come along at once. Cinemagoers are used to the odd dance-drama pirouetting onto the screen, from The Red Shoes and Billy Elliot to the documentaries Ballets Russes and La Danse. But 2011 brings a rush of films packed with pliés and pas de deux, jetés and arabesques.

• Black Swan stars Natalie Portman

In January you can see Natalie Portman going elegantly bonkers as a ballerina suffering a breakdown in Darren Aronofsky's opulent melodrama Black Swan. Meanwhile, British film-maker Christopher Payne is shooting Love Tomorrow - a tale of love and loss involving two dancers due for release next year.

Love Tomorrow stars former Royal Ballet soloist Cindy Jourdain and the strapping Cuban Arionel Vargas of English National Ballet (ENB), and is choreographed by Michael Nunn and William Trevitt, better known as the Ballet Boyz. But what's really sprinkling sequins on ballet's big-screen moment is reports Kate Moss is to dance with veteran tights-stuffer Mikhail Baryshnikov for an art film directed by long-time friend and choreographer Michael Clark.

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This is more than mere coincidence. Film is a simplistic medium and ballet is an art of extremes. Dedicated dancers push themselves to the limit to express stories that deal in big, broad feelings. Backstage, high tension and the proximity of honed bodies manifests itself in jealousy, hatred, and sexual passion. Just ask Portman, now dating Black Swan's choreographer, the wonderfully named Benjamin Millepied. It's notable, too, that Aronofsky's nine-year relationship with Rachel Weisz ended as he immersed himself in this heady world.

"Ballet is incredibly cinematic," says Payne. "You are watching bodies in motion conveying meaning. It's a combination of athleticism and beauty everyone can understand. It cuts across barriers of age and culture."

A virtual virgin in the world of classical dance, Payne says that visits backstage to ENB opened his eyes to the extraordinary stakes dancers play for. In Love Tomorrow, Jourdain's character sees the career she's focused on from the age of six - and with it a long-term romance - collapse after she suffers an injury. In Black Swan, Portman's character is driven to a breakdown by the stress of starring in - and starving herself for - Swan Lake.

As for La Moss, presumably she'll carry off her hotly anticipated classical dance debut with the insouciance she brings to everything else. Because the other thing that makes ballet work on film is the veneer of dazzling, unruffled elegance that overlays the churning underside.

"The glamour attached to the world of ballet works very well on film," says Alastair Spalding, artistic director and chief executive of Sadler's Wells. "People love the bling involved, all the costumes.Also, there seems to be a resurgence of interest in dance as a form. We've had an increase in our audience of 50 per cent in five years. And programmes like Strictly and other dance competitions are coming on the back of that, rather than leading it."

Christopher Payne speculates the vogue for cinemas to broadcast live dance and opera has made people more avid for ballet on screen. "Dance demands an immediate response from you, usually of joy, delight and surprise," he says. "And there's not much of that going on at the moment, is there?"

• Black Swan is out 21 January. Love Tomorrow will follow.