Dance And Film

1804 Words8 Pages
Dance is an expression of emotion, movement, music, rhythm, social interaction and passion. From the 1930s up until 2011 dance has been explored and experimented in movies. Originally when dance was introduced into film, it was used as an added form of entertainment, it wasn’t part of the story line but over the years, dance has transformed in film, becoming more than entertainment, it has become the main theme and basis of certain movies – an essential part of the story line. Black Swan is a fine example of a film in which the director Darren Aronofsky uses certain camera angles and filmic techniques to make the film more effective, to capture the element of dance, to hide Natalie Portman’s flaws as a dancer and to give us insight into her character’s (Nina’s) psychotic and emotional turmoil in her mind. The movie starts off dramatically (it draws on Alfred Hitchcock’s films of the 1930’s) with sombre music (Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake), and black and white shadows, there is a contrast between black and white which could be representative of the battle between good and evil, the battle between the white swan and the black, and the battle that Nina will later on experience in her mind. The lighting focuses on white in the beginning, which highlights the dancer. The beginning scene consists of a lot of synecdoche shots of the feet, which show us how difficult ballet is and the amount of pain that a ballet dancer experiences. The dancers are lit from the top, this separates them from the audience (the audience is asked only to spectate not to participate) and it puts the dancers in an aura. The fact that we hardly see the faces of the dancers is another factor that is indicative of the conflict that the main character, Nina will experience at a later stage in the film. The camera shots in the second scene establish Nina as character, the camera isolates her from her

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