Product Description

Donya Feuer's The Dancer follows the young and gifted student Katja Bjorner through years of intensive training at the Royal Swedish Ballet School, as she develops into an international ballet star. Filmed with an eye toward conveying the physical aspects of dancing, the pain, sweat, and tears, as well as the exquisite beauty, The Dancer captures the fierce determination and struggle that goes into the desire to dance at the highest level.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #14986 in DVD
• Released on: 2005-05-24
• Rating: Unrated
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, Letterboxed, NTSC, Widescreen
• Original language: English, Swedish
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 96 minutes

Review
Feuer brilliantly crystallizes the sacrifices that dancers make - she reinvents the way we view dance. --Dance and The Arts Magazine

Review
Anyone interested in ballet will want to see The Dancer. --New York Times

Review
A fascinating and compelling journey. Katja Björner is a charming and talented subject. --Boston Herald

Customer Reviews

A Rare And Magnificent Look Into The Royal Swedish Ballet School.
If you like ballet documentaries then this one should be in your collection. We do not often get to learn much of what goes on in the Northern European Ballet Community, which has made very important contributions to the ballet tradition, so this is all the more welcome. It is an intimate behind the scenes look into the Royal Swedish Ballet and its school. We are shown the daily routines of the dancers in training, both female and male. Mostly, we follow the daily routine of Katja Bjoerner, a young lady who is one of Sweden's hopes for a prima ballerina. There are many classroom scenes with group and private instruction at the professional level, both barre and center, as well as stage rehearsals. Some of the dialogue is in Swedish with English subtitles, but a lot of English is spoken also. Katja speaks perfect English. For more on the Royal Swedish Ballet see my review of their Swan Lake.

Andromeda
This artistically produced DVD was a joy to watch. Closeups of the dancer's feet and her perspiring face drove home the dedication of this young dancer. For anyone who thinks ballet is easy or something to be taken lightly, this will change your mind and make you see the beauty that is possible with dedication and hard work. I especially enjoyed how the dancers were corrected, as when the teacher told the dancer to go more to second position with her working leg before turning her foot back to arabesque. This type of attention to detail makes all the difference in dance training and this is packaged beautiful into an entertaining picture to view.

A Definite Buy for Dancers
Though I am not a dancer, I love anything having to do with ballet. I discovered this little film many years ago and rented it probably about 30 times from the video store. I recently purchased it on DVD and found that I still adore every moment of it. There is something compelling (as the narrator of the film also sees) about the dedication it takes young people to become professional dancers. This film brings to life the incredible hard work of dance students. Though there are snippets of certain performaces, what really draws you in are the rehearsals, warm-ups and stretching, for that is where the real meat of ballet lies. If you love dance, you'll love this film.