Ballerina Trailer (2013)

Trailer for Ballerina.

Inspired by world-famous Swedish ballerina Elsa Marianne von Rosen’s autobiography, filmmaker Maja Friis uses beautifully choreographed contemporary dance scenes to reveal the dancer’s impossible balancing act between consuming human love and an all-encompassing artistic passion. Connecting unique archival material and new recordings of the now 89-year-old legend, the film portrays dance as a lover, a partner, a support and a shadow. Ballerina is an essential artist’s portrait that speaks to and for itself, using movement as an expression of narrative. Von Rosen’s career becomes the choreography, her love life a body of work, and the body itself its storyteller. Brilliantly assured, this poetic film gives insight into von Rosen’s deeply passionate relationship with dancing as a way of life and a way of being. It’s a real life pas de deux that both breaks the heart and makes it beat faster.