A ballet that conveys a powerful message to young people to “be yourself”, while making a dig at social media in a story about superficial beauty, has inspired one of the UK’s most famous dancers to perform on the big screen.
Dame Darcey Bussell, a former principal of the Royal Ballet, will dance in a new film based on the classic ballet Coppelia because, she said, it will “resonate” with young people who face intense pressures to change their looks in the pursuit of happiness.
She told the Observer: “Dance is a great tool to touch on a difficult subject and make it easier to accept and easier to understand.”
In the original story, Dr Coppelius is an eccentric toymaker who dreams of bringing his mechanical dolls to life. In the reimagined story, a young woman must save her sweetheart from having his heart used by the charismatic but sinister cosmetic surgeon Doctor Coppelius to bring life to Coppelia, the perfect robot-woman he has created. The lure of superficial beauty poisons a town until its people realise that it has never been more important to be yourself.
Bussell said: “It’s about appreciating you can be yourself, and you should be happy with who you are. The young, especially, believe that to be happy they have to change their appearance.”
She is disturbed by the darker side of social media, describing it as “an unkind space”. “For all the good it creates in connecting people, it can also be the opposite. It’s a very hard thing to balance, for the young person especially, because they’ve known nothing else.
“Sadly, because we communicate constantly on a screen, we forget body language and how we read people’s emotions. When you’re constantly texting, it stops that social skill that is so important you learn from a young age.”
She said she only uses social media for work-related subjects, realising that the brevity of comments means that they are so often misunderstood: “Something comes out wrong and people always get offended. There’s no detail. You don’t see the thought behind it. It sadly gives people a way of expressing themselves unkindly, without any thought.”
Adrienne Liron, one of the film’s producers, said that it makes a dig at social media in showing characters looking in the mirror after their treatment at the cosmetic clinic: “In the reflection, what they see is like an Instagram or Snapchat filter, a Kardashian-esque version of themselves. The directors wanted to show how people often want to see themselves. Kids are using these filters to give themselves perfect skin, bigger eyes, bigger lips, a smaller nose, whatever. It’s a terrible negative thing.”
Coppelia will be released in the UK on 1 April. It is a modern interpretation of the 1870 comic ballet, an innovative approach that mixes 2D and computer-generated animation with live-action dance. It was created by filmmakers Jeff Tudor, Steven De Beul and Ben Tesseur, and choreographed by Ted Brandsen, artistic director of the Dutch National Ballet, with an original score by Maurizio Malagnini, which has just won two major awards.
Its producers describe it as a silent movie, using the language of dance, music and animation to tell the story. The world-renowned ballerina Michaela DePrince heads an international cast that includes dancers Daniel Camargo, Sasha Mukhamedov, Vito Mazzeo and Irek Mukhamedov.
Liron said: “We believe that we’re the first dance feature film to mix world-class ballet with 2D and 3D animation. It’s unusual to have a film that has no dialogue. There aren’t many silent feature films any more.”
She added that Bussell and Irek Mukhamedov, who appear as a mayor and a baker in the film, used to be partners at the Royal Ballet: “This is the first time they’ve been reunited in 20 years. It is something very special in the dance world. The two of them are absolute legends. Irek is one of the greatest male dancers ever, Darcey is one of the greatest female dancers ever. So it will bring a smile to the face of anyone who remembers them dancing together at the Royal Ballet.”
