00:00I actually think ballet should be an Olympic sport.
00:07Just because you were number one once does not mean you will be again.
00:11I will be number one.
00:13Who are you?
00:14I'm Kate.
00:15I'm here to win the prize.
00:17You directed the ballet scene almost like boxing matches.
00:23Why?
00:24You know, I never took ballet growing up, but I did take karate.
00:28So maybe – and I was sporty.
00:32Like the little detail that Kate used to play basketball, that's a little bit from my own life.
00:37I was into basketball and tennis and volleyball and skiing.
00:41So I think maybe I come more from a sports background.
00:46And, yeah, I love that you said that because I certainly wanted to treat dance a bit more like a
00:52boxing match.
00:53I actually think ballet should be an Olympic sport.
00:55I think it's one of the most athletic feats that humans can do.
01:02And I think it would be really interesting to make it a competitive Olympic sport.
01:05It's interesting how you portrayed the struggle for power in ballet.
01:13Ballerinas are almost like submissive creatures in this movie.
01:19And yet we think about them as perfect and beautiful.
01:24So beauty and perfection are tricky.
01:29Yeah.
01:30Well, it's interesting.
01:31You know, traditionally – this is changing now, thankfully.
01:35But traditionally in the world of ballet, the men tended to have all the power because it was like this
01:41army of like perfect ballerinas who are all supposed to look and move the same.
01:45And then you have like the virtuosic male dancer leaping around the stage and – or the traditionally, again, male
01:53choreographer.
01:54So there was this kind of messed up power dynamic between the genders.
01:59And I certainly wanted to play with that in this movie, particularly as these characters are coming of age and
02:08their identities are so much more fluid and so much more non-binary and they don't fit neatly into those
02:15boxes.
02:16I kind of wanted to set those two things against each other.
02:19One of the girls tells the other, you forced me to face myself and now I'm free.
02:26It's not easy.
02:27How can we do it?
02:29Wow.
02:29What a question.
02:32That's such a great question.
02:34I mean, I think one of the messages of this movie is that the more you try to run from
02:41pain or escape your pain, the more distress it will cause you.
02:47And that one of the best things you can do is accept that there is no escape from that pain.
02:54And in the moment you own it – Madame Brunel tells M in this story that you have to learn
03:02to love your rock.
03:03It's a heavy weight you'll carry around.
03:05But if you can learn to love it, then it will make you stronger rather than weighing you down.
03:09And I think that's very true of grief and pain.
03:12I think in some ways the plight of the human condition, there's no – none of us are going to
03:18be immune from suffering.
03:20And so the best thing we can do is to embrace that suffering as uniquely our own and know that
03:28it's shaping who we are and shaping our own story.
03:35And, yeah, not run from it.
03:38That's the notion, too, of blessed is she who falls and blessed is she who rises again, of having compassion
03:49for yourself and accepting your own pain and your own story.
03:54Another line of the movie is, you're an artist, not a puppet.
04:01You're a director.
04:02So do you ever think about this, I'm not a puppet, I'm an artist?
04:07Oh, man, I feel like I could go off the rails with this question.
04:12But, you know, there's a – you can look at it on one level.
04:17We are all puppets of our DNA, of our environment, of our circumstances.
04:23If you have a sort of deterministic view of how the universe works, we're all puppets, perhaps.
04:30But we all, I hope, also have that spark of an artist in us.
04:36Whether or not we have control over how things really go, we certainly have control over our – over our
04:45attitudes as witnesses and participants of the things that happen in our life.
04:50So I think the spark of an artist is – it's somebody who is choosing to be very present in
05:11those moments
05:12and to sort of embrace fully and make their own choice whether or not it is truly theirs, I guess.
05:24That's the most careful sort of philosophical answer I could try and give you at the moment.
05:29But, yeah, it's a fine line.
05:32But I think part of what Em's journey in this movie is that she was born into the world of
05:38ballet and has been dancing since she was little,
05:41has always just been told sort of that's who you are.
05:44And certainly in the world of ballet, it's all about achieving the choreographer's vision and being as perfect as possible
05:52and almost kind of being the perfect puppet.
05:54And so for her, I think it really was about learning to listen to her own voice.
06:00Okay.
06:01Thank you so much.
06:02Great work.
06:03Bye.
06:03Thank you.
06:03So nice to meet you.
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