Vera Viselli
Flesh and Bone
Moira Walley-Beckett, Usa, 2015 (1st season, 8 episodes)
Who’s waiting for a series (which came a little late, maybe) in the style of The Company di R. Altman, be careful: Claire Robbins, the young ballerina which leaves Pittsburgh to reach New York and join the American Ballet Company, is not a featureless character as the result obtained by Altman.
She’s docile, soft, light in the dance but she’s multilayered in the private life, with a sibling bond close to The Dreamers and a dark side which brings her in a strip-club a couple of times a week, not to dance classical. Immediately we recognize Claire is a devastated soul, sexually gashed – here the reason of her self-harming, which goes against her feet, since she’s a dancer, especially on the nails.
«I wanted she had a special connection with books and in particular with one book» says the creator of the series (awarded for Breaking Bad). That book is The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams (also known as How Toys Become Real): Claire has to find a way to become real, through obsessions and psychological dramas – so she seems an anti-Black Swan as she’s also an anti-Walter White: in Breaking Bad, Walter is a boring and impersonal middle aged man who becomes an excellent criminal mind, while Claire is young, with an extraordinary talent, forced to face extraordinary obstacles. Claire transformation happens in the finale episode, through Dakini: a four acts ballet which exactly explores the voyage of a young woman from her childhood to her self-affirmation.
