Breaking Pointe, So Far

November 28, 2001

Now that we’ve seen the first two episodes of The CW’s Breaking Pointe, I’m left feeling like the producers are missing the point. So far, at least.

 

The show tries so hard to be dramatic. Which is understandable. They have to sell this to a mainstream TV audience. From the shadowy opening dance shots, to the voiceovers of Allison DeBona talking about how ruthless the competition is and Adam Sklute’s comments about the expendability of dancers, everything bangs us over the head with “drama.”

 

For the most part, the show gets it right: Dancers do have to deal with insane competition; their bodies take a beating; dancers have little outside life; their dating pool becomes incestuous; they do crazy things like forgo a kitchen table in order to have a “stretching room” in their house.

 

But we’ve yet to see much of the actual day-to-day work in class and rehearsals—the core of what it is to be a dancer. The first two episodes gloss over the fact that dancers spend their entire work day striving to achieve the impossible. Maybe the producers are afraid that people who don’t understand classical technique would get bored watching dancers actually dance. But I hope that guess is wrong, and in the next few episodes we’ll get to see the sweat, not only the tears.