Karen Kain and Neve Campbell on Swan Song, Streaming Now

July 26, 2024

Karen Kain’s 2021 retirement as artistic director of the National Ballet of Canada coincided with one of the biggest challenges of her 50-year career: mounting a new, full-length production of Swan Lake. Directing a ballet was something she’d never done before, and the stakes were huge. On top of that, a film crew had set up camp at NBoC’s studios, capturing every stressful moment.

The result of those efforts—in addition to Kain’s world-premiere ballet—is Swan Song, a feature-length documentary that goes deep inside the creation process as the company prepares for opening night. Directed by Chelsea McMullan and executive-produced by Neve Campbell, Swan Song will be released in theaters and be available on demand (via Amazon and Apple TV) on July 26.

As a dancer, Kain had been an international star—she made her debut as Odette/Odile in Erik Bruhn’s Swan Lake at age 19, and soon caught the attention of Rudolf Nureyev, who took her on as his protégée. She was NBoC’s defining ballerina throughout the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s before joining its artistic staff, serving as artistic director from 2005–21.

Shaelyn Estrada sits on a dance studio floor in a straddle split and leans forward on her arms. She wears a black leotard, white practice tutu, and pointe shoes.
Corps de ballet dancer Shaelynn Estrada. Photo courtesy Obscured Pictures.

Campbell, who trained seriously at Canada’s National Ballet School from ages 9 to 15, jumped at the chance to an executive producer on Swan Song. “Karen had honestly been my idol and was probably the reason why I became an artist and a dancer,” Campbell said in a joint Zoom interview with Kain earlier this week. “So I was very, very elated to be a part of the experience.” (This isn’t her first time mixing her two passions—Campbell co-wrote, produced, and starred in the 2003 Robert Altman film The Company, featuring The Joffrey Ballet.)

Swan Song follows Kain as she attempts to bring her vision of Swan Lake to life. “It felt like something I needed to do,” she said. “We had a number of Swan Lake [productions], but none of them were heartbreaking.” In her version, inspired by Bruhn’s staging, the swans are abducted, trapped women forced to fulfill an evil man’s fantasy. She tasked choreographer Robert Binet with choreographing new sections to give the ballet a fresh, more contemporary look.

Two lines of ballerinas are shown from the side standing onstage. They all wear the same white tutu with feathered embellishments, and most casually have their hands on their hips. A ballet dancer in the foreground looks slightly off to the side. The stage is dark with bright lights coming in from the wings.
Tene Ward and other members of the corps de ballet during a tech rehearsal. Photo courtesy Obscured Pictures.

Kain isn’t the documentary’s only subject. It also follows several company members, including principal Jurgita Dronina and corps members Tene Ward and Shaelynn Estrada. You learn the deep-seated reasons behind Dronina’s intense drive, and her private struggles with an excruciating nerve injury. Ward opens up about being a Black dancer in the mostly white ballet world. She’s excited when Kain announces that the corps will forgo pink tights for bare legs—“This is a huge thing for us, to finally be ourselves onstage,” she says in the film—but grows frustrated by her colleagues’ lack of enthusiasm. And Estrada is especially candid about her complicated relationship with ballet, her struggles with her mental health and self-harm, and the feeling that she never quite fits in.

“It was really important that this be a very honest portrayal, and the only way to get that truly was to get to know the dancers in an intimate way, but also to win over their trust,” said Campbell, who was involved in the documentary’s editing process. “Luckily, I think we’ve found some really wonderful people who were open and honest about their journeys and happy to share it and be vulnerable.”

Jurgita Dronina. a ballerina wearing a black tutu and headpiece, pink tights and pointe shoes, stretches on a dance studio floor. Other dancers are shown in the background, with clothes, dance shoes and other dance supplies strewn on the ground.
Principal dancer Jurgita Dronina in a scene from Swan Song. Photo courtesy Obscured Pictures.

While the trailer is a bit melodramatic, the actual film is very true to what life in a ballet company is like. What’s especially apparent is the sheer amount of hard work that goes into putting a production like this together. You see the dancers’ frustrations as they try to figure out formations, adjust to brisk tempos, and deal with heavy costumes and wigs. The filmmakers pay particular attention to the corps de ballet: the unrelenting repetition, tedious tech rehearsals, streams of sweat, and endless running, running, running. (In one scene, Ward’s iPhone alerts her that she’s run the equivalent of a 5K.) It makes the elation and pride that Kain and the dancers feel when the curtain comes down all that more palpable.

 “I think it’s really good for the general public to understand the depth of commitment and the amount of physicality, training, and physical pain that artists go through to create something so beautiful,” Kain said of the film. “I think [Swan Song’s] actual portrayal of the world that we live in is very honest and very clear. And I feel proud of that.”