Dance Pretty Lady

The Promised Land

September 2015 •Chinese

Ling Ai and He Jiang are young, ambitious, and in pursuit of careers imported from the West, but romantic longings and career ambitions are inevitably shaped by larger social forces.

The Toll Collector

February 2003 •English

A parable about a thwarted dream. A narrator tells us about a young woman who wants, more than anything, to be a ballerina. Thanks to animation, we see the problem: her legs make up about three-quarters of her height. She sees the impossibility of her dream and moves to a house on an isolated hill where she lives by herself, lonely, practicing her art, and then, in near despair, taking up knitting. Madness seems close at hand, but is there anything that can bring hope and pull her from her solitary, circumscribed life?

Carillon

June 2018 •Italian

Ortensia is a mechanical ballerina, that every day is forced to dance for an audience, in a seemingly endless loop. But one day, she sees in the crowd someone drawing her: the first representation of herself as an individual.

The Mad Genius

September 1931 •English

A crippled puppeteer rescues an abused young boy and turns the boy into a great ballet dancer. Complications ensue when, as a young man, the dancer falls in love with a young woman the puppeteer is also in love with.

The American

November 2023 •English

American ballet dancer Joy Womack is accepted into Moscow's infamously tough Bolshoi Ballet Academy, with the dream of becoming a great ballerina.

Louise

November 2021 •French

Louise, ballerina at the Garnier Opera in 1895, rushes home after a show but is stopped by a friend asking for money. Louise knows what to do in order to repay her.

Sunshine Becomes You

December 2015 •Indonesian

A contemporary ballet dancer helps a pianist recover from his hand injury after causing him to fall down the stairs.

The Bolshoi

December 2016 •Russian

Young and extremely talented dancer Yulya Olshanskaya from a small mining town draws a “happy ticket”: she is noticed by a former ballet dancer Pototsky and he promises her a future of great ballerina, worthy of the main stage of the country. However, in order to become a diamond, anyone, even the most outstanding brilliant, needs to be cut, and the way to the legendary stage of The Bolshoi Theatre for Yulya lies through the walls of the ballet school, where the more capricious teacher Galina Mikhailovna Beletskaya takes custody of the rebellious provincial. Turning into a prima will require incredible self-denial, and Yulya herself will have to make sure that the big ballet is not only the whiteness of the packs, the gold of the boxes and the slip of silk ribbons. But no obstacles will stop the one who has the big dream.

Bobbie of the Ballet

June 1916 •English

Wealthy Jack Stimson (Jay Belasco) falls in love with Broadway diva Velma Vrooman (Gretchen Lederer), and for her sake bankrolls the musical production in which she is currently starred. But when Velma proves to be fickle and unreliable, Jack shifts his affections to humble chorus girl Bobbie (Louise Lovely).

Love Never Dies

October 1916 •English

Love Never Dies was set in France, and convincingly so (which was not often the case in American-made films of this period). It is established in the first reel that hero Felix and heroine Cecile have been sweethearts since childhood. Later on, Fate forces Felix and Cecile to separate, but viewers could take heart in the positive sentiments expressed by the film's title.

Grand Jete

September 2022 •German

Dance teacher and mother Nadja left her son Mario with her own mother when he was little. Now she has reappeared on his doorstep, seeking a closeness that knows fewer and fewer boundaries. An uncompromising film about family relationships.

A Nutcracker Christmas

December 2016 •English

When her niece is cast in The Philadelphia Ballet’s production of the Nutcracker, a jaded ex-ballerina is forced to come to terms with the life and love she left behind.

Honoo no hada

October 1951 •Japanese

The Cowgirl and the Ballerina

June 2016 •English

A mother and daughter struggle between fantasy and reality.

The Night Is Young

January 1935 •English

Young Austrian Archduke Paul "Gustl" Gustave is in an arranged engagement but his uncle, the emperor, decides to let Gustl carry on a fling with ballet dancer Lisl Gluck.

Déjà Vu

May 1985 •English

A choreographer who believes that he was reincarnated also believes that his present wife possesses the soul of his wife in his previous life, a ballerina.

His Mother's Eyes

March 2011 •French

A writer suffering from a lack of inspiration sneaks his way into the lives of a star television journalist and his lead ballerina daughter to write, unbeknownst to them, a non-authorized biography. Meanwhile, in Brittany, twenty-year-old Bruno, who lives with his parents, doesn't yet know the consequences that this story will have on his existence...

The Red Danube

October 1949 •English

A Russian ballerina in Vienna tries to flee KGB agents and defect.

Waterloo Bridge

May 1940 •English

On the eve of World War II, a British officer revisits Waterloo Bridge and recalls the young man he was at the beginning of World War I and the young ballerina he met just before he left for the front.

Margot

November 2009 •English

At the age of forty Dame Margot Fonteyn is considered to be past her best as a prima ballerina and Ninette de Valois is reducing her roles at the Royal Ballet. Then the exciting young Russian dancer Rudolf Nureyev, a recent defector to the West, comes into her life and her bed and revitalizes her career. Frederick Aashton creates a new ballet for them and they become the golden couple of the ballet world. However, Margot is married to Roberto 'Tito' Arias, a Panamanian politician of dubious repute who is not sympathetic to her calling and is probably faithless. When he is shot and paralyzed for life Margot must carry on dancing well into her sixties in order to pay for his costly treatment though she still collaborates with Rudolf in the occasional ballet.