Trippy Timelines of Terror!-Ballet films

If you ever wanted to see Padme Amidala doing tippy-toes, you probably are psychic. "Black Swan" gracefully jumps onto screens this weekend, and as for what's it about, a beautiful but fragile ballerina (Natalie Portman) is chosen to play the two roles of good girl and bad girl in a production of "Swan Lake". Due to the extreme mental and physical ordeals she puts herself through in the name of perfection, she starts to go a little cuckoo and begins experiencing powerful hallucinations. Now, I've never watched a movie completely centered on ballet ("Step Up" has enough street-dance to not be a ballet movie), but, as it turns out, the art of blood-stained shoes has a long cinematic history:

1948-"The Red Shoes" (picture above right)

Considered a British masterpiece, this adaptation of Hans Christian Anderson's story centers on a girl who lives to dance, and how this leads to tragedies and heartbreak.

1951-"An American In Paris"

Gene Kelly plays a WW11 vet who tries to make it as a painter in the City of Love, and gets mixed up in a crazy mix-up of love.This film ends with a 16-minute ballet sequence set to "The American In Paris", a musical number that cost more than $500,000.

1951-"The Tales of Hoffmann"

Hoffmann (Robert Rounseville) tells the tales of his three past girlfriends while his newest girl Stella performs a ballet in a Nuremberg bar.Based on the opera "Les contes d'Hoffmann" by Jacques Offenbach.

1985 (yes, I'm going that far ahead)-"White Nights"

Gregory Hine's American tap dancer defects to Soviet Russia and meets Russian ballerina Nikolai Rodchenko (Mikhail Baryshnikov), who wants to defect in the other direction.Sorry, I can't write anymore Russian names.

2000-"Billy Elliot"

A coal-miner's son starts goes from boxing to ballet, his father and brother are outraged.But, when his father Jackie sees the talented dancer his son is, he decides to help push him toward his

dream.Now a major musical.

2003-"The Company"

A film about the Joffrey Ballet of Chicago directed by Robert Altman, this follows real stories taken from the companies' dancers, choreographers, and others.

As you can see, it is clear that ballet is not visually underinterpreted.Along with hip-hop and ballroom, it is a tradition that is still being continued.