Film / Center Stage (2000)

"I am the best goddamn dancer in the American Ballet Academy. Who the hell are you? Nobody."

— Maureen Cummings

A 2000 teen drama directed by Nicholas Hytner, starring Amanda Schull, Ethan Stiefel and Zoe Saldaña (in her first movie role), Center Stage follows a group of young dancers chasing their ballet dreams and goals through a workshop and performance at the American Ballet Academy.

The bulk of the story centers around the passionate but technically challenged dancer Jody Sawyer as she tries to find her place in the ABA. Her faulty technique continuously gets her into trouble, and when she catches the eye of company choreographer Cooper Nielsen, she naively believes she has found love. The year culminates in a workshop performance that sees some dancers doing everything they can for a part — and others desperate to relinquish their roles.

Not to be confused with 1991 Hong Kong film Center Stage.

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This film provides examples of:

• Abhorrent Admirer: Kathleen feels that Cooper has become this since she dumped him for Jonathan.
• Actor Swap: Maureen secretly arranges for Eva to perform the lead in Jonathan's ballet in her place, as she's giving up ballet.
• Age-Gap Romance: While it's not clear how much older Jonathan is than his wife Kathleen, if considering she's a principal or featured soloist she's likely in her late 20s or early 30s while Jonathan, a retired performer and longtime director, is at least 10 years older. (Peter Gallagher was nearly 45 at the time of production, while Julie Kent was 30, making a 15 year gap between the actors.)
• Agony of the Feet: The shot of Jody's battered, bloody feet after practicing alone all evening might cause some Squick.
• Alpha Bitch: Maureen is said to be one by other characters, and while she's certainly cold, she borders more on Defrosting Ice Queen, especially once it's revealed how deeply unhappy she is due to her mother's emotional abuse. As an example of how informed this attribute is, Eva brands Maureen as a "big-time bitch" simply because Maureen tells her that smoking indoors is forbidden.
• Art Imitates Life: Cooper's ballet is intentionally a very thinly veiled depiction of his Love Triangle with Kathleen and Jonathan. Less intentional is its similarity to Jody's love triangle with him and Charlie, especially after Erik turns his ankle and Cooper takes his role rather than letting the understudy do so.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Anna shows shades of this. While she is sweet and polite on the outside, she's shown to be bitchy and competitive alongside Maureen.
• Blatant Lies: Maureen, every time she tries to cover up her forced vomiting.
• Butt-Monkey: If anyone in class is going to have a correction shouted their way, it's probably Jody. Her fellow dancers are visibly annoyed when an instructor holds up class to adjust Jody's turnout manually.
• Camp Gay: Erik speaks in an effeminate voice, is often hypersexual, lusts after his straight roommate Charlie, says he cares about ballet because of tiaras and "boys in tights", and even adopts the stage name "Erik O. Jones" after his idol, Oprah. He's so proud of this fact that it's how he introduces himself to Eva (and the audience).
• Cast Full of Gay: Apparently the male half of the student cohort is typically this, as the girls are very excited (while Erik is very disappointed) that Mr. Fanservice Charlie is both straight and single.
• Chewing the Scenery: A number of the scenes are campishly overacted, but Maureen practically growling at her boyfriend as she tells him off on his doorstep and later when she's crying that she wishes it had been her who'd been injured and wouldn't have to dance instead of Erik takes the cake.
• Contrived Clumsiness: Jody "stumbles" into Cooper, Jonathan, and Joan Miller in an effort to get Cooper's attention.
• Courtly Love: The somewhat flirtatious first meeting between Cooper and mega-donor Joan Miller has shades of this, including a gallant kiss on the hand.
• Dance-Off:
  • A playful one between Jody/Charlie and Erik/Eva at the salsa club.
  • In a sense, the final workshop performances are this, since everyone is competing for spots with ballet companies.
• Dancing Is Serious Business: A number of training montages (played straight) take place across the length of the film, including a traditional "prepping of the pointe shoes" montage.
• Dogged Nice Guy: At first it seems as though Jim will be a Hopeless Suitor for Maureen, showing signs of being a Stalker with a Crush by calling her repeatedly at the school office and waiting for her outside the front door. She does agree to a date with him, however, and after that they become a couple off-screen. He is still a dogged nice guy, evidenced by his efforts to convince Maureen of his genuine concern for her health. He succeeds; Maureen gives up dance completely and goes to college, realizing her mental and physical health are terrible and she's dancing more for her mother than for herself.
• Dress Code:
  • Female dancers must wear a black leotard and pink tights to class, with their hair pulled back from their faces.^note This is pure Truth in Television. While leotard colors will sometimes vary — schools like the Royal Ballet School and School of American Ballet will frequently have different colors distinguishing different levels — the "[x color] leotard, pink tights, hair in a bun" rule will be familiar to anyone who has ever taken ballet at a school that teaches ballet pre-professionally. The point is to minimize distractions by putting everyone on an even playing field and, in the case of the hair, keep it well out of their faces while dancing. Eva demonstrates that she is a Bad Butt by violating this code on her first day.
  • While not explicitly stated, the dress code for male students is apparently black tights or shorts and a white T-shirt.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: Everyone gets their good endings, though most of them have to work for them. Cooper impresses Joan Miller and gets the funding for the ballet company he wants to start. Jody is offered the principal role in said company and ends up with Charlie, rather than Cooper. Charlie, Eva, Erik, and Anna are accepted into the school's affiliate ballet company. Sergei is accepted into the same company in San Francisco where his girlfriend dances. And Maureen breaks free of her mother's insistence on her pursuing a ballet career and decides to go to college and stay with Jim.
• Establishing Character Moment: When the girls are sitting and watching the guys practice, they are trying to figure out which are gay and which are straight. Charlie looks right over at them (Jody in particular) and smirks. The girls immediately deduce he’s straight. This scene reveals that yes, he’s straight, and has feelings for Jody.
• Evil Gloating: Cooper and Jonathan have this against each other regarding their past conflict on Kathleen, who left Cooper for Jonathan:
  Cooper: You're still holding onto all that personal shit.
  Jonathan: I don't have to hold onto anything. I got the girl.
• Family-Friendly Stripper: Cooper's ballet includes a scene in which Jody strips down to her bra and dance briefs.
• Game-Breaking Injury: Erik is supposed to play one of the male leads in Cooper's ballet, but slips on stage and injures his ankle—always a dancer's worst nightmare. At the end, we learn his injury is not permanent—not only will he be Back in the Saddle in time to dance professionally, he's accepted into the school's company even though he didn't dance at the performance.
• Genre Mashup: While Cooper's ballet still uses mostly straight ballet technique with some African and jazz influence, it is set apart from the rest of the performances because it uses modern pop and rock music, such as Michael Jackson and Jamiroquai.
• Glory Days:
  • Juliette's previously illustrious career as a dancer is hinted at, but never detailed.
  • Jonathan's career as a dancer gets a little more detail; apparently he was the company's best-ever Romeo until Cooper took up the role.
  • Nancy, Maureen's mother, never made it into a ballet company (she didn't have the feet for it) and so puts all of her hopes and dreams on her daughter—which doesn't go well, as Maureen's miserable and unhappy.
• Good Old Ways: A theme of the movie is the frustration of some dancers at the school's strict adherence to classical ballet tradition. Cooper's ballet is a mix of old dance and new music and styles, while Jonathon focuses on classical music and the strict styles of old. Subverted with Eva, who is constantly rebellious and doesn't fit into the uptight ballet atmosphere—but desperately wants to be a professional ballet dancer in a classical dance company. Although one would expect her to rebel from the genre itself and gravitate toward more modern ballet or jazz, Eva is shown to be nothing but passionate about classical ballet and thrives in Jonathan's very traditional piece even in the corps. When she takes the lead role in Maureen's place, she shows how she's clearly serious and skilled—enough that Jonathan admits it and she gets a spot in the company.
• Informed Ability:
  • Eva is said to have amazing extension; we never see examples of Eva extending, stretching or leaping that proves this, and her performance in the showcase (what's shown of it) doesn't exactly show a great deal of extension. Zoe Saldaña had a good deal of dance training, but not at the pre-professional level required to play Eva, so some of her dancing was shot around or doubled.
  • Maureen is supposedly the best dancer in school, but we never see any indication of that beyond her executing a simple port-de-bras at an average skill level at best and some shots of her practicing with Sergei. We never even see her doing basic barre work. It was obvious enough that Susan May Pratt was one of the few actors who was untrained in dancing.
  • Erik falls under this as well. The most we see him "dance" up close is performing a lift, yet he's supposedly so good that he's accepted into a company without anyone even seeing him perform. Shakiem Evans was also not a trained dancer.
  • Inverted with Jody. She supposedly suffers from inadequate turnout and bad feet, but we only see a few examples of poor turnout in close-ups of her feet when she's doing pliés. When she's actually dancing, we don't actually see any technical difference between her and the others, other than a pained expression (although she's playing it safe at times during the final number). As it happens, Amanda Schull was a professional dancer who was working with a company prior to this film and while she said turnout and feet were among her own struggles as a professional dancer, the only example we see of truly insufficient turnout from Jody is in a close-up. Otherwise her turnout doesn't appear to be significantly worse than that of her peers, and her feet, while they don't have the most exaggerated arch, are far from flat or "bad" ballet feet.
• In-Universe Soundtrack: Most of the music on the movie's soundtrack is played while the characters are dancing onstage, in class, or (in one scene) at a club.
• Jerkass : Cooper is a talented choreographer and wonderful dancer but is undeniably a jerkass. He constantly needles Jonathan, uses Jody for sex, and seems completely taken aback when she gets a little clingy after (perhaps why you shouldn't sleep with a teenager).
• Jerkass Has a Point: The pas de deux instructor admits that Sir Swears-a-Lot Eva's correct when she cusses in class.
  Sergei: (dramatically posing on bended knee) I am your slave!
  Eva: I'd believe it more if you weren't staring at your fucking reflection when you said it.
  Pas de deux instructor: If someone wants to hear profanity, Miss Rodriguez, they can take a subway. They don't need to spend sixty dollars on a ballet ticket. (to Sergei) Though she has a point.
• Jerkass with a Heart of Gold: There is no indication that Eva's audition for the program was anything less than voluntary, and clearly she does have a passion and drive for ballet. Yet from the moment she is accepted into the training program—which itself seems to make her inexplicably angry—she has a terrible attitude toward the company and the instructors and goes out of her way to antagonize them. This is meant to be justified In-Universe because of a few arguments she has with Jonathan and Juliette, but these arguments likely would not have happened if Eva did not pick them herself. She also immediately antagonizes Maureen, whose worst offense against her when they first meet is giving her a somewhat unenthusiastic greeting and letting her know they can't smoke in the dorms. All that said, Eva is a loyal friend to people she considers worthy of her friendship, she's capable of loosening up and having a good time, and she can be brought to tears by a beautiful performance.
• Karma Houdini: Cooper sleeps with a student (possibly underage), berates and mistreats her in front of guests, uses a piss-poor excuse to cast himself as a lead in his own production last minute (which also sees him pantomiming sex with said student onstage) and what happens to him? He gets enough of a grant from a wealthy philanthropist to fully fund his own company and gets a principal dancer who's happy to work for him. He doesn't even get verbally chastened. He does, however, not continue said relationship with said dancer.
• Living Legend: Prima ballerina "THE Kathleen Donahue" is apparently this, to hear the girls speak of her.
• Long-Distance Relationship: Sergei, who is in a relationship with another dancer named Galina who works in San Francisco. This doesn't stop him from getting very cozy with an older woman at the salsa club.
• Parental Neglect: Maureen's mother Nancy is shown to be overbearing to the point of disregarding her mental health and is so smothering she falls into the category of emotionally abusive. She urges Maureen to break up with Jim—whom she truly loves—because it may affect her dancing, and when Maureen flat-out admits that she throws up half of what she eats after letting Eva have her role in the performance her mother brushes it off as "you watch what you eat." It is even implied that the only reason Maureen ever began dancing was because of her mother's unfulfilled ambition.

• Random Smoking Scene: Eva and Erik are both smokers, but this has no bearing on the plot or their evolution as characters. Same with Cooper, who is seen smoking after Erik turns his ankle and can't dance.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech:
  • Maureen delivers a fairly cutthroat speech to her mother in which she spells out that ballet was her mother's dream, not hers. This is punched up given that the speech takes place after Maureen has given her role to Eva, and right before she walks out of the lobby and leaves her mom crying—and realizing that Maureen has given up on dance forever.
  • Although he tries to do so as nicely as possible, Jonathan ends up delivering one to Jody when discussing her lack of technical improvement.

• Screw the Rules, I'm Beautiful!: It is very doubtful that a ballet school as prestigious and demanding as the ABA would accept a student with all of Jody's (alleged) flaws: poor turnout, bad feet and "not the ideal body type." A brief conversation between two proctors at her audition suggests the reason she is ultimately accepted is because she is beautiful, though in a Technician Versus Performer way, not a Distracted by the Sexy kind of way.
• Second-Hand Storytelling: Maureen, Anna, and Emily recount the huge fight between Kathleen and Cooper that led to the latter escaping to London for some time.
• Sexy Discretion Shot: Jody and Cooper embrace, kiss and begin to remove their clothes... before the scene fades and we cut to them in bed post-coitus.
• Shout-Out: Jody's mother thinks she would be better off going to college, particularly Indiana University, which has an excellent ballet program. Actress Amanda Schull, who plays Jody, began attending that very program on scholarship at the age of 17.
• Shown Their Work: In terms of ballet choreography and technique, thanks to the numerous professional and trained ballet dancers in the cast. Four of them were professional ballet dancers at the time (Amanda Schull/Jody, Ethan Stiefel/Cooper, Sascha Radetsky/Charlie, and Julie Kent/Kathleen). The pas de deux Kathleen and Cooper perform together from Kenneth MacMillan's Romeo and Juliet was more or less just Julie Kent and Ethan Stiefel doing a performance for a film crew that they'd already done together hundreds of times onstage at the American Ballet Theatre—tweaked for filming purposes but straight out of the real ballet. Zoe Saldaña had done ballet training, and while not a dancer, Ilia Kulik was a professional figure skater. Only two main actors had no ballet training at all—Susan May Pratt and Shakiem Evans. Furthermore, professional dancers were cast for background players.
• Soul-Crushing Desk Job: Likely Maureen's mother Nancy's attitude to her own job. Having lacked the talent to get ahead as a dancer in her younger years, she must settle for working in the company's press office.
• Stage Mom: Nancy to a horrifying fault. She wasn't able to make it as a dancer, so has put all the pressure, hopes, and dreams on her daughter Maureen—insisting that she loves dance, that it's her ambition to join a company and dance professionally, and even saying she's distracting herself by dating when she needs to be focused on dance. Maureen crumbles hard under the pressure, gives her role to Eva and decides to drop out of ballet altogether, which Nancy has a breakdown about. When Maureen then confronts her mom in the lobby—telling her she's not happy and she's throwing up half of what she eats to remain a dancer—Nancy denies it all, including saying that Maureen is just "watching what she eats".
• Start My Own: Cooper's ambition is to open his own, more modern ballet company. By the end of the film, the help of a Wealthy Philanthropist is enough for him to make it happen, with Jody as the star.
• Stern Teacher: All of the ballet instructors, particularly Juliette. Cooper is in contrast as a bit more open and friendly—but also morally corrupt.
• Straight to the Pointe: The female dancers wear their pointe shoes to their very first class. Justified, as these are assumed to be highly skilled dancers who at that point have been dancing in toe shoes for years, and the movie does make it clear how difficult and painful it is to dance en pointe and what a stress it is on the toes and feet. This is also a case of Reality Is Unrealistic; at their level, female ballet students rarely wear flat ballet slippers to class anymore. Kathryn Morgan, a former soloist with NYCB and graduate of the School of American Ballet, has said that she isn't sure she even owned a pair of soft slippers during her time at the school, doing all her classes in pointe shoes. The reasoning is that it improves foot strength and technique to take class, even barre, in pointe shoes.
• Technician Versus Performer: One of the main themes in the movie. Jody's imperfect but passionate dancing contrasts heavily with Maureen's mechanical but souless precision. Both sides of the trope are deconstructed, since Maureen's lack of passion comes from her unhappiness with ballet, and Jody's lack of technical ability means that she actually doesn't meet the minimum standards. Averted with Eva, who has both incredible technique and passionate performance skills, but a sour abrasive attitude with the teachers.
• Their First Time: It is never overtly stated that Jody's first time is with Cooper, but she is significantly more inexperienced than he is, sexually, and as a result seems to take the encounter more seriously.
• There Are No Therapists: The professional ballet school has a nutritionist on-site, but there is no mention of a therapist or counselor who can help the increasingly unstable Maureen. Not that she thinks to ask.
• Training Montage: Nearly the whole movie, which consists of many practices in the movie's ballet-heavy setting.
• Two-Teacher School:
  • The students' training seemingly solely takes place from the same four teachers (two for the girls, one for the boys, one for pas de deux).
  • Jonathan Reeves is apparently the artistic director of ABC and the head of ABA. And although overseeing both the company and the affiliate school is not entirely unheard of in ballet, Jonathan's level of day-to-day involvement in both is a lot. He still choreographs for the company, attends auditions for the school and showcase, knows the advanced students by name and meets with them one-on-one and choreographs for the student workshop! Maybe ABC/ABA really is just that broke and needed Joan's money after all.
• Vague Age: It's never established how old the core characters of the movie actually are. Some assume that they are high school seniors, since they are part of a private training program at the American Ballet Academy. It's also established that ABA does have an elementary-to-high school program, since Maureen has been at the school since she was nine. However, the students are also seemingly the sole performers in the year-end workshop performance (no younger dancers featured), not to mention Jody's choreographer sleeps with her (morally sketchy even if she were of age, but downright abhorrent if she's underage). The Dawson Casting of the film doesn't help the ambiguity. Word of God states that the school and company are based loosely off of the American Ballet Theatre, which operates both a company and a school, as well as a "transitional" company training program for young dancers age 18 and up who are aspiring toward a company. Other professional ballet schools (such as Canada's National Ballet School) have similar programs or college-style programs for students who have finished high school but not yet ready for companies. This could be the case, but it's never stated.
• Vomit Discretion Shot: We hear Maureen make herself purge after eating a few times, but always from the privacy of the bathroom.
• Wham Shot: Sergei reaches his hand out to the dancer waiting in the wings—and it's Eva, not Maureen, who's waiting for him.
• Win-Win Ending: Every one of the leads gets a good ending, even if they had to work their toes off to get it. Eva and Erik get into ABC with Charlie, even though Erik didn't dance at all due to his ankle injury and Eva was in a lead role she wasn't cast in (as she proved her seriousness in her performance). Cooper gets the money for his own dance company from wealthy philanthropist Joan Miller and Jody becomes his principle dancer, even if their relationship is clearly over and she's now with Charlie. Sergei will be going to San Francisco to dance with his girlfriend, what he always wanted. And Maureen has quit dance (and addressed her eating disorder) to attend college with her new boyfriend Jim and made real friends.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Eva reminds Jody of this as she cries over Jonathan and Juliette telling her her training isn't up to par. She reminds Jody that there's more to being a great dancer than great technique, and that Jody needs to find her passion and love of dance again. Maureen disagrees, however, arguing that great technique is the bare minimum for professional dancers.
• You Are Fat: The implication behind a teacher advising Emily to make an appointment with the school nutritionist.