‘Swan Song’ Review: An Absorbing Canadian Doc About a Celebrated Ballerina Who Revitalizes ‘Swan Lake’

A few years ago, before retiring from her role as artistic director of the National Ballet of Canada, Karen Kain decided to direct a show. “We needed a new Swan Lake,” she says at the top of the new documentary Swan Song, “and I thought: I want to try to find the courage to do this.” Kain, a former ballerina, trained at NBC and made her debut as Swan Queen in the company’s 1971 production. She was later mentored by the Soviet dancer and choreographer Rudolf Nureyev, who helped nurture her career. Kain gained domestic and then international recognition. Andy Warhol made a portrait of her and Canadians affectionately nicknamed her the nation’s Princess Diana. 

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Directed by Chelsea McMullan, Swan Song follows Kain’s journey to direct Swan Lake in her final year at the National Ballet of Canada. She intended to retire in 2020, but the COVID-19 pandemic forced the company to pause the show three months before opening night. McMullan’s documentary, which bows July 26 in select theaters and on demand, opens with an acknowledgement of this challenge. Kain ended up delaying her retirement and Swan Song begins, in earnest, two years after the shutdown, eight weeks before their debut. The pressure is on for the company — from Kain to the dancers — who are staging an ambitious, more contemporary production of Tchaikovsky’s ballet and trying to recoup some of the money lost from the early stages of the pandemic. 

There are a lot of moving parts in Swan Song and it makes sense that this feature has an accompanying four-part docuseries that premiered in Canada last fall. The pandemic elongated McMullan and their team’s timeline, allowing the crew to embed themselves within the company for two years before rehearsals restarted. Swan Song only encapsulates a fraction of this investment — of the information gathered, the emotions felt, the experiences captured. Despite Brendan Mills’ (Quickening) competent and assured editing, the doc can feel brusque at times. McMullan tackles a litter of topics — Kain’s career, her desire to modernize elements of Swan Lake, racism in ballet, eating disorders and class — that could each have stood as its own hour-long entry. Often, time constraints can energize a documentary; here, it inspires longing for more. 

What McMullan does present offers a peek into the complicated, dramatic and at times tense world within the National Canadian Ballet. The physical, emotional and psychological stamina required from the dancers is on full display from the moment Jurgita Dronina, a resolute Russian-Lithuanian dancer with an easy smile, appears on the screen. She explains, briefly, the structure of the company, which includes the corps de ballet, soloists and principal dancers like herself. In this early part of the doc, McMullan also introduces Shaelynn Estradra, a corps dancer from Texas, whose working-class background and struggles with mental health can, at times, feel at odds with her ambitions to be a principal ballerina. At one point in Swan Song, Estradra describes ballet as both a personal “angel” and “demon.” Kain, Dronina, Estradra and other interviewees’ testimonies, together, form a striking portrait of the past, present and future of modern ballet. 

McMullan supplements Kain’s stories of the past with archival footage of the dancer in her own productions of Swan Lake as well as interviews with dance scholars and critics like Seika Boye and Paula Citron. Boye talks about the importance of certain elements within Swan Lake — the critical role of the corps, for example — and touches on the structural issues and history of exclusion within ballet. A significant source of tension within Swan Song revolves around Kain’s decision to forgo tights among the corps dancers. The artistic director understands the traditional role of white nylon, but thinks the performers showing their bare legs will make the piece feel more contemporary. 

Tasked with bringing Kain’s vision to life is choreographer Robert Binet, a patient and steady figure throughout the documentary. He corrects the corps dancers, reminding them when they must move faster to keep in time with the music, and challenges Kain with a similar kind of gentle but firm command. He navigates, with admirable grace, the task of marrying a director’s vision and her dancers’ abilities. Binet’s emotional support can be felt in nearly every scene of Swan Song, from scanning the ensemble during rehearsals to reassuring individual dancers in private conversations.

But there’s an obvious technical gift too — one most displayed in the final act of Swan Song, as the company buzzes with the nervous energy of opening nights. McMullen, with DPs Tess Girard and Shady Hanna, plunges into the chatter of the crowds milling about in the theater lobby and the dancers applying thick eyeliner and hairspray. Mills’ editing becomes more dynamic in these scenes, mirroring the kind of haunting aesthetic of Quickening, another film about the grueling demands of dance.

When the performers are on stage, Swan Song becomes electric. Close-ups of the dancers invite us to experience the effort of this performance: beads of sweat rolling down chests, muscles tightening as they leap and land. Watching lithe bodies glide across the stage, I was reminded of Kain’s earliest desire, the wish that seemed to drive her direction. Tired of seeing academic renditions of Swan Lake, she set out to leave the company with an emotional ovation. “I want to be moved,” she said. “It’s theater, you know; I want to cry.” And surely, there was no dry eye in the house that night.