Flesh and Bone Episode One: Bulling Through

When Flesh and Bone was announced as a Starz limited run series, many of us here at the Hot Pink Palace were excited because BALLET.

When I was a little girl I dreamed of being a ballerina until I realized that 1. holy shit it’s a lot of work and 2. I have all the coordination and grace of a duck with an inner ear infection. Maybe that’s a good thing because when Starz said “dark drama” about ballet, they weren’t fucking around; if I still had any dancing aspirations, this show might squash them. Let’s take a deep dive, shall we?

(Heads up: big TW for abuse and self harm, k?)

We open with Claire (Sarah Hay) sitting in her bedroom that is totally a little girl’s room right down to the creepy dolls. Her door is padlocked FROM THE INSIDE and that particularly disturbing implication sets the tone for the rest of the show. Claire tosses her bags out of her window and bails, all while someone pounds on her door and the padlock shakes precariously.

Cut to NYC and the fictional American Ballet Company. Lots of young dancers are here to try out–Claire included. The tryouts are arduous, in part because the artistic director Paul Grayson (Ben Daniels) is a goddamn tyrant. At one point Claire goes into the hallway and peels her big toenail off. I got real sweaty at that part. If you are squicked out at foot stuff probably don’t watch this show.

Claire makes it till the end when Paul questions her about her past. She was an apprentice at the Pittsburgh Ballet at age 18, then took a leave of absence. She hasn’t professionally danced since then (she’s now 21). She dances for Paul and wows him and he invites her to be part of the chorus.

Since Claire doesn’t have anywhere to stay, Monica the nice lady in the office, sets her up with company housing. She’ll room with Mia (Emily Tyra). When Claire arrives at her new apartment she’s startled to find Romeo (Damon Herriman), a homeless man living under her stairs. She also finds Mia banging some dude on the couch. Surprise new roomie!

That night Claire can’t sleep. She (creepily) picks up the empty condom wrapper and smells it. Then she covers herself with all of her books (a suitcase full she brought from home) like a blanket.

The scene cuts to Paul’s theatrical tyranny. He’s raging at his staff because their chairman is serving FUCKING PROSECCO INSTEAD OF CHAMPAGNE YOU GUYS. HOW CAN HE EVEN. Amid his flailing and railing Paul declares, “We serve Veuve Clicquot if I have to give blowjobs on the corner to pay for it!” Paul needs to calm his tits.

Claire arrives at the company and goes to the locker room to change. She meets Daphne, the Mila Kunis–I mean “bad girl”–character. Daphne’s dad has a lot of money. For no reason other than to show us boobs, a naked ballerina comes out of the bathroom holding toilet paper to her hoosey. She has her period. “You still get your period?” someone asks. The nudity in this show is so far all female and accentuates how rail-thin the dancers are.

When Claire gets to class, she’s kicked out of her spot by the prima ballerina Kiira (Irina Dvorovenko). She’s given a spot at the back by resident hot and straight male dancer, Ross (Sascha Radetsky). Claire’s phone goes off in class giving Paul the opportunity to go apoplectic. Paul demands that Claire dance a really hard part to save herself from being kicked out. She nails it. Paul is giddy. He’s found a star.

Later Claire is so mad at herself for not turning off her phone that she hits her big toe–THE ONE WITHOUT THE NAIL–with her pointe shoe repeatedly. Those shoes are compressed paper, fabric, and glue and support her entire body on a 2.5 inch platform. They’re hard, y’all.

In the dressing room Kiira reminds Claire that she’s a nobody, and Claire sees Kiira snort some cocaine, dropping a packet of it. Claire covers the cocaine with her foot, stealing it. OH HEY REMEMBER HOW HER PHONE RANG IN CLASS AND STARTED ALL OF THIS? It’s some dude named Bryan. He’s been calling her a lot.

Then there is a totally mystifying scene where Paul decides they need to design a new ballet around Claire—all while butt fucking a dude.

Later Paul tells Claire she has to go to a fundraising party to dazzle their potential patrons. She doesn’t have anything to wear so she goes home with rich girl Daphne to borrow a dress. Daphne then takes her to a strip club where she works part time. The club is run by a Russian mobster named Sergei who is taken with Claire. Claire is mesmerized by the eroticism of the women dancing on stage but when she sees Daphne giving a dude a lap dance she freaks out.

The next night Claire shows up to the fundraiser with her secret weapon–BOOBS. Paul arranges for her to talk with their chairman, Laurent. He tells Claire to make Laurent want her sexually, a thing that clearly troubles her. She trips when her heel breaks and falls into Laurent. They talk and clearly he’s charmed by her.

The next morning Claire dances for Laurent and Paul and it’s decided she’ll be the lead in a new ballet commissioned for her. The other dancers, namely Mia and Kiira, are pissed. In the locker room Claire let’s Kiira see her cocaine on top of Claire’s things in her gym bag and Kiira backs off a bit, clearly unnerved that Claire knows she’s using.

The show ends with Claire’s brother, Bryan, calling her. He wants to know where she is. He’s masturbating while talking to her, and tears run down Claire’s face.

RHG:

THAT WAS DARK DARK BANANAS AND I LOVED IT.

I once told Twitter that Black Swan would have been a FINE First Date movie for me (still would, in terms of Netflix and Chill). I took ballets as an older teenager- I was never good, but I enjoyed it a fuck of a lot. The scene of the warm ups in the company class had me feeling all warm and nostalgic until their exercises progressed far beyond what I did, and the adagio center exercise was… well that was actually completely ridiculous and mean and even non-dancers should get that.

Starz is not fucking around when they called it dark- it really is. Yeah, there’s a lot of dysfunction and drug use in the ballet world (to get an idea of where we were in the early 1980s, I suggest Off Balance by Suzanne Gordon), and abusive company managers (please see Balanchine) and the competition and the backbiting and the being terrified of the upcoming new kids that will take your place.

I thought having Claire’s audition piece be off screen, and only see You-Wish-You-Were-Balanchine’s reaction to it was brilliant. She’s good, she’s really good, but seeing that through his reaction (and not his eyes) is the only way to convey that without giving it away. Ethan Stiefel (The hot dancer from Center Stage) is the show choreographer, and he knows his shit. (Sasha Radetsky, the hapless dude dancer from Center Stage, has not improved as an actor in the past 15 years.)

Oh and the opening credits are AMAZING. BRING ON YOUR BANANAS, SHOW.  I AM READY.

Elyse:

I think this show is trying to explore a lot of themes: the sexualization of adolescent girls, physical and psychological sacrifice for art, a sexual abuse victim trying to understand/reclaim her own sexuality.

The idealized ballerina body is sort of trapped in a pre-pubescent state–thin hips, long limbs, extremely skinny, no breasts. I think when they showed the dancer coming out of the bathroom looking for a tampon, her nudity was meant to shock us. Look at how thin this woman is. Look at how young she looks. This contrasts with Daphne’s striptease which is overtly sexual and adult. It’s an interesting parallel–the ballet world is “art,” and the woman are viewed through a covert sexual lens. The strip club is something forbidden and dirty, and the woman are overtly sexual. It feels like a statement about how we view women’s bodies and their sexuality.

Those are my big, intelligent thoughts about the show so far. My other thoughts are mostly sheer horror at Claire peeling off her toenail and anxiety over the fact that her brother is apparently sexually abusing her.

I loved the dance scenes. I don’t have a great appreciation of ballet (or a huge understanding of it), but I could watch it all day long. Seeing the dancers off stage, sweaty, wearing mismatched, sweat-stained leotards was an interesting departure from the seeing them under the lights, in costume. This is work, people. It ain’t pretty.

I fully appreciate that this is going to be crazysauce in pointe shoes. When Paul was trying to drum up his genius WHILE INSIDE A DUDE’S BUTT and then PLACED A CALL WHILE STILL IN A BUTT, I knew this show wouldn’t disappoint. I’m with RHG. GIVE US YOUR BANANAS.

Wait, I didn’t mean it that way.

 

Flesh and Bone is on Starz on Sunday nights, and you can watch episodes on demand, or on Starz Play.

Have you watched Flesh and Bone? What are your thoughts?