At the end of the opening of the highly anticipated, eponymous ballet The Red Shoes, the film doesn’t linger so much on the raving response of the audience. It cuts instead to a very intimate moment. The empty space of a dance studio is made indefinitely big by mirror walls. Reflected in the far back of the room, we glimpse a door opening and the tiny figure of Vicky entering. The familiar space suddenly seems huge, mysterious, somehow inhospitable—perhaps a metaphor for how success has just changed the scale of the world around young Vicky. In the still silence, she warms up, stretches at the bar, ready to get back to work as if nothing happened. When the first soloist and the choreographer join her, they celebrate with soundless smiles and respectful gestures of affection. No one utters a single word as if protecting the fragility of the moment—and the sanctity of dancing. This scene will stay with me forever. It is not just moving. In foreboding the unknown that’s bound to come, it almost holds an element of suspense. The discipline, the dream, and the ultimate innocence of the artist even in front of art itself.
