Leap! / Ballerina (2016)

September 20, 2017 9:02 PM

An orphan girl dreams of becoming a ballerina and flees her rural Brittany for Paris, where she passes for someone else and accedes to the position of pupil at the Grand Opera house.

This was released in France in 2016 as "Ballerina" and recently rereleased in America as "Leap!" with dubbed English. 3D animation. It's no Princess Tutu, but it's got its cute moments.

posted by one for the books (3 comments total)

Had not seen this, expect to be alternately charmed and annoyed at the animation. Dance movements are hard to get really right, there are wonderful animation artists whose interpretations are abstract cartooning -- finding an essence of movement that's "about" dance but not "the dance". 3D will likely get the position and end points just right and totally miss the essence and dynamics of the movement.
posted by sammyo at 8:43 AM on September 21, 2017

I am not a dancer by any means, so I'm not qualified to judge the animation in that regard, but I will say that dilemma is something of a theme of the story.
posted by one for the books at 9:48 AM on September 21, 2017

3D will likely get the position and end points just right and totally miss the essence and dynamics of the movement.

I've seen the movie, which I found to be by-the-numbers but quite charming nonetheless, but I don't know the first thing about ballet so I can't judge the dancing shown in the movie. However, it should be noted that the dance animation was choreographed by two étoile dancers of the Paris Opéra, Aurélie Dupont and Jérémie Bélingard. They created the choreography and did the dancing themselves, which were then replicated by the animators (motion capture was planned at first but the idea was dropped for some reason).
posted by elgilito at 5:36 AM on September 22, 2017