Hey Internet,
I’ve recorded my thought process when I thought about clicking on the Flesh And Bone stream on Stan. I was really umming and aaing as to whether I should watch this show:
Me: A whole series of Black Swan!?! Sounds pretty good. Well….it can’t be as good as an Oscar winning movie….
Flesh And Bone: Meet Claire Robbins, a young woman who has moved to New York…
Me: Okay, I’ve heard this one before. Keep going
FAB: She’s a dancer with a troubled past.
Me: Ooohh, mysterious. Still sounds a bit like Black Swan….
FAB: She’s going to save an evil/corrupt Ballet Company.
Me: Yeah…still sounds a little familiar.
FAB: There are heaps of evil mobsters and night club owners. Psychos in and out of the ballet company. Exotic ballet dancers and crazy ex-boyfriends.
Me: I’m in.
Flesh And Bone is incredibly dark, sexy and engaging. It offers an intimate view into the dark, twisted world of professional dancing. This mini-series is definitely worth the investment. We follow Claire Robbins (Sarah Hay) as she escapes the domestic traumas in her home city of Pittsburgh and moves to New York City to make in the prestigious American Ballet Academy, which is led by the kind of insane, dick-flinging artistic director Paul Grayson (Ben Daniels).
Watch the trailer for Flesh and Bone here. Post continues below.
If you love dance and darkness then this is the show for you. The show is certainly on the ‘heavy/gross’ end of the drama scale, but there’s plenty to mesmerise, too. The cast is strong throughout, with Ben Daniels being a standout (you might know him his as the sexy British photographer from House Of Cards). I should note that this show is really edgy. This show is not for the faint hearted. If you want the Disney-style “girl trying to make in dance academy” story, complete with a top 40 pop-rock sound track, I’d recommend Step Up or Centre Stage.
This show is for hardcore ballet peeps. Flesh And Bone is about as brutal as your watching best friend have open-heart surgery: it’s horrible, but you’re anxiously watching every movement with the full gamut of human emotion.
Flesh And Bone successfully recaptures the psychological darkness and beauty that Black Swan exhibits. In fact, Flesh And Bone is kind of a mishmash of Black Swan and Closer. Or maybe I’m just thinking of movies where Natalie Portman plays a dancer? Either way, this show is worth a ‘stream’.
The screenplay in Flesh And Bone is excellent, with the banter in the changing rooms between the ballerinas being a highlight. I don’t know a thing about ballet, but I loved being taken by the hand into the brutal reality that is chasing your dreams and leaving the past behind.
The cinematography in this show is particularly good. The blue tints that saturate most of the interior shots create the grim atmosphere that dominates Claire’s claustrophobic world. Similarly, the numerous shots of New York streets scapes provide viewers with concept that Claire is certainly in a challenging space.
These forbidding streetscape are artfully juxtaposed with the equally menacing neon lights that dominate the strip clubs that dancers inhabit. In short, this show is beautiful to watch. Honestly, you could purely watch this show for the HD long shots of New York City. It’s beautiful.
Oh, I should mention that the world of dance gets weirder and darker in this show. It’s so dark it makes Batman look like an episode of Yo Gabba Gabba. Claire meets some rather unsavoury characters in the ballet/strip club world. And there seems to be nasty people everywhere.
Think of Claire Robbins as a dancing Alice In Wonderland. Every corner of New York City seems to reveal new levels of darkness. But each monster presents Claire with a new challenge she can pirouette away. The monsters of the dance world are not always where you expect them to be, but having the resolve to make it in the unbelievably cutthroat world of ballet allows Claire to tackle the unthinkable. She’s impressive – that she can dance so beautifully while the world around her is utterly vile. I can’t even touch my toes and spend most time whinging about public transport. Like any heroine, Claire Robbins is tough as hell.
Start streaming on Stan Flesh And Bone now! Or I’ll start screaming at you like a crazy ballet creative director!!!! “I said arabesque, you pathetic excuse for a dancer!!! Don’t give me this gangdam-style YouTube garbage choreography!! Watch some quality dance on Stan!! (If an Australian network want to do a rip off of this quality show, I can totally play an artistic director. Just call me).
