Dancer

Steven Cantor's Dancer plays like a PBS version of Behind the Music—with ballet standing in for rock and roll—but that is not necessarily a bad thing. Ukraine-born Sergei Polunin has an angular face, crystalline eyes, and the awe-inspiring ability to fly through the air with the greatest of ease. His mother, Galina, claims that he was so flexible from birth that it alarmed her nurse. Polunin was a gymnast before switching to ballet, and to pay for his expensive schooling in Kiev, Polunin's grandmother took a job in Greece while his father worked in Portugal. "That," Polunin now reflects, "is when fun was over," as the working-class family pinned their hopes on him to the exclusion of everything else. It's not hard to understand why such kids lose control once they get a taste of freedom, and that's exactly what happens when Polunin moves to London, where he is a star student but also a party monster—although that doesn't prevent the 19-year-old from becoming the Royal Ballet's youngest principal dancer. Meanwhile, his family implodes due to visa problems and broken marriages. By 2012, Polunin has had enough of the stress and strain, and—to the shock of everyone—walks away from his dream job. The rest of Dancer tracks Polunin's attempts to find a place where he can be himself, including a humiliating stint on a Russian reality television series. This is a compelling story, up to a point, but since Polunin's personal life remains mostly off-screen this portrait feels frustratingly unfinished. Still, it should be considered a strong optional purchase. [Note: DVD extras include deleted scenes (21 min.), and trailers. Bottom line: a solid extras package for this uneven documentary.] (K. Fennessy)