Front Row
(Netherlands/USA/UK/Ukraine, 75 min.)
Dir. Miriam Guttmann
Section: Come As You Are (World premiere)
Ballet dancer and choreographer Erik Bruhn once said, “Dance every performance as if it were your last.” That mindset echoes poignantly throughout Front Row, a poetic dance doc in which the frailty of life takes centre stage. It’s a stirring portrait of the Ukrainian war told through the strikingly cinematic images of dancers’ bodies on display.
This film directed by Miriam Guttmann and executive produced by Sarah Jessica Parker observes the United Ukrainian Ballet Company as dancers do their patriotic duty. The performers, including Alexis Tutunnique and Vladyslav Bondar, worry if they are letting their country down by not being at the front lines. However, the dancers, exiled themselves to the Netherlands, assume a worthy fight in their own right. They put Ukrainians’ resilience on the world stage by showing that their spirit refuses to be defeated by Putin’s army. Fighting during wartime isn’t limited to the battlefield.
As the dancers stretch, rehearse, and recognize that the show must go on, they nevertheless feel a pull to do more with the ballet. As the company travels to the USA for a performance, Alexis in particular finds himself distracted. He discovers the story of Oleksandr “Teren” Budko while scrolling the rabbit hole of social media. Budko, a Ukrainian soldier in his late 20s, gains media attention after losing both his lower legs during combat. Alexis discovers that Budko is in the USA to have some prosthetics fitted. He extends an invitation to the soldier to come see his fellow Ukrainians onstage. A few salutes of “Slava Ukraini!” later, Alexis has a brain wave.
The dancer decides there’s no better way to honour the Ukrainian war effort than to spotlight a soldier who sacrificed for his county. Teren cautiously agrees to join the ballet as a guest performer. There’s just one hitch, though: dancing with two left feet is one thing, but dancing with no feet is another task. Budko isn’t a professional dancer, either. Before the war, he was a barista and a graphic designer. He’s only getting acclimatised to his new body and moving with prosthetics. Learning choreography alongside a chorus of agile ballerinas won’t be easy.
However, Budko gamely assumes the challenge. Life during wartime reminds him to embrace every dance as if it were his last. Guttmann intercuts her backstage documentary with images of Budko and fellow soldiers on the battlefields. She observes the sweat and determination during rehearsals. It’s equally matched by the camaraderie that Budko enjoyed with his teammates in the army. One company parallels the other. Budko also learns throughout the preparations of one loss that hits really hard, so using his body to show the courage of Ukrainian soldiers assumes greater urgency. He stays determined to keep pace with the dancers, adopting a soldier’s discipline for getting the choreographing down pat to honour those who fight.
At the same time, dancers in the company become more thoughtful about the war effort—not that home is ever far from their minds. Bondar, for one, always worries about his father, who is fighting with the army so that his son doesn’t have to. Images from the front, including some violent videos of gunfire and shelling, remind the dancers how quickly fate can turn. Bondar’s father tells his son of an extremely close call during a breathless video chat. It hits home how forgiving they all can be about Budko’s struggles with the choreography.
It’s not all a united front, though, as the company prepares to perform Adolphe Adam’s Giselle with Budko as the guest attraction. One disciplined ballerina expresses frustration over having such an untrained dancer in the ranks. Ballet, she says, is all about perfection. Budko’s performance, simply put, is imperfect at best.
However, the dancers ultimately calibrate the performance to put such imperfections on display. Budko’s body becomes part of Gisele’s artistic design. He bravely incorporates his scars into the show, performing a captivating dumb show of sorts with his upper body as his prosthetic limbs lie onstage beside him. Eventually, he fastens them to his limbs and rises to dance with agility and (enough) grace alongside his well-trained peers.
Guttmann finds a courageous portrait of Ukraine’s war effort through this backstage arts doc. The film takes audiences from the front lines to the front row to offer a refreshing salute to those who fight, but also to the artists who keep spirits alive. Beautiful cinematography by Christiaan van Leeuwen fluidly captures the dance with a sense of motion. Front Row avoids the trap into which some dance docs fall by making the performance feel flat. Instead, the camera dances with them, favouring intimate shots that emphasize the sweat and emotion over wider proscenium-style shots that capture the full show. Front Row is all about the dancers and how they translate their life experience into moving ballet.
Front Row finds an especially strong embodiment of these themes in Budko. He valiantly assumes the challenge to be vulnerable on stage for the world to see. The soldier has natural screen presence and, incidentally, heated up the screen this year as the eligible single on the Ukrainian edition of The Bachelor. (Quite the catch: a hunky soldier who dances and makes good coffee!) The film also finds great characters in company members Tutunnique and Bondar, along with ballerinas Iryna Zhalovska and Violetta Hurko who form the principle members of the documentary. The young women fuel an especially compelling moment when they return home after a long absence. After seeing how life goes on while Ukraine is in ruins, their attitude to the performance of Giselle changes. The imperfections become the company’s strength.
