Polina 2017

As a child Polina auditions for ballet school and is accepted. The head teacher and choreographer, Bojinski, notices her talent and pushes her hard, sensing the spark of something exceptional. Yet she continually wrestles with the rigidity of training for ballet and her own growing passion for dance, torn between precision and the urge to move with feeling.

Polina is accepted into the Bolshoi Ballet in Moscow, a dream long held by her teachers and family. But after catching a glimpse of a different kind of movement at a festival, she decides to seek out new horizons in Aix-en-Provence, auditioning for a modern dance program there alongside her boyfriend, Adrien. Both are accepted, though she’s warned that modern dance will demand a different mindset from the classical tradition she knows so well. She grapples with unfamiliar choreography and endures criticism for prioritizing her craft above almost everything else. A setback comes during a rehearsal when she injures her ankle, and her understudy, Sonia, steps in and begins an affair with Adrien. Once Polina heals, she asks for her role back, but the choreographer, Liria, tells her she’s not emotionally ready. Frustrated, she leaves the company.

Polina ends up in Antwerpen, where she calls the number of the first dance company she sees. She auditions for a strange man who tells her that since she is a dancer and they both know she can dance, he wants her to make him feel something. The audition is unsuccessful and she leaves, but not before she notices a man teaching dance to kids. Unable to find work elsewhere, she becomes hungry and homeless, eventually taking a waitressing job at a bar. She returns to the site of her failed audition and meets Karl, the dancer who teaches improv. She joins one of his classes and slowly rediscovers the joy of dancing, finding freedom and purpose again. Encouraged by Karl, Polina choreographs a duet for the two of them to perform together.

Polina’s father dies, and she travels back to Moscow where her mother reminds her that her father always wanted her to be a great dancer. She then returns to Antwerpen, where she and Karl perform their piece for a programmer who books them for the Montpellier Festival, a hopeful sign that her art might finally find its place on the stage again.