giseledepkat said:
Thanks for reminding me! I agree, Ilia delivered a surprisingly naturalistic acting turn (in a surprisingly guilty-pleasure movie!) But I was really surprised at how weak a dancer he appeared to be -- even though he was mostly just posing. (Rgirl, if you saw this, I'd be interested in your reaction!)
Gisel,
(Rgirl comes leaping onstage a la Nijinsky
) Here I come to give my great dance opinion on Ilia Kulik as a ballet dancer in "Center Stage." Here's the deal, IMO: Dancers and figure skaters train their bodies in completely different ways. I once said in a post that I had seen video of Gordeeva & Grinkov as well as Oksana Baiul (when she was 16) doing a ballet barre and that relative to elite level ballet dancers, that is, dancers who would be in just the corps de ballet of American Ballet Theatre, the real company on which the American Ballet Company of "Center Stage" was based, at best they would have been in the beginning levels of a professional school or moderate to advanced levels of a local ballet studio.
It's not that G&G or Oksana were that bad at ballet, it's just that figure skaters use ballet only to enhance their main training. They don't spend up to eight hours a day taking class and rehearsing in a style that develops the body in a very specific way. I've seen dancers who danced for 20 years after they haven't danced for 20 years and they still look like dancers. Some of it is genetic, too, especially for female ballet dancers.
For one thing, elite male ballet dancers are more muscular in the upper body than male figure skaters. Male figure skaters can't afford to be too muscular in the chest and shoulders. It inhibits their jumping. What male skaters really need is power in the muscles that bring the arms in (adduct the humerus) for getting multiple rotations in jumps and also for spinning. This is mainly where I think Ilia looked "undancerly" compared to the other male dancers in the cast--at least of what they showed. The director wisely cut away from Kulik's lower body, since he would not have looked anything like a ballet dancer, nor should he. A lot of the greatness of Ilia's jump technique as a skater comes from the fact that his body is rail thin, with just enough width in the shoulders to biomechanically stabilize his jumps.
Now in the scene where the dancers went out to the bar to "boogie," Ilia definitely held his own. But that's bar dancing, not the highly technically demanding style of ballet. If you've ever seen the "Rocky" movies, you'll see another example of how movies and reality don't match. Sylvester Stallone, especially for "Rocky II" really built his body to look amazing on screen. But he looked nothing like a real boxer. Look at any heavyweight boxer and you you'll never see the bulging muscles and "cut," "shredded," or "freaky" look of the body builder, which is closer to what Stallone's body was. But Stallone knew moviegoers didn't want to see Muhammad Ali's body; they wanted to see something closer to Arnold Schwarznegger's body, and that people wouldn't care if it was like a boxer's or not.
In the case of "Center Stage" apparently the director felt Ilia was the best actor for the job, which called for a Russian who spoke English well. If they hired him because he was the OGM, they sure didn't use it in the advertising. Anyway, it's not like "Center Stage" was going to be vying for any Academy Awards--and that's not to diss it. The movie had a specific audience in mind and was made for that audience. The final ballet sequence could never happen in real life the way it happened on film either. Although there were some realistic things in the film, most of it called for some serious suspension of disbelief.
Anyway, I agree with Jaana. Kulik's main talent by far is figure skating. To be a successful actor, you've got to put as much time and work into "making it" as a skater does training. I think Ilia happened to be in the right place at the right time for that role and his acting was good enough to land the part. But my guess is that he probably immediately saw how much dedication it takes to become a successful actor and after he collected his paycheck and went to the premiere, refocused on skating. After all, you could say "nothing came of it" for Ethan Steifel or any of the other dancers in the cast. Even Mikhail Barishnykov, who had a relatively successful career for a ballet dancer, only did about five movies. The days of the dancer/movies star such as Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Ann Miller, Cyd Charisse, Ginger Rogers, Eleanor Powell, and others sadly went the way of the movie musical.
I just wish SOI would rehire Ilia. They've had more than one US male singles star, why not two Russian singles stars? Even my "bowling and brewskies" male cousin thought Ilia "stole the show" when he saw SOI live in '99.
Rgirl
You rock!
