Rezensionen (engl.)

"Ballet might look graceful and ethereal, but don’t be fooled by the pliés and politesse. The world of professional ballet is brutal and bruising, populated with lecherous taskmasters and sharp-elbowed ingenues. (...)

(...) revealing the ugly truth just beneath the beautiful veneer. But the show suffers from its own surface-and-depth dichotomy (...)

There’s more to *Flesh And Bone* than meets the eye, but not a whole lot more. (...)

The show gives in completely to the gothic overtones that make so many cable dramas too heavy and humorless. (...)

(...) *Flesh And Bone* wins with its casting. (...) The cast is stacked with dancers turned actors, some of which have no television credits to their names, and the authenticity of their performances means *Flesh And Bone* doesn’t have to cheat with body doubles and artful editing. (...)"

Rezension von Joshua Alston: *Starz’s ballet drama Flesh And Bone can’t meet the barre*, A.V. Club, 11. Juni 2015

"Many times (...) dancers soar into the air hang there briefly like the lightest of feathers. Those of us watching this gothic tale of physical and psychic torment risk sinking in the other direction, weighed down by layers of metaphor and murk. If German expressionism is your thing - and the sensation of emotional battering feels real here for the characters and viewers alike - the eight-episode series will be searingly satisfying. Everyone else, be warned and encouraged: This is a long walk on the dark side pierced by occasional moments of glittering, breathstopping beauty. (...)

Rezension von Nancy deWolf Smith: *'Flesh and Bone' TV Review: Dancing in the Dark in a World of Hurt,* The Wall Street Journal, 05. November 2015.

"Ballerinas have an identity problem. One identity is the dancer of little girls’ dreams, who spins on top of a music box to a tinny rendition of *Swan Lake*; the other is the dark, sinister ballerina who, in her doomed quest for perfection, turns into a stressed-out, strung-out anorexic. The nature of ballet smashes the ideal of the music-box ballerina. (...) but ballet offers the promise of greatness, for the mortal to become immortal by living in the imaginations of others.

(...) *Flesh and Bone* (...) fixates on the physical excess and emotional distress exacted by ballet. One part *Dancing on My Grave* and another part *The Jerry Springer Show*, *Flesh and Bone* revels in the clichéd, the sensationalistic, and the tawdry.

(...) Claire Robbins (played by a competent if underwhelming Sarah Hay). (...)

Like the center of an asterisk, all the characters intersect with the rabidly ambitious Paul, who has two moods: boiling excitability and icy derision. Abandoned by his parents and raised in a foster home, Paul takes his angst out on whomever gets in his way. Targets include Ross (Sascha Radetzky (...) ), the playboy principal dancer, who balks at Paul’s suggestively hands-on coaching and company manager Jessica (Tina Benko), who strives to indulge Paul’s demands for champagne on a prosecco budget.

(...) there’s enough sex, drugs, and boobs for a rock star. (...)

The aging prima ballerina Kiira (the deliciously campy Irina Dvorovenko) (...)

As for the sex, pretty much everyone is having it. Mia (Emily Tyra), Claire’s anorexic roommate, has an obscene encounter with Claire’s traumatized brother, who’s returned from Afghanistan. Paul keeps his male lover at arm’s length by paying him, and Claire moonlights at a strip club where, (...) she has sex with a smitten customer. Rather than titillate, these trysts depress, fueled as they are by loneliness and self-loathing.

While myriad boobs fill the screen, it’s really the foot that’s the fetish. (...)

(...) All the storylines twine into a banal climax — the success of American Dance Company’s gala performance. Claire astonishes the crowd in Toni’s contemporary ballet, *Daniki*, (...) The clunky, amateurish choreography (by Ethan Stiefel) of the supposedly groundbreaking *Daniki* points to the larger issue with *Flesh and Bone*. It desperately wants to be provocative and innovative, but it isn’t doing anything that hasn’t been done before. Toni’s first rehearsal for *Daniki* features the dancers with bare feet, an African drummer, and lots of rolling on the floor — modern dance clichés to be sure, but at least at odds with classical ballet. By the next rehearsal, it’s back to ballet as usual: pointe shoes, sweeping lifts, and pretty *port de bras*.

It’s this failure to transcend the lurid, hackneyed bromides of ballet, in both story and art, that makes me wonder: Does anybody have anything new to say about ballet?"

Erin Bomboy: *'Black Swan' Redux*, BroadStreetReview, 19. Januar 2016.

1. ↑ https://tv.avclub.com/starz-s-ballet-drama-flesh-and-bone-can-t-meet-the-barr-1798185532
2. ↑ https://www.wsj.com/articles/flesh-and-bone-tv-review-dancing-in-the-dark-in-a-world-of-hurt-1446765238
3. ↑ http://www.broadstreetreview.com/film-tv/flesh-and-bone-on-starz#