Dancer

[projekktor id=’27001′]

Emmy Award winning director Steven Cantor’s latest documentary Dancer chronicles the up and down career of Ukranian ballet dancer Sergei Polunin, who burst onto the scene after featuring in Hozier’s music video for “Take Me to Church.”

Ukrainian-born “bad boy of ballet” Sergei Polunin became the Royal Ballet’s youngest ever principal dancer at age 19. But two years later — at the height of his success — he walked away from it all, resolving to give up dance entirely. Steven Cantor’s Dancer tracks the life of this iconoclastic virtuoso, from his prodigal beginnings in the Ukraine to his awe-inspiring performances in the U.K., Russia, and eventually the U.S., where he went viral after David LaChapelle filmed him dancing to Hozier’s “Take Me to Church.” Yet beyond celebrating the raw talent and wild ambition of Polunin, Dancer considers how wealth and success may not be enough when it comes to finding personal and professional identity.

In an interview with Screen Daily, the dancer talked about his hopes that the film will lead to more film projects in the future and expose the art to a wider audience. “My concern is that Dancer influences young kids to dance. It’s an important message for me. Ballet needs to become more democratic. It’s public but not open. It’s strange. We need people to popularise it, to make it more accessible. I want to bring ballet to the masses. I want to do ballet movies: to combine theatre and movies.”

Dancer is rated PG.