Dance – A Body Can Lose Control

It makes sense: Careers are short, and there is always another dancer waiting in the wings with better feet, a higher jump and — that undeniable thing — youth. But dance is also a way to show emotions and the inner mind without words; a body can lose control. It can appear to be human and transform into something else: eerie, tormented, exaggerated.

“The Red Shoes” (1948) is an opulent look at a young ballerina who rises to the top and dances herself to death. Problematic? The horror in “Suspiria,” both the 1977 and 2018 versions, involves witches haunting dance academies; the dancers in Gaspard Noé’s “Climax” are deranged and on drugs.

They’re grown up. It shows dance as a form of catharsis: Billy, growing up during the grim 1984 coal miner’s strike in northern England, had a reason to dance. But “Tiny Pretty Things” is cheap: It’s like an 11-year old trying to act — and dress — like a grown-up.

And add to that some of the trauma and torment associated with “Flesh and Bone,” a 2015 Starz mini-series, and the unending scandal of “Gossip Girl.” It should come as little surprise that in “Tiny Pretty Things,” rest and rehab aren’t how a dancer overcomes an injury: It’s drugs. One student, Bette, dancing with fractured metatarsal, needs more Vicodin.

What Is The Name Of The First Season Of Tiny Pretty Things?

The dialogue is often tired, the archetypes are predictable, the villains are cartoonishly villain-y, and the cliches are too numerous to count. There’s a misunderstood Muslim boy who gets a hard time from his roommate for praying, a spoiled rich blonde girl who gets everything she wants, a gay boy who hooks up but can’t commit, and an Asian girl who pushes herself because of her Tiger mom. And yet by the end of the 10-episode first season of Tiny Pretty Things, I wanted to see what happened next.

Though they had denied her at her audition, the school wants her now to fill a spot created when the best dancer at the school fell four stories off a roof. Instead of a place where someone jumps off the roof, they want to be seen as a school that gives poor Black girls a chance to be prima ballerinas. (At one point during Tiny Pretty Things, a newspaper writes about a sex scandal with underage girls at the school and the headline is “Tutu Close for Comfort.”

As Neveah navigates her new surroundings, she finds that she can’t trust anyone and danger lurks everywhere. The flat, stereotypical characters give way to actual teens somewhere halfway through the season. Once the show realizes that systems are scarier than jealous teens, it starts to click into place.

When every student is trapped in an environment that could lead to harm at any turn from those who are meant to protect them, the story becomes deeper and more compelling. These themes are also illustrated in Neveah’s backstory, which includes police shooting an innocent young Black kid and incarcerated family members. One thing Tiny Pretty Things offers that other teen murder shows don’t is dancing.

Just as the story meshes better over the season, the acting improves as well. Yet, even with all its over-the-topness and cliches, by the end of the season, there were characters I was rooting for and people I was shipping. It’s not great television, but it is a fun ride and you know what you’re getting—and sometimes that’s enough.

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Who Is A Prime Suspect For Cassie’S Attempted Murder?

The drama show about murder and ballet attracted many viewers. Some of the cast members cuddling up. While not having a single straight, white male as the main character, Tiny Pretty Things‘ diverse characters are often stereotyped.

Nabil’s roommate Caleb, who is on the right, hates Nabil because his father was killed by a Muslim man in action. June attempts to emancipate from her mother because she refuses to support her dancing. The show criticized for its sex scenes Upon Tiny Pretty Things release, the internet formed a consensus for why the drama show made them uncomfortable.

The issue lies not in the students’ sexualities but in the horrific way the writers depict them. For instance, the show features a love triangle between Shane, Oren, and Bette. Oren and Bette are in a supposedly committed relationship with one another.

Tiny Pretty Things was a book written by Dhonielle Clayton and Sona Charaipotra. Although the book focuses more on female characters Neveah, Bette, and June, this relationship is severely toxic in the show. This vindictive nature is not something teenage girls should be learning.

So why does the audience continue to watch it? Simply put, people love watching the drama unfold. However, those viewers eventually realize they should not be supporting a show that promotes negative stereotypes.

What Is The Latest Teen Drama To Hit Netflix?

Tiny Pretty Things is the latest teen drama to hit Netflix, and it’s like Riverdale meets Pretty Little Liars with a ballerina spin. I was a ballerina for most of my young life, from age 2 to 17. I never went to ballet boarding school, as the Tiny Pretty Things characters do, but I spent up to 6 days a week for much of my formative years doing ballet so I think I have a pretty good grip on how things work in the world of ballet.

A lot of the advice and musings on dancing that come from the voiceover are quite accurate. In this show, the ballet master calls it “junk”, but regardless of terminology, overclothes are unacceptable in a lot of serious classes. I constantly got in trouble for showing up to class with extra clothes on.

In the first few episodes, Neveah adapts to her new classes, and her instructor is constantly correcting her form incessantly. When she gets down on herself over this, her roommate points out to her that it’s a good thing, and she’s totally right. She corrects her form, but in her corrections is a much deeper meaning about life.

Eating disorders abound in the world of ballet, both in the show and outside of it. To stay very thin, ballerinas exercise constantly and some eat very little. This is unfortunately quite prevalent in the dance world.

Dancing with hair down is distracting and difficult and not as beautiful as it looks on screen. I know ballet masters are technically a thing, but I’ve never known anyone who referred to their instructors like that. Dancers can’t really fight as they do in that one scene in the alley.

What Is The Problem With The Tropes In Tiny Pretty Things?

The world of dance is deeply dramatic, and fairly ridiculous, in this overstuffed series simply heaving with dance drama clichés. What would a ballet story be without the competition between dancers and a big scandal everyone’s whispering about backstage? The problem isn’t that the tropes are there, it’s that they’re not done well, and Tiny Pretty Things feels shopworn instead of like a guilty pleasure.

People don’t talk this way, so, writers: Don’t write them this way. And if you’re thinking that said diva is being set up so that series lead Neveah can become the Next Amazing Thing that will threaten and perhaps even topple said diva’s reign, well, you’ve probably watched a few dance dramas yourself, and can pretty much predict what’s going to happen next at every twist and turn. If that doesn’t turn you off, then maybe Tiny Pretty Things won’t either.