Beyond Moving: A South African child street-performer's problematic journey to ballet's global stages
By Jim Slotek
Rating: B-plus
The magical “diamond in the rough” is one of the most timeworn of themes – teenage superstar ball players fielding amid rubble in Cuba, self-taught child math geniuses in Indian slums, etc.
While heartwarming in its Billy Elliot-ish premise, Vikram Dasgupta’s Beyond Moving is, as its title suggests, about what happens after the newly discovered-talent is hurled into the world, ultimately neither here nor there.
Ballet prodigy Siphe November and his first teacher, Fiona Sutton
The movie follows the journey of the National Ballet’s Siphe November, who was discovered as a child in the South African townships, entertaining in the streets with a self-created mash-up of break-dancing and ballet (the latter taught to him, and to his older brother Mthuthu, by a strong-willed, and later quite ill, dance teacher named Fiona Sutton).
Though they performed as a duo, Siphe was plucked from a life of (as he puts it) “doing nothing” to the National Ballet School, courtesy of a Toronto couple who went the extra mile to foster him and arrange for an unheard-of audition for a previously unseen dancer.
As much as someone can be a “natural,” we watch him play that part. He’s considered too small and his ballet training rudimentary, but his fluidity and creativity of movement impresses. And over the years (this is an ambitiously lengthy undertaking as documentaries go), he becomes a stand-out performer, winning over the likes of Russian principal dancer Diana Vishneva (who initially refuses to be on the bill with students), and ably taking on dance roles made famous by Baryshnikov.
It might be hard to feel sorry for someone who goes from the the Townships to first-class hotels and international performances. But the surreality and pressures of Siphe’s fish-out-of-water existence come through on the screen. He’s trying to become the first male Black African lead of a major ballet company, deeply misses his mother and brother (who’s back in South Africa, still drying to make it as a dancer himself) and is somewhat estranged from Sutton, who is proud but guardedly bitter at having lost her prize pupil.
Beyond Moving is indeed moving, and doesn’t settle for tidy finishes or happy endings. We live in an entertainment culture that plucks young people out of one reality by dint of talent or attractiveness and makes them sink or swim in another. This comes with a cost that is clearly visible, even as Siphe succeeds.
The film is also a terrific introduction to the philosophies of dance, articulated by Siphe himself, and by his world-class teachers, who’ve dedicated their lives to physical storytelling.
Beyond Moving. Directed by Vikram Dasgupta. Starring Siphe November, Mthuthu November, Fiona Sutton. Now available on demand on Documentary Online Cinema websites across the country, the Ted Rogers Cinema website via Hot Docs At Home, and the Blue Ice Docs website.