Kristine Froseth

Birds of Paradise treads the well-worn path blazed by films powered by the refrain that ‘everything is not beautiful at the ballet.’ The dance drama is beautifully made (even if it works the birds metaphor pretty hard) and never succumbs to the temptation to make the ballet world more “accessible” by revolving around an implausible outsider–I’m looking at you, Flashdance, and other misguided attempts to make the “stodgy” world of classical dance more relatable by focusing on a rebel whose mission is to make it less classical dance-y.