Neve Campbell trained extensively for two years straight prior to filming "The Company." Mark Goldweber, a Ballet Master with the Joffrey Ballet of Chicago had this to say about the talented dancer: "Neve Campbell is a beautiful and dedicated artist. Her discipline for getting back in shape after ten years off pointe was amazing and inspiring to the entire Joffrey Ballet. In class she made it her priority to take corrections from the Joffrey Ballet Masters and she achieved the Joffrey look in a relatively short time. Young dancers will especially enjoy and admire her performance in 'The Company.'"
You’ve been saying you wanted to make a movie about ballet for years. How did this happen for you?
I have been developing it for the last seven years. [If you want something done right], you gotta do it yourself. You can't just wait for it to happen. That was the process.
I actually originally had a dance film I tried to develop at a large studio. I realized very quickly that they were very happy to have me in a movie that happened to be about dance, as opposed to a movie about dance that happened to have me in it, which was not what I wanted to make. I wanted to make a film about dance itself and the process of choreography and what the dancers go through - the athleticism and the spiritual challenges. That's what I wanted to make. I took it away from the studio and consequently owed them a lot of money. I took it to Killer Films instead, because I knew that Killer Films is very good at making small films that might be a challenge to get financing, and staying out of the creative process.
I found Barbara Turner about 4 years ago. She and I started going to the Joffrey Ballet in Chicago and getting to know the dancers and doing all the interviews with all of their stories, and learning about their passion for dance. Then we created the story and Barbara wrote the script, and then we found Bob [Altman].
How do you make a film like this accessible to non-dancers and people who are not familiar with that world?
You hope [it reaches] anyone who might be interested in learning about a world they know nothing about, or people who are obsessed with athletics and the challenges that athletes go through. I think that this is that story, as well.
What did you learn about ballet from this experience?
I started dancing when I was six. It was my first love, my first passion. It was my entire childhood and my entire adolescence and my early adulthood. So I knew a lot about it.
But did this help you discover a different side of it?
I don't know that I discovered a different side of it. I think the knowledge I had was the story I wanted to tell. Because these dancers are so phenomenal, and such amazing athletes and artists, that story to me needed to be told. But I don't know if there was one story in particular that I learned. It was just that I was able to step back into it.
You started at six years old? Did your mom say you had to go to dance class?
Dad took me to “The Nutcracker” - my dad raised me. I fell in love with it and said, "I want to do that." He bought me ballet lessons for Christmas. And so I started.
Robert Altman said that all dancers hate “The Nutcracker.” Were you ‘Clara’ at some point in your dance career?
I didn't despise it because when I did it, I was a kid. I went to the National Ballet School of Canada and so I got to dance in “The Nutcracker” as a child. But I never got to be Clara. I was Naughty Girl and Tall Girl. I did two seasons of that. There were about 50 shows each season. As a kid, you go to the school, you get to dance with the dancers you idolize. You spend Christmas in a hotel in Ottawa or Hamilton or Toronto. So for me, it was a magical experience. But later on I got a little sick of the music.
PAGE 2: The Joffrey Ballet, Returning to Dance, and Injuries
ADDITIONAL "THE COMPANY" RESOURCES:
"The Company" Photo Gallery
"The Company" Movie Credits
"The Company" Trailer and Websites
