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Strictly Ballroom

directed by Baz Luhrmann

This unit was prepared by Lorraine Bowan, Narrabeen Sports High School

The representation of aspects of the world through images

The world of Australian ballroom dancing

The setting of the world of Australian competitive ballroom dancing was a marvellous opportunity for production designers, Catherine Martin and Bill Marron, and costume designer, Angus Strathie.

$7,000 worth of ostrich feathers, $200 per metre sequined fabric and 5,000 hours labour to decorate the costumes contributed to the film’s visual richness.

“Their costuming amplifies their characters. They have their rehearsal outfits and they have their ballroom costumes which are extraordinarily spectacular,” says Catherine Martin.

It is this “amplification” that is the key to the way the screen writers, Craig Pearce and Baz Luhrmann, envisaged that world and how the director, Baz Luhrmann, together with cinematographer, Steve Mason ultimately represented it in the film.

Craig Pearce explains: “The world of ballroom dancing is a heightened world anyway but in the film it is represented as even more heightened than in real life.” (Interview with the writer, Iona, 27/1/00)

Each of Baz’s and Craig’s screen plays, Strictly Ballroom, William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and Moulin Rouge is set in a heightened world against which primal myths are played out.

“Luhrmann’s direction nicely emphasises the second-fiddle glamour aspects of the ballroom world in question and also caricatures it. The costumes and production design are a giant help in defining the self-involved world in which most of “Ballroom” takes place, a cosmos of chintzy dazzle, gaudy colours, ill-fitting wigs, too much mascara, but also dance and dreams.

Robert Osborne: ‘Strictly Ballroom’ in The Hollywood Reporte, 18 May 1992.

The world of Australian ballroom dancing:

The opening sequence

The red curtain in semiotic terms is a modality marker which helps us assign the narrative to the realm of fact or fiction.

We hear strains of The Blue Danube as a red plush stage curtain fades onto the screen and opens to reveal the film’s title. This image establishes two important things for the audience:

firstly that they are going to see a fairy tale;
secondly, that its representation will be expressionistic, not naturalistic.

Many reviewers have labelled the film’s visual style as that of the cartoon or caricature and this is suggested by the sparkle which animates the title in Disney style.

“The red curtain suggests that we will open the curtain and show you a world,” explains Craig Pearce.

“You’re meant to know how it’s going to end the moment it opens,” says the director, Baz Luhrmann. “It’s not supposed to be naturalistic or psychological. It’s a fairy tale...” (Sheila Johnston, “Leading a Merry Dance” in The Independent, August 14 1992.)

Craig Pearce explained the image of formally attired dancers seen in silhouette, in slow motion and monochrome, leaping joyfully, saying, “It is based on the commercials for sports shoes showing high profile athletes in heroic slow motion action, full of grace and larger than life which is how the ballroom dance world sees itself.

The point of view here is that of the dancers but as they emerge into the light and colour of the next scene, the point of view changes. It is saying ‘Now we will show you their world as it appears to us’.” There is thus a contrast. The grace and dignity of the silhouette scene gives way to the tacky, gaudy posing and preening in the small time dance hall as the film affectionately satirises the world of ballroom dancing.

Activity:

The image of the number 100 on Scott’s back is emphasised in this opening sequence with a freeze frame.
Trace each recurrence of this image and explain how the director uses this image throughout the film.

The Dance Federation

That the ballroom world is controlled by a hierarchical structure with a president at the top is established in the samba sequence (6.30). The low angle shot of Barry Fife is introduced by Shirley who explains that Scott’s crime was magnified by its having been made in front of Federation President, Barry Fife, who smiles benevolently and raises his arms in a gesture of power. Mention of his video and the applause of the crowd confirms his status.

The film could have been set in any organisation which rewards adherence to the rules and represses originality:

“It’s not about ballroom dancing. Ballroom dancing just provides the imagery. The story of the boy and girl who rebel against the narrow restraints of the ballroom federation to find their own way of expression, is a microcosm of the world at large. The ballroom federation is every political body which fights to defend the status quo against up-and-coming champions.”

Baz Luhrmann quoted in David Robinson: “Fearless team takes on the world and wins” in The Times 21 May 1992.

Activity:

Watch Barry’s sequence from 6.30 on your tape counter and note the office furnishings, particularly the globe. Follow the link to read about metonymy and explain how the globe functions as a metonym and what it adds to our understanding of Barry’s stature.
Follow the link to see how to use graphic organisers, then use one of the graphic organisers to represent the way Barry Fife and the Federation is represented through image throughout the film.

The world of Spanish culture

It is through Fran and her Spanish family that Scott Hastings finds the missing element in his dancing when YaYa asks him, “Where do you feel the rhythm?” and indicates that he should feel it in his gut and his heart. This is a world apart from the rigid routines he has mastered dancing Federation steps.

While all of the scenes representing the world of the dance studios and competitions are interiors, those scenes depicting the world of authentic Spanish flamenco at the Toledo milk bar are all exteriors. Montage is the predominant mode in representing the world of the federation while the scenes at the Toledo milk bar are as close as we get to mise-en-scene realism. (refer to Film Script Terminology or other sites in the References section for definitions of film terminology.

“While many of the smaller parts played by Gia Carides, Bill Hunter, Barry Otto and Pat Thomson are comic book-inspired, those of Antonia Vargas and Armonia Benedito are almost ‘neo-realistic’,” writes Peter Crayford in The Australian.

Writing of the scene which begins at 49.52 on your tape counter, he states: "this scene is, in its own small way, an affirmation of multicultural Australia and shows what immigrant people can contribute...Strictly Ballroom recognises an almost subliminal psychological and political change in the Australian identity and expresses it as a clash of cinematic styles, as well as of characters and values. It will be seen as [an] important ... film in defining ourselves to ourselves and to others...”

This is an example par excellence of the way in which the use of language (in this case the language of image) is inseparable from the meaning it conveys.

“The clash of styles gives the film much of its inventiveness,” Crayford concludes.

Milk bar scene

Activity:

Contrast the camera techniques used in the samba competition scene beginning at 6.50 with those used at the Toledo exterior scene beginning at 55.30 after following the links in this section.

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