Flesh and Bone

“It was a hell of a job. In the dressing room I hammered so much on focus and that we had to be on top of it from minute one, but we were just kidding away easily. In itself it is not bad if your opponent is better, but make up for it with hard work and hit it hard every now and then. We did not. We looked like a hell of a bunch of fine ballerinas! ”. More than once I have heard disappointed football coaches say after a lost game that their players, when they rolled over the lawn again moaning with phantom pain after a minor violation, had behaved like a bunch of ballet dancers. Well, I have never read in the VI that Maher, five minutes before Cambuur - PSV, had quickly picked the loose nail from his swollen, bleeding big toe with trembling hands and then played the stars of the sky. The latter has only happened sporadically since his departure to Eindhoven, but that is not the point at the moment. Ballerinas are the Rambos of the dance world and when on a drizzly Sunday afternoon in a half-empty Eagle Hall, they have to put the Go Ahead Eagles over their knees, they keep making the back line until the vomit flows out of all their cavities. Sorry, that may have been a bit too much, but you see what I'm trying to say. Don't let the pink tulle of the tutus blind you, dancers are wreckers and that is all beautifully explained in Starz 'new finger-licker Flesh And Bone. With just a one-way ticket to New York and a sports bag with some clean underwear, Claire gets on the train in Pittsburgh. After a lot of misery, it is high time for news. For exciting. Nice and exciting. Claire has blown the dust off the pointe shoes and stretched the muscles again for an audition with the highly renowned dance collective of Paul Grayson, a choreographer who can go even harder than Gordon Ramsay on a bad day. As happy as she is when she belongs to one of the chosen ones, she will have it hard when she has to survive in a world of manipulation, abuse of power and hate and envy. Heavy food. Especially when her dark past suddenly decides to knock on her door again. With series like Magic City, Boss, Power and Survivor's Remorse, Starz is secretly knitting a nice collection with very different series and as far as I am concerned, Flesh And Bone enters that list with a dot. Curious about the first episode in the morning I clicked on play at my box with Cruesli and then stared at my screen for seven hours without interruption. Yes, I have time for that yes. It's Black Swan dressed up as a series. It's awkward, dark and confronting, yet there's so much beauty too. It is the ugly behind all that is beautiful. It is sucking on a sweet lollipop and then suddenly you come to that sour core. If Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis had you covered in Black Swan, I would definitely give Sarah Hay (Claire), who has to come to Amsterdam soon to propose to me, a chance. As if credibly reciting your lyrics isn't difficult enough, Hay in Flesh And Bone plumps everything together like it's nothing. Of course I am not a ballet fetishist and I did not eat any fromage of port de bras, relevé and développé, but it all looked very professional and credible. Not that I will now be in the Stadsschouwburg every weekend for the umpteenth contemporary rendition of Swan Lake, but seven hours of ballet on the couch was perfectly manageable. In any case, better than the average Ajax match. www.gumstarr.com

I used to love FAME ... made a kind of tutu at home from an old petticoat and fantasized dancing on flat gym shoes ... I was therefore glad that a dance series was finally coming. But don't expect sweet girls and lots of pink ... I watched an episode with sex, a lot of sex actually, drugs, abuse and pain. The first episode left me stunned ... did I think this was a good pilot ..? I think so, I want to see at least the 2nd episode .. I'll leave the rest in the middle for now.