Flesh And Bone

Season 1 M-Net Edge (*102) 21:35 Drama

When dancer Sarah Hay, who plays American Ballet Company newcomer Claire Robins, read the script for the first episode of ballet mini-series Flesh And Bone (2015), she thought, “Wow, this seems like I’ve lived this before. This is so weird.” And yes, dance does get crazily dramatic. “I’ve been screamed at by directors because my shoes weren’t the right colour onstage,” Sarah says. There were still aspects she found strange, admitting that “the situations where I was put against another dancer, verbally, was very challenging for me”. But in terms of dance, she’s on pointe…

The 29-year-old has been dancing 1

“forever”. She started formal training aged eight, graduating from New York’s American Ballet Theater in 2006.

With her relatively (for a dancer) 2

short and curvaceous build, Sarah battled to find roles in the US. “They have this cookie-cutter idea of being skinny and tall,” she says. Her struggle has been worked into Claire’s storyline over the show’s eight episodes.

Sarah took a break from her career 3

as a soloist at the Dresden Semperoper Ballett in Germany, where she’s been dancing since 2009, to film the once-off series. The moment filming wrapped, she was back at work, preparing for their 2016 tour of Russia.

This isn’t Sarah’s first time dancing 4

on camera – she was an unnamed member of the ballet corps in the 2010 Oscar-winning film Black Swan.

Sarah ignored the show’s invita5

tion to audition as she thought it was a reality show. It was creator/executive producer Moira Walley-Beckett’s Emmy Award-winning work as story editor, writer and producer on Breaking Bad (2008-2013) that convinced her to take the chance. NB! More on p7.