CALLED TO THE BARRE
Some movie stars are also pretty talented dancers
SARAH L. KAUFMAN
It’s no stretch to say that dance is an underrated superpower in the film world. In fact, it’s central to the origin story of anyone who wants to play a superhero.
Just take a look at who’s starring in 2020’s upcoming superhero and action-adventure movies. Many of Hollywood’s hottest actors were hoofers before they were movie stars.
The following performers have all capitalized on years of serious dance training.
ZOE SALDANA
She is best known as slayer-turned-saviour Gamora, the green-hued Marvel Comics character in the Guardians of the Galaxy movies. But before she found stardom in action roles — including Indigenous hunter Neytiri in Avatar and its forthcoming sequels, and the acrobatic assassins in The Losers and Colombiana — she spent her childhood in ballet classes. Saldana also studied jazz, modern and Latin dance, but ballet was her obsession.
She gave it up when she found she didn’t have flexible-enough feet for a professional career, yet those years at the barre served another purpose. They launched her first big film role, in the 2000 ballet-school drama Center Stage. Saldana played the scene-stealing, tart-tongued dancer Eva. Her combination of fierceness and classical ballet technique in that film set her up for combat roles to come. “Ballet sort of trained me for action,” Saldana told Time.
TOM HOLLAND
The reigning Peter Parker/spider-man began his career at age 12 in Billy Elliot on London’s West End in 2008, after being spotted in a hip-hop class. Two more years of dance training, as well as gymnastics, prepared him for his musical-theatre debut. The lithe athleticism and the expressive, rhythmic grace of a dancer inform his film performances, too. Especially when he’s Peter, by turns boyishly awkward and preternaturally adept. We can read the happiness in his bouncy walk just before a mission, and he conveys a similar eagerness as he scooches along a ceiling and lands a backflip, while also demonstrating his agility and complete body control.
GAL GADOT
The Wonder Woman star returns in the sequel, Wonder Woman 1984, in June. Her gym workouts, horseback riding and the two years she spent in the Israeli army — that sounds like pretty great training for a superhero. But Gadot has had a more musical, artful form of preparation: She was a dancer for 12 years, studying ballet, hip hop, modern and jazz. She loved it so much, she told Vanity Fair, “I thought that I wanted to be a choreographer.” You can tell she’s a dancer in the simplest of actions — in the way she walks, for instance. It’s not only in her long, confident stride but in the way she conveys determination throughout her body. Gadot shows us not only Wonder Woman’s heroism but also her moral drive, in the slight tilt of her neck, forward but elongated, her head held proudly; in her drawn-in core; and in the smooth carriage of her arms and shoulders, the muscles engaged but not clenched. Her hip flexibility is key in all the lunges and kicks of the fight scenes, but the keenest evidence of Gadot’s dance training is in how she carries her shoulders, broadened and relaxed in a way that says she’s not looking for a fight, but she’ll have the angels on her side if you start one.
KRISTEN WIIG
The former Saturday Night Live comedian may not spring readily to mind as superhero material, but with seven years of ballet training as a child, the sky’s the limit. In Wonder Woman 1984, she’ll portray the villainous Dr. Barbara Ann Minerva, a.k.a. Cheetah. Look for a clash of two dedicated dancers, as Wiig’s Cheetah is the archnemesis of Gadot’s Wonder Woman.
CHARLIZE THERON
The star of Bombshell was a classically trained dancer before getting into acting. After studying ballet in Johannesburg, she attended the Joffrey Ballet School in New York until a knee injury forced her to stop. The majesty in her performances is unmistakable, especially as the title character in Aeon Flux. She performed some of the acrobatics herself, even after sustaining a neck injury. In 2017’s Atomic Blonde, where Theron plays an MI6 agent, her dancer’s flexibility, length of limb and grace are on view in the way she lunges and kneels while hog-tying and flipping her victims.
ANSEL ELGORT
In The Fault in Our Stars, he’s cute. In Baby Driver, he’s cool. No leaping or backflipping for him: He’s the getaway driver who releases his pent-up energy off the job. He turns a coffee run into a street ballet as the opening credits roll. His smooth control, the loose, musical roll of his shoulders, the rhythm of his walk — all signal the dancer within. This three-minute sidewalk show has its roots in the five years Elgort spent at the prestigious School of American Ballet, the training arm of New York City Ballet. He’s also starring as Tony in Steven Spielberg’s movie remake of
West Side Story, coming out in December 2020.
ZHANG ZIYI
The Chinese star shot to fame in 2000 in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon as a leaping assassin with a delicate physique. She reportedly had no martial arts training for that film, relying only on the speed, flexibility and control she developed as a dancer. She’d joined the Beijing Dance Academy at 11 and won a national youth dance championship at 15.
But Hollywood actors with significant dance training aren’t limited to action roles ...
PENELOPE CRUZ
Cruz studied ballet for nine years at Spain’s National Conservatory, then won a talent competition and landed her first TV role, which led to her film career. Even just walking around, she is instantly recognizable as a dancer, with her easy, uplifted carriage and lit-from-within energy.
CHANNING TATUM
The childhood athlete and martial artist has dance in his bones, if not in his educational background. Dancing came naturally, whether he was stripping (a real-life job that inspired his character in Magic Mike) or showing off in a Ricky Martin music video and the 2006 dance film, Step Up, that followed.
RYAN GOSLING
He began his showbiz life on TV’S rebooted The Mickey Mouse Club. Scratch that. He began even before then in his native Ontario, singing and dancing as a child with his sister in talent shows. Blah blah, The Notebook, blah blah ... and voila: La La Land. He displayed quiet confidence as a dancer in that musical, with even more ease in choreographed motion than his Oscar-winning co-star Emma Stone.