Pięćdziesiąt dwa százalék (52 procent)

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Rating: 8.57 (7 votes)

Directed: Rafal Skalski
Country: Poland
Language: Russian
Genre: Documentary, Short
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1074928

Summary

52 percent is the perfect leg length to height ratio. This is one of the most important criteria for admitting children to the Russian Ballet Academy in Saint Petersburg. Alla has two months to amend her proportions.

A strange connection is being made here between beautiful, sensitive art, and difficult emotions or sensations: tension, fear, pain and extreme weariness. All of this is already visible at the entrance exam to the ballet school. During this examination, the children are subjected to something they do not understand, because they just enter their teens. Alien people judge whether the candidates have an ideal body. They scrutinize the length of the neck, the stretchability of the limbs. Even their ideal proportions of legs to height are being verified. The dignity of the child is not at stake here, they are instrumentalized in the name of a higher cause. In a sense, their usefulness for this world is being measured.