Stream It Or Skip It: ‘On Pointe’ On Disney+, A Docuseries About The School Of American Ballet

It’s interesting timing that On Pointe, a docuseries about the real-life School of American Ballet, is coming on the heels (or more likely, toes) of Netflix’s YA series Tiny Pretty Things, about an elite ballet school. If you watched TPT, you might never encourage your kids to take up ballet, given all the drama we saw on that show. So will On Pointe, which profiles kids as young as 9, make you think otherwise?

ON POINTE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A quote by George Balanchine, the founder and director of the New York City Ballet: “But first, a school.” We then see skyline shots of midtown Manhattan and the outside of Lincoln Center.

The Gist: On Pointe follows groups of students through the winter season of the prestigious School Of American Ballet (SAB), founded by Balanchine as a feeder system to the New York City Ballet. We see all levels of training at the elite school, from kids as young as 6 up through high school kids who have applied from all over the country.

In the first episode, we see various instructors and administrators go all over the five boroughs of New York to audition new students into their beginning boys and girls’ classes. During those auditions — only 25% make it — they’re looking for ballet-ready flexibilities and body types. We also see returning students, like 9-year-old Isabella,10-year-old Kai and 11-year-old Gabbie, looking to see if they can get parts in the NYCB’s production of The Nutcracker.

We also go all over the country to visit teenage students in the Intermediate and Advanced programs, that usually live in dorms at SAB and take academic classes at a nearby school. Taela, 15, is from New Orleans; Domenika, 15, is from Tampa; Sam, 16, is from Richmond; Elias, 17, is from Oakland.

Whether they’re in the children’s division or the intermediate/advanced division, the students have long days, whether they commute into school or stay in the dorms, often ending somewhere between 8 and 9 at night. And the Balanchine technique, which is ultra-detailed and athletic, is not easy to learn, even for students of classical ballet.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Tiny Pretty Things, except in real life, with teenagers who are actually teenagers, and none of the sex.

Our Take: On Pointe, directed by Larissa Bliss for Imagine Documentaries, is probably what kids who aspire to be ballet stars — and their parents — should watch before committing to such a life. It shows how devoted to the art kids can be from a young age, and how difficult and exacting the training is at a top school like SAB, even for the littlest students. As gentle as the documentary tries to be about it, it still feels like a cautionary tale.

The series feels like the promotional docuseries you see all over Disney+; but instead of being promotional for Disney, it’s promotional for the SAB. We only see the good stuff; kids being tried out, dancing in class and getting gently corrected, teens enjoying the friendships they’ve built at the school over their time there. We don’t see the pain the kids feel in their feet, knees and hips by doing these unnatural movements over and over. We don’t see heartbreak at not advancing or making it onto a production like The Nutcracker. We don’t see the physical abuse some of these dancers might put themselves through in order to fulfill their dreams.

But the most unfortunate thing is that we don’t see any of these kids — and even the teens are kids — acting their age. They all talk like they’re 30 and they’re already aiming for the principal dancer spot at some large city ballet company. The crushing schedules the kids have to follow in order to do ballet on top of academics made us wonder if these kids had time to ride bikes, or skateboard, or play games with their friends. Or are their entire lives given over to ballet?

Sure, it’s their choice. Bliss made sure to interview atypical dance parents, like Dominika’s dad, who won a Stanley Cup on the Tampa Bay Lightning in 2004. Taela’s mom held her back a year because she didn’t think her daughter was ready to be away from home. But you just have to wonder if there were bigger discussions going on that we’re not privy to, where the parents asked if their kids are ready for this kind of commitment. Those are the kinds of conversations we would have wanted to see, instead of information about the school and the Balanchine method that we could have looked up online.

What Age Group Is This For?: This series feels like it’ll work well for the 8-and-up set.

Parting Shot: Isabella and her mom walk away from the school as we see the digital ad boards for Lincoln Center that line the streets outside the landmark.

Sleeper Star: Isabella, for sure. She’s the youngest kid profiled, but she’s got her head squarely on her shoulders.

Most Pilot-y Line: Not a problem, per se, but we’re wondering if the series will deal with how the pandemic affected the season and the kids who were staying at the school. It does take place during the 2019-20 season, so the pandemic was a part of it.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Despite our objections, On Pointe is still an interesting look at something we usually only see on scripted TV shows, exaggerated to dramatic effect. It shows that the life of a ballet student isn’t nearly as dramatic as what you see on shows like Tiny Pretty Things.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

Stream On Pointe On Disney+