A dancer’s dream fulfilled

Neve Campbell wanted to be a ballet dancer when she grew up. At 6, she enrolled in the National Ballet School of Canada, training and performing into her early teens, until recurring injuries slowed her down and acting presented itself as the more viable option.

But like many people who abandon their dreams for practical reasons, the actress never stopped thinking of herself as a dancer. Once she’d made a name for herself in the “Scream” movies, she used her status to convince a studio’s executives to let her develop a film about the dance world. She envisioned a behind-the-scenes look at the lives of dancers and a filmed testament to the ephemeral art form. If Campbell couldn’t be a professional ballerina, at least she could play one in a movie.

The 30-year-old had the confidence that despite having given up dancing nearly a decade before, she could get herself back in shape to be convincing on screen. She soon realized that in order to make the kind of movie she wanted -- not the star vehicle she says the studio had envisioned -- she would have to produce it herself.

She and the studio, which she declines to name, had a falling out. “I realized that the way I wanted to make this film was not the way that most studios would want to do it. So I decided to do it on a smaller scale. I took it away from that studio, and now I owe them a lot of money,” she says. “But that’s OK. We’ll work it out.”

The resulting film, Robert Altman’s “The Company,” a faux-documentary that features the Joffrey Ballet of Chicago and stars just three actors -- Campbell, James Franco as her love interest, and Malcolm McDowell as a character based on Gerald Arpino, Joffrey founder and artistic director -- opens on Christmas Day.

“The Company” is no “Billy Elliot” or “Flashdance,” with a central figure dancing his or her heart out to center stage. The movie features company dancers and ballet masters, as well as choreographers Lar Lubovitch and Robert Desrosiers. It does not have a driving narrative; half of it is pure performance. “I wanted to dance in a movie,” Campbell said last fall on the set in Chicago, “but I also really wanted to make a film that would show the world of dance. I don’t think there’s ever been a film that’s solely been made to show you what that world involves, and I wanted to see a film like that. I think most dancers feel that way, because they never feel that dance is represented in a realistic way.”

Campbell already had one producing experience, with her brother Christian on a friend’s straight-to-video movie eight years ago. “I learned a lot,” she said in a telephone interview. “It gave me the confidence to go out and to know what I was talking about when I was talking about getting crews together, you know, and production managers and locations and financing.”

Getting the money together, she says, was the hardest part. But over a period of about seven years, her producing duties included choosing a ballet company on which to model the film (she says she chose the Joffrey for its eclectic mix of contemporary and classic repertoire, its “all-star, no-star” motto and its close-knit dancers); hiring screenwriter Barbara Turner (“Pollock”) to travel to Chicago and spend several months over a two- or three-year period, interviewing and observing the dancers; and going through thousands of pages of transcribed interviews for Turner.

Campbell went to Christine Vachon at Killer Films to help her find co-producers for the movie. “A female-driven film about the world of dance is not the easiest film to get financed,” she says with a laugh. “So I had originally gone to Christine, because she’s good at making small films and films that may not get made otherwise.”

Campbell also spent three months convincing Altman -- a self-admitted dance innocent -- that there was a whole gritty, fascinating universe for him to explore. “I’m just passionate about the world of dance and dance itself because it was my passion throughout my childhood,” Campbell says. “But it was fun to talk to Bob about this world and see that he became intrigued and interested, because it made me think that other people might be as well.”

She says Altman was her first and only real choice as director, with his singular talent for ensemble pieces and his fluid camera. “I did not want for this to be some sort of MTV video,” Campbell says. “I hate it when dance is shot and you don’t actually get to see the choreography because they’re spending so much time showing the feet and then showing the hands and they’re more interested in their own camera work than the dance itself.

“Bob’s been really open to just setting the cameras back and turning them on and letting the dance be the dance, instead of letting the cameras dance and being fancy. Whenever you see dance on film, because people make so many cuts to tell a story, they never get to see the work itself. For Bob, it’s important to feel like we’re sitting in the audience watching the piece; to allow the dance to be the movement, not the camera.’”

Campbell helped choose the dance works for the movie -- strong visual pieces that had not been seen by large audiences and that would work well in snapshots. This included calling Desrosiers, whose “Blue Snake” she saw and loved when she was 11, and asking him to restage it.

On the set, Campbell became one of the company and devoted most of her energy to rehearsing and performing eight or 10 hours a day, relying on producers from Altman’s Sandcastle Films and Killer Films to handle much of the day-to-day logistics. But she also found herself as a liaison between the disparate worlds of ballet and moviemaking, having developed relationships with many of the dancers over the years of pre-production. The dancers went to her for clues about what the movie side was thinking; they trusted, with her first-hand knowledge of dance, that she would be able to explain when the floors were too slippery or the room was too cold. “I was the middle man in a big way,” Campbell says.

She said she also learned a lot about moviemaking from Altman.

“You can just tell he’s been in the business for a very, very, very long time,” she says, having noted how he dealt with obstacles like losing a prized location at the last minute.

“Most directors, if they have to lose something that they love creatively in their film, they freak out, they get upset, they fight it, they hate everyone. Bob freaks out, gets upset -- because he thinks creatively that art should be the last thing to get lost. But five minutes later, he’ll find a solution and something else that’s great to replace it and make it work business-wise. I think that’s a big thing to learn, not to lose your energy on anger and frustration in this business. Because there’s always going to be things that spin you around and change your plans -- it happens all the time.”

Campbell had a tired but exhilarated air during the last week of shooting. “Physically I’m exhausted,” she said, “but I also have more energy than I’ve had in 10 years. I hope I have a few more experiences like this, where something is so close to my heart. I feel very grateful that I was actually able to have an idea and then a dream and then do it. And create that for other people, too. So even if I’m physically exhausted, it’s probably the happiest I’ve ever been in my life.”

After the movie was finished, she said, she realized that producing was the only way to have control in a business in which the actor is often a pawn, rather than a driving force in the creative process. “Although it’s a fair amount of work, I’m going to continue to produce, because I think it’s easier to get stuff done in a way that you want,” she said. She’s also hoping to direct one day.

Why didn’t she try this one? “Because I didn’t want to mess it up,” she said, laughing. “But I’ve always wanted to direct.” She said Showtime offered her a chance to direct a couple films last year, “and they said, ‘We’ll surround you with all the people and you’ll be fine,’ which is a great opportunity. But on the other hand, I didn’t want to feel just like I was putting my name on something. So I think I want to develop something myself. I’m not sure how I’m going to do it yet.”

She says she took notes in the editing room with Altman, where she spent several sessions helping him with dance sequences. Even when pressed, Campbell insists that the experience, though hard work, was nothing short of “incredible” and “amazing.” Nevertheless, she says, “What I hadn’t expected is that it actually would have helped me with some remorse that I have about leaving dance. I didn’t expect to feel like, oh, I understand why I danced for so many years, now, and be able to let go of a bit of that sadness. Because I feel like I’ve done something productive with all my knowledge and training. And that’s something that is fantastic. I feel lucky, because a lot of dancers never get to let that go.”

Is it the movie she dreamed about? “Yeah,” she says. “It’s exactly the movie that I dreamed about, which is weird to be able to say, because it’s really rare that you can actually say that. Somehow Bob managed to get exactly what I wanted, and I don’t know how that happened, really. Except that he listened.”