“Resilient Man”: An Injured Dancer Revealed in a Stunning Documentary

Steven McRae is a dancer with the Royal Ballet in London. A victim of a serious Achilles tendon rupture, he decided to fight to return to the stage. Stéphane Carrel followed all stages of its reconstruction in a moving documentary.

His career was broken on stage on October 16, 2019 while he was dancing Manon’s story, Kenneth MacMillan’s famous ballet. Steven McRae is a “principal”, the equivalent of our principal dancers, at the Royal Ballet in London. In the documentary A resilient man dedicated to him by Stéphane Carrel, in cinemas from April 17, he explains how he made it “little jump” AND feeling “like a stab in the Achilles tendon.”

He can no longer stand on his feet and starts screaming. Stunned spectators are the first witnesses of his pain and his drama. Twenty minutes later, the decision was made to operate. He will be in a cast and then wear an orthopedic boot for weeks. He will be arrested for two and a half years.

Never give up

His career could have ended there, but his passion for dancing is so strong that he is not ready to give up. With the help of his wife, a Royal Ballet dancer like him and the mother of their three children, he will fight body and soul to rebuild himself and return to dancing.

Director Stéphane Carrel he followed him for almost two years, step by step, for better or for worse. His documentary hides nothing of the difficulties, the anxiety of this brilliant performer who finds himself forced to start from scratch, or almost. The title of the film is about resilience, this the ability to never give up.

A resilient man shows behind the scenes, the exceptional weight of the profession of a dancer and the sword of Damocles that injury represents. We are thinking of Cédric Klapisch’s film In the body published in 2022 which also followed the journey of a dancer injured on stage. Reality meets fiction. And it often exceeds it.

To return to the stage, Steven McRae does not take the easy way and exercises Romeo and Juliet, one of the most challenging classical ballets. His instructor advises him to hold his horses. He is in a hurry to get back to his best level.

Learn to measure your efforts

However, he knows better than anyone what happens when you don’t listen to your body’s warning signals. He ignored it for a long time with strong painkillers. Learning to measure your efforts is an integral part of the reconstruction program.

A resilient man is a moving exposure. The dancer surrenders completely without hiding his doubts and fears. Despite its length, the documentary gives reason to think about the priesthood that this profession can represent. He asks this difficult question: how can we grow old in dance if the body no longer keeps up?