Where
Sundance Kabuki, 1881 Post St.
When
12/6/2010 check listings
Cost
11
Until its final, harrowing, ecstatic ending, Darren Aronofky’s Black Swan takes viewers on a mind-bending, over-the-top trip that pulls back the curtain on the ballet world’s gruesome underbelly all while slipping further and further into a horrific, obsessive realm where dreams and reality become indistinguishable.
The setting is the NY Ballet Company. Nina (Natalie Portman), is ideal for the White Swan – sweet and vulnerable – but lacks the passion and unguarded freedom needed to play the Black Swan. To reach her dark, other half she has to go to Hell and back. Egging her on in her descent is Lily (Mila Kunis) – a new dancer that exemplifies the abandon she seeks, yet fights against.
Gone must be her pink, tousled, teddy-bear swarmed room, the oppressive, smothering mother that lives through her successes and failures, the prison of her frigid virginal perfection. The true perfection needed to achieve this role is the combination of dark and light, innocence and fire which she must embrace in one sweep, literally peeling back her own skin to allow her dark swan feathers to emerge. The question that the audience faces is, can she withstand the pressure of the transformation?
Proxy and paradoxes - commodities and culture as "pop-ups". 
The mystique has not died, in fact it has reinvented itself! 
A good, close shave.