PRODUCTION NOTES “Flesh and Bone” follows Claire, a young ballet dancer with a distinctly troubled past, as she joins the ranks of a prestigious ballet company in New York. The gritty, complex series unflinchingly explores the dysfunction and glamour of the ballet world. Claire is a transcendent ballerina with vaulting ambitions, held back by her own self-destructive tendencies; coping mechanisms for the sexual and emotional damage she’s endured. When confronted with the machinations of the company’s mercurial Artistic Director and also an unwelcome visitor from her past, Claire’s inner torments and aspirations drive her on a compelling, unforeseeable journey. It is Moira Walley-Beckett’s first project following her Emmy-award winning tenure as a writer and Executive Producer on “Breaking Bad.” Walley-Beckett partnered with a team of Executive Producers whose backgrounds include premium programming and insider dance connections – former ballet dancer Lawrence Bender (Pulp Fiction, Inglourious Basterds, Reservoir Dogs), Kevin Brown (“Roswell”), whose family of former ballet dancers was the basis for the 1977 feature The Turning Point, and Emmy-award winning producer John Melfi, whose extensive credits include “House of Cards,” “The Comeback,” “Nurse Jackie” and the film and TV versions of “Sex and the City.” “Flesh and Bone” is a character-driven drama that “rips the Band‑Aid off the glossy, optical illusion that is ballet. Ballet appears to be ethereal and perfect - and the dancers make it look easy - but the underbelly is pain,” said Walley- Beckett. “It’s dedication. It’s obsession. It’s an addiction. And it is perfect fodder for drama.” “Ballet is the backdrop for the story and many of the characters are involved in that world, but I’m not telling a story about ballet,” Walley-Beckett explains. “I’m telling a story about these characters.” In addition to Claire Robbins (Sarah Hay), the characters include her brother Bryan (Josh Helman), Romeo (Damon Herriman) a schizophrenic homeless man who befriends Claire, Paul Grayson (Ben Daniels), the Artistic Director of the American Ballet Company (ABC), and a company of 22 professional dancers. Casting authentic, trained professionals was the first challenge the production faced. “I didn’t want to fake it,” said Walley-Beckett. “I didn’t want to have body doubles. I didn’t want to have actors who could dance a little. I wanted dancers, and I wanted to be able to put the camera anywhere. I wanted to watch them sweat and bleed and suffer and soar. So we went on an exhaustive, seven‑month, international search for my main characters, and we got down to the wire. We found some remarkable dancers, including Sascha Radetsky (Ross) and Irina Dvorovenko (Kiira) but I couldn’t find my Claire. And then Ethan Stiefel, our choreographer, who is a former principal dancer at the American Ballet Theatre (ABT) remembered Sarah, who had studied at the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis pre-professional school there. And we tracked her down, dancing for a company in Germany. The rest is history.” CHASING A DREAM According to Walley-Beckett, “She [Claire] just wants a normal life, but this may be an impossible goal. She’s struggling to be ordinary while doing something extraordinary. Claire is our eyes into this world, and it’s her journey we’re following. She is a very complicated character. She’s suffered a lot of adversity. And when we meet her, she’s making one last kinetic thrust out of her dysfunctional life and into a future, and the stakes are high. But anything is better than where she was, so, she’s going to try her hardest to capture this elusive dream. It’s a last ditch effort, because at 21, she’s old to be starting again in a company. This is her moment, and it’s all or nothing, and nothing is truly nothing.” “We watch as Claire tries to overcome her enormous obstacles. Bryan, Romeo, and Sergei (Patrick Page), the Russian mobster who hires her to dance at his strip club, and a lot of other people who aren’t in the ballet world are vital parts of her journey.” In fact, Walley-Beckett says the time Claire spends at Sergei’s club, Anastasia, is as crucial to her growth as her time in the dance studio. “She’s so desperate to be in control of herself and to be the kind of woman that she had always hoped to be. There is an allure to the strip club. Claire starts to think of it as an opportunity to blossom into a woman who’s in control of her circumstances and her sexuality. That’s what draws her, like a moth to flame, because all her life she’s been completely powerless and completely at the mercy of men and her circumstances. So, she’s looking at the strip club as an opportunity to save herself and to transform.” NO BOUNDARIES Of course, the most formidable adversary on Claire’s transformational journey is Paul, the volatile artistic director. Paul sees Claire as a rising star, as the promise of a new future for his struggling company. “People like Paul exist,” Walley-Beckett confirms. “The artistic directors of companies are wildly creative people. Paul doesn’t have any boundaries, and he isn’t expected to have any. He’s a very extreme personality and within the world of ballet, not that unusual. The dark side attracts me, and so all the characters have lots of color, lots of circumstance. Nobody has an easy road, and that’s what I like.” Ben Daniels relished the challenge of bringing a character “with no off button” to life. “He’s such an incredible mixture of self-confidence and arrogance, self-loathing and deep, deep insecurity,” he says. “On the one hand, he’s like he feels like he’s the biggest, worthless piece of human trash. And on the other hand, he’s virtually a god. And he vacillates between those two poles daily, and sometimes in the same minute he can be both. And it’s quite fun to play that as an actor. He’s very instinctive and he never knows until he opens his mouth what he’s going to be like. He sort of borders on the sociopath – other people and their needs and wants don’t really enter the frame. He expects nothing but the best, because that’s how he danced when he was a dancer. He is living through these dancers and if they’re not at their hundred percent then neither is he; he can’t be the best.” With no professional dance experience, Daniels loved immersing himself in the community. “I hope I’m not offending anyone, but people involved in the ballet world are heightened, crazy people. And it’s so brilliantly written by Moira, who knows that world. None of it feels fake – talk to any of these dancers and they will tell you it’s not exaggerated in any way. He’s not a well man, Paul. In the dark of the night, he feels that he’s just not good enough and that his whole life is a lie. He has no family other than his dancers, and in his position he is the father, the brother, the lover. And Claire is very special. The moment he sets eyes on her, the moment she dances, he falls in love with her completely. And that plays out throughout the series.” “IT’S NOT A TEAM. WE’RE ALL AFTER THE SAME PART” Walley-Beckett started dancing when she was three, and continued through her 20s, including some years on a professional level, so she is deeply familiar with the idiosyncrasies of this world, which gives the series a realism that helps drive the narrative. “Coming from my background on “Breaking Bad,” authenticity is everything – dramatically, character-wise, story-wise. And in terms of the ballet component, that’s something that I wasn’t willing to show without full verisimilitude. All of it is true. It’s a very dynamic environment and there is a lot at stake and a lot at play, a lot of jockeying for position, a lot of ambition. You’re in this microcosm, thrust together all the time, and within that, you’re in a very familial, congenial-seeming place and yet, maybe you’ll get an opportunity because someone gets hurt. Or maybe your relationship with somebody will help you further your position. Your friends are your competition so it’s like a little stew.” Sarah Hay, who returned to the Semperoper Ballet in Dresden, Germany as soon as production wrapped, says she has experienced many of Claire’s challenges in her own career. “Being torn apart by people can be an everyday thing depending on who you are working with. I’ve been there. The anxiety from people judging you and people being jealous can take a toll. When any new dancer comes into a company, they want to size you up and know what your background is, where you came from. Everyone is wondering: Is she going to get my part? People can be pretty terrible within any competitive field, but ballet is a sport as well as an art and you’re not playing on a team. That’s what people always forget about dance companies – you’re all together all the time, but it’s not a team. You’re all playing for the same part.” Ethan Stiefel, a former ABT principal dancer who was working as artistic director of the Royal New Zealand Ballet, was brought in as choreographer for the series.