Jalet, who choreographed Luca Guadagnino’s horror movie “Suspiria,” knew Saldaña only from the movie “Avatar.” When he discovered “Center Stage,” he grasped that she would take movement seriously. “It was such an amazing relief to feel that, “Oh, she’s a dancer,” he said.
In the original conception, Saldaña had just one dance scene: Rita walks through a crowd in an open-air market, building a defense for the courtroom as her hands and arms slice through the air with emphatic intensity. “In this first scene, she’s rough,” Jalet said. “She has instinct. You recognize gesture, you recognize her power. But it’s also sent in many directions. And there is something not so sharp about it.”
Jalet fought for more opportunities to choreograph for Saldaña, to show her character’s growth. He wanted to make a dance in which she would fully explode and discover a space of freedom. That happens in “El Mal,” set in a ballroom at a gala, where she confronts the wealthy hypocrites in the room. Wearing a red velvet suit, her hair slicked back in a low ponytail, she’s defiant as she interprets lines like “had his partner’s throat slit,” with an arm striking forward and her fingers in the shape of scissors.
As Saldaña makes her way among the tables, her body moves with force, spinning, strutting, consumed by confidence. Her hips swirl; her limbs shoot out like swords. “She’s a killer,” Jalet said. “And that’s the thing — I wanted to use dance in that film like a tool of resistance, like a weapon.”
And Saldaña’s weapon, not just as Rita but in all of her roles, is the intelligence of her body — a body of passion and articulation whether seen or only felt.
Jalet said he could feel that dance was Saldaña’s first love.
“When you start as a dancer, you think as a dancer the rest of your life,” he said. “With dance, it’s like Sisyphus. You can have an amazing show, and the next day you have to start from scratch. You go through physical pain, you go through exhaustion, and there’s always this thing that it’s you. There’s this vulnerability that you bring, a level of power and vulnerability.”
Saldaña’s performance is proof: You can’t hide from your first love.
