Neve Campbell once dreamed of fame as a ballerina, not as an actress, and spent five years training with the National Ballet of Canada.

Her promising career was cut short by injuries, an emotional breakdown and the rude realities of the obstacles facing all but the highest elite of dancers. Now she is acting out the trauma of a ballet life in the new film The Company.

The Guelph-born, 30-year-old Campbell conceived the film's inside-the-company story, enticed screenwriter Barbara Turner (Pollock, Georgia) to develop it with her and pestered the 78-year-old legend Robert Altman to direct it, refusing to take his many "No!" answers as final.

But the controversial film -- because reactions are so mixed -- is not autobiographical. Campbell stars as an aspiring dancer within the ranks of the Joffrey Ballet company in Chicago, where the film was shot. The National Ballet of Canada is not a player here.

"I didn't want it to be the Neve Campbell story," says Campbell of her own disappointing romance with ballet. "I thought that that would be distracting.

"I thought if it was about me, well, it would be boring, I think. I would actually rather see a company of dancers rather than see an actor try to be a dancer and tell her story, her old story, her sad story. Come on, it's not interesting!"

Altman, who has been directing for 53 years and writing for film and television even longer, was drawn to The Company -- finally -- because Campbell seduced him into thinking that he would enter a mysterious, enticing world in ballet. Altman actually knew little about it before the film project.

"This is interesting to me," says Altman, "so I assume it's going to be interesting to someone else. I knew I was walking into a fog. I didn't know what I was going to find."

Altman had no contact with and no interest in working with the National Ballet of Canada just because Campbell had once trained there. "I couldn't have done it with the National Ballet of Canada. They wouldn't have done it. They would not have given me the access, the time."

The Joffrey did, thanks to several years of contact with the Chicago company by Turner and Campbell. The research took place there; the film is set there; members of the real Joffrey perform on screen and some aspects of the story line are inspired by elements within the real company.

Altman was pleased that Campbell let her own story go. "She did all of it," Altman says of initiating the project, but making herself secondary to the Joffrey ensemble. "But that was her mandate coming in. She said: 'I don't want this to be about me as a dancer. I just want to be one of the dancers in the company.' I made a little more dramatic use of her than was intended.

"She's very special and she's very smart and she's very tenacious and she's the real fuse to this whole explosion. She caused it, she supported it and I hope she's pleased with it."

What pleases Campbell the most is that The Company is a truthful chronicle of the process of creation, in this case of a new ballet by tempestuous Canadian choreographer Robert Desrosiers. The film pulls back the curtain to show how a real dance company operates, Campbell says.

"I'd never felt that there had been a film made about the world of dance itself. There have been plenty of dance movies and there have been dancers within films who have been the chorus girls who want to make it. But we've never actually seen what companies go through and what that entails and what the dancers go through on a daily basis financially, physically, mentally and spiritually.

"I think we should care because they're fascinating people."

People are obsessed with sports and athletes, Campbell says.

"Dance is that as well. It is certainly a sport and they're phenomenal athletes -- some of the best in the world -- and they're also artists and that's interesting."


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