We follow one young dancer who is scheduled to perform her first principal role during the tour, as she frantically tries to learn the steps for her part. Two weeks before the tour she had suffered a leg injury that had prevented her from rehearsing and she is struggling to make up for lost time. The cameras follow her into the final rehearsal with the full cast before her big night, and it's obvious she's not ready as she makes mistake after mistake. In the end the missed rehearsal time was too much to overcome and she is pulled from her lead role. She tries to put a brave face on it — she will still be principal dancer in another ballet later in the tour — but you can hear her heartbreak in the way her voice trembles as she talks about it.
Of course there's also the whole logistical nightmare of transporting a ballet company and all the sets they are planning on using for their performances halfway around the world. The technical people have a day before the run starts to "hang" their sets (most theatres use what's known as a fly system where sets are hung on rigging high overhead and lowered down onto the stage by a series of pulleys) and focus the lighting to fit their requirements. However if they think they've got problems, that's nothing compared to what faces the music director as she has been given only a week to teach the orchestra the scores for the ballets they don't know.
Facing these types of obstacles, not to mention that the entire corps de ballet is suffering from jet lag, it seems a miracle that they are able to perform at all, let alone perform up to the standards that are expected of them by a Russian audience. Unlike North America where ballet is still considered something a little suspect by the majority of people, in Russia it's as much a part of their cultural heritage as sports are over here. Yet somehow, as is always the case, the dancers rise to the occasion and perform wonderfully. Even the orchestra vanishing for forty minutes during the intermission on opening night for some extra rehearsal, leaving the dancers in limbo as they wait for them to come back, doesn't manage to damage their concentration.
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