Summary
Billy comes home from practicing with Sandra and makes some tea. That night, Tony sneaks out of their room at 4AM, but doesn't tell Billy where he's going. In the kitchen, Tony takes a hammer out of a toolbox, but he is apprehended by his father, who is in the kitchen waiting for him. When Jackie questions whether his son is bringing the hammer, Tony insists that he's going to fight back, not just get beaten up at the strikes.
When Billy speaks up and asks what's going on, Jackie snarls at him to get back in bed. When Tony refuses to stay home, Jackie stands between him and the door and Tony yells at him that he's been "useless" ever since their mother died. At this insult, Jackie punches Tony in the face while Billy screams. Staring at his father, Tony leaves the house, and Jackie yells at Billy to go to bed.
The scene shifts and we see Billy practicing with Sandra, who scolds him about the fact that he isn't practicing enough. "You're not even trying!" she yells at him. When she tells him to do it again, he yells that he will not and leaves the gym.
Billy runs to a changing room and hides on a bench, Sandra following close behind. She apologizes to him, but he yells at her, "You're the same as anybody else: all you want to do is tell me what to do!" He yells that he doesn't want to do the audition, that she only wants him to do it for her benefit, "because you're a failure." He goes on a tirade against her, telling her that she doesn't even have her own dancing school, that she's lost all of her own opportunities, and when he gets especially nasty, she slaps him in the face.
Billy looks confused and Sandra is immediately regretful, holding him in her arms as he cries. They go back in the gym to practice. Later, she and Billy ride a ferry and listen to Swan Lake. Sandra tells Billy the plot of the ballet, that a beautiful woman is turned into a swan. "And then one night, she meets this young prince and he falls in love with her and she realizes this is the one thing that will allow her to become a real woman once more," she says. Billy doesn't like the plot of the ballet and they get back in the car.
That night, Billy watches as his grandmother has a delusional episode, screaming out in the middle of the night. She looks frightened as Billy tells her it's just him. Then Billy goes to the fridge to drink some milk out of the bottle. Suddenly a vision of his mother appears in the kitchen and tells him not to drink straight out of the bottle. He pours some in a cup and drinks.
Billy rehearses with Sandra. Later, Debbie and Billy sit on a bench and she tells him she will miss him if he goes away to ballet school. He doesn't respond, and simply asks, "Who do you think's better? Fred Astaire or Ginger Rogers?" She asks if he fancies her and offers to show him her "fanny," but he declines and leaves the room.
The strikes get more and more violent, and we see a montage of Tony and others running from the cops as "London Calling" by the Clash plays. Billy calls to Tony as he runs from the cops, urging him to go back and turn himself in. The cops beat Tony with their clubs and he gets arrested.
Billy calls Sandra, but Debbie picks up, as Billy says, "I have a problem with the audition," thinking Sandra has picked up the phone. After a moment, Debbie hangs up the phone, which confuses Billy.
At rehearsal the next day, Sandra waits for Billy but he never shows up, as he has gone to visit Tony. Sandra drives to Billy's house, and outside, a little girl stares at her. As Billy, Tony, and Jackie return home, Sandra tries to talk to Billy, but he tells her not to. "Who the fuck are you?" asks Tony, and Jackie invites her inside.
In the kitchen, Sandra tells Billy's family that he missed a very important audition for the Royal Ballet School that day. "Have you any idea what we're going through?" Tony says to Sandra, and scolds Billy for going to ballet. "I don't want a childhood, I want to be a ballet dancer," says Billy. Provoking her, Tony puts Billy on the table and tells him to dance, but Sandra tells Billy not to. "Dance you little twat!" he yells, but Billy doesn't.
As we see Sandra and Tony fighting, Billy dances in an alleyway furiously. Later he dances on a rooftop for Michael, as Tony watches from a window. When he jumps off the roof, Michael runs after him.
Christmas. We see strikers cheering and chanting at a bar in the neighborhood. In the alley behind their house, Jackie destroys the piano with an axe, and Billy asks if his mother would mind. "She's dead," says Jackie simply.
Analysis
The stakes get more dire for Billy's brother and father as tensions rise in the miner strikes. Tony disagrees with his father about being peaceable about the protests and wants to begin using violence in his fight for justice. Meanwhile, Billy keeps his dancing a secret, watching as Tony and Jackie fight about the correct way to protest. The backdrop of political and economic upheaval makes Billy's secret that much more fragile, an effeminate frivolity in the midst of chaos and violence.
The chaos at home and at the mines rubs off on Billy. While he has been an earnest and playful young apprentice to Sandra, eager to become a better dancer and etch out a new life for himself, after he witnesses the violent fights between his father and brother, he begins to act out, practicing less and talking back to Sandra. With the situation dire and tensions high, Billy begins to doubt his own talent and his one true dream.
Even though the film often has a fun and upbeat tone for much of it, an everyday violence and anger is bubbling beneath the surface for many people in the town. The socioeconomic struggles of the characters and their difficulties to find fulfillment in their community well up in moments of physical violence, and intergenerational abuse. First, Jackie punches Tony when Tony disagrees about how to go about striking. Then, Sandra slaps Billy for disparaging her work as a dance teacher. In this section of the film, the children become especially resentful of the adults in their lives, disparaging them for not doing a better job—for being merely human, and having their own failings.
In spite of these disruptions to Billy's life, he maintains a constant love of dance, and finds deepest solace when he is dancing at the barre. Through his father and brother's deep tensions, the aging of his grandmother, and the general bleakness of his existence, he finds peacefulness through dance, the only constant. The film is a sensitive portrait of the role that the arts and discipline with a craft can provide in a child's life, its ability to heal and center even through deep trauma and hardship.
The film includes many lilting and exciting montages of dance that align us with Billy and not only show us that he is a true talent, but show us more about his inner state. After Tony and Sandra scream at each other in the Elliot kitchen, Billy engages in a very long dance, first letting his anger out in an alley behind their house, then on a rooftop, then down the streets of the neighborhood. He dances with grace and abandon, as if his passion cannot be contained and must be expressed, and the montage takes us through the seasons all the way to Christmas. At this point in the film, Billy's relationship to dance is visceral, explosive, and impossible to subdue.
