Summary
As Billy finishes the dance, the judges are silent and stare at Billy. They thank him and he runs from the room, embarrassed. In the locker room, he is upset, and tells one of the boys, "It was a waste of fucking time!" When one of the other boys auditioning tries to comfort him, Billy punches him in the face.
A teacher comes into the locker room and escorts Billy out to his father, who asks how the audition went. When Billy doesn't say anything, Jackie fears the worst. The scene shifts abruptly to Billy and Jackie sitting in front of the judges, who tell them that Billy's displays of violence cannot be tolerated at the school and his behavior will likely affect the judges' final decision.
The judges then begin to ask Billy and Jackie some questions. When they ask Billy why he first became interested in ballet, he answers brusquely and straightforwardly, without expressing much about his desire to be a dancer. "He dances all the time, every night after school," says Jackie. The judge then asks Jackie if he likes ballet, and he tells them he's not an expert.
With this, the judge says, "No child can succeed without the 100% support of the family. You are completely behind Billy?" Jackie replies that he is, and another judge asks if he has any questions. When Jackie says he does not, the judges dismiss them both. As Jackie and Billy get up to leave, another judge asks Billy, "What does it feel like when you're dancing?"
Billy pauses a moment, then begins to describe the sensation of dancing—that as he dances, he begins to forget everything and "sort of disappear." He describes dancing as having a fire in his body, or as flying like a bird, like electricity. They leave.
At home, Grandma tells Billy he ought to learn a trade, and that she could have been a professional dancer, as Billy and Jackie glare at her. In school, the teacher gives a lesson about the extinction of the dinosaurs and Michael hits Billy with his pencil to get him to pay attention.
Jackie receives a letter from the school in the mail, and we see Billy walking down the street in town, as George asks him if he's heard anything yet. He comes home to find the letter on the kitchen table, his whole family sitting around it expectantly. He is nervous as he takes the letter into the other room to read. After reading it, he begins to cry, and when his father opens the door, he tells his whole family, "I got in."
We see Jackie running down the street jubilantly to the miners' social club, announcing to the other miners that Billy got into school. The miners are not enthusiastic, and tell him that the strike is over and they will be going back to work the next day.
Jackie and Billy visit Billy's mother's grave and Billy tells his father he's scared. When Jackie makes a joke about renting out Billy's room, Billy laughs uproariously and pushes his father onto the ground playfully.
Billy goes to the gymnasium and watches ballet class for awhile, before telling Sandra the news. She's already heard the news from Debbie, and Billy tells her he'll miss her. "This is when you go out and find life, and all those other things," Sandra says, wishing him luck, before going back to ballet class. Billy returns home to his family and says goodbye to his grandmother, who grabs him and hugs him before pushing him.
As Billy goes to the bus, Michael calls to him and Billy runs to say goodbye, kissing his friend on the cheek before running to catch up with his father and brother. Billy hugs Jackie hard before getting on the bus and heading off to school in London. Tony smiles and says "I'll miss you" to Billy through the window, but Billy cannot hear him. He runs to the back of the bus and yells to his brother through the window as the bus drives away. The scene shifts and we see Jackie and Tony going down into the mines.
Years in the future, we see Jackie and Tony going to one of Billy's performances in London. They take their seats next to Michael, who is now an adult and dressed in effeminate clothing, with a boyfriend next to him. Backstage, Billy prepares to go onstage in Swan Lake. A stage manager comes over and tells him that his family is there, as the music swells. As Billy leaps onto the stage and into the air, Jackie weeps.
Analysis
Billy's audition goes dreadfully, and he dances without any confidence for the judges, who look puzzled by his less-than-orthodox dance style. To make matters worse, he punches a fellow auditioner who tries to comfort him after the display. With both Billy's talent and his behavior in question, Billy and Jackie are scolded by the judges, who tell them that Billy's irreverence and fiery temper will not be tolerated at the school.
Just when it seems that Billy has no prospect of going to the school, a teacher asks him a momentous question, one which asks him to get in touch with his feelings, rather than just the discipline of ballet or the rhetoric of admissions. When the judge asks Billy what it feels like when he's dancing, he becomes thoughtful and feels less under a microscope. While it is unclear whether his words are getting through to the judges, he is able to put to words just what it is about dancing that he loves and that keeps him going. He becomes verbally fluid when discussing dancing, and even though he and his father leave with their heads hung low, at least Billy got to speak his piece.
It is Billy's rawness and the fact that he is not a polished, upper-class pupil that make him so magnetic in his speech to the judges. He describes dancing in an off-the-cuff, uncontrived way, and his expressiveness mixed with his lack of pretensions wins the interest of the skeptical adults in the room. As he describes dancing as like "electricity," and like "being a bird," his desire is not to impress the judges but to express a pure sentiment about his love for dance. In this way, Billy's humble background and lack of polish make him a quintessential student, a raw and unformed subject who will benefit the most from training.
No sooner does Billy get in to the school than he begins to see all of the people he is leaving behind in his small town. In contrast to Billy's ascension into the world of the polished London society, Jackie faces the fact that he must descend once again into his lowly position in the mines. After all of her thankless help in preparation of the audition, Sandra does not greet Billy with enthusiastic congratulations, but with a straightforward insistence that he will not miss her when he goes off to live his life. Billy's class mobility comes in contrast to all of the unmet expectations of the adults in his life, casting a shadow over his victory.
Even so, the film ends on a triumphant high note, with a dance performance of Billy's when he has grown up and received training. He is in the ballet that Sandra told him about all those years ago, Swan Lake, and he leaps through the air, a bonafide ballet dancer, as Jackie cries at the glory of it all. The end represents a full resolution of Billy's struggle to express himself and also connect with his family, and through dance he is able to find communion with his art and with his father, a communion that it had seemed might never be possible.
