Swan Lake (Allegory)
At a moment when they are just becoming better acquainted, Sandra tells Billy the story of Swan Lake, the ballet. In humorously blunt terms, she describes the story of the swan princess who switches between being a swan and being a human. The curse that she is under mirrors Billy's own plight, in that he is leading a double life. Sometimes he is just a normal boy, living just like any other boy his age, but at others he is a jubilant dancer. While Billy does not take to Sandra's story, thinking it sounds stupid, it provides a model of his own situation. Then, at the end, once he is an adult and a professional ballet dancer, Billy dances the part of the swan in the ballet, which recalls Sandra's synopsis and confirms that Billy and the character of the swan are aligned in some way.
Ballet (Symbol)
Throughout, ballet serves as a powerful symbol for the feminine, the frivolous, and the upper-class. While men in his community are meant to work hard and not engage in such florid and dainty pastimes, Billy has a strong impulse to dance, which subverts the expectations placed on him by virtue of his gender. Thus, ballet itself becomes a powerful symbol for feminine qualities. Tony and Jackie are appalled when they first learn that Billy is dancing ballet because they think that it signifies that he is a sissy or not a "real man," like them, miners.
Strike (Motif)
Throughout, we see Billy's childhood set against the backdrop of the miners' strike taking place in his village. While he is going to school and discovering his artistic passion, his brother and father are striking and fighting a tense political battle in town. Interpolated throughout the film, in between scenes of Billy's coming of age, are sequences depicting the brutal and impassioned tensions at the picket line, and the violence breaking out as a result of the political tension.
Glam rock (Motif)
In the opening moments of the film, Billy turns on a record and listens to T. Rex, a glam-rock band. The music inspires him to dance and we see him jumping up and down, overcome with the impulse to move his body. Then later, when he decides to start rehearsing secretly with Sandra to prepare to audition for the Royal Ballet School, we see a montage of him dancing with Sandra to "I Love to Boogie," another song by T. Rex. The use of the music by the band T. Rex, a famous British glam rock band, is a cheeky way of showing that Billy is not the typical ballet dancer. Instead of dancing to traditional classical music, he falls in love with rock and roll, and the motif of the music pulls the viewer into Billy's journey.
Billy's Mother's Jewelry (Symbol)
When Jackie sees how talented Billy is, he becomes determined to help him audition for the ballet school and tries to pool his resources to pay for it. While he receives some help from his fellow miners, who raise money for the talented boy, it is not until he brings his late wife's gold jewelry to a pawn shop to sell it that he raises enough money for the application fee. The jewelry, and what Jackie does with it, is a symbol of the sacrifices he is willing to make for his son, as well as his belief that his late wife would want him to help Billy in whatever way he can.
