Paul Risker chats with Love Tomorrow stars Cindy Jourdain and Arionel Vargas...
![]()
To coincide with the DVD release of Christopher Payne’s ballet drama Love Tomorrow, which picked up the award for Best Film at Raindance Film Festival, Flickering Myth had the opportunity to put some questions to the films two stars, Cindy Jourdain and Arionel Vargas. An Ex-Royal Ballet Soloist and English National Ballet Principle Dancer, Cindy and Arionel are no strangers to the world of ballet, and whilst the old writing tip goes, “Write what you know”, perhaps for Cindy and Arionel it is a case of act rather than to write what you know.
Amongst a multitude of fascinating thoughts and reflection on life, work and art, they shared with us their thoughts on the representation of ballet in cinema, channelling their experiences of dance and music into their acting, working with the Ballet Boyz, and offered us a metaphorical and humanist reading of Love Tomorrow.
Paul Risker: What was it that attracted you to Love Tomorrow, and how did you become involved in the film?
Cindy Jourdain: Only a few weeks after handing in my resignation to the Royal Ballet Company, I received a call from Christopher and Stephanie about Love Tomorrow. They were looking to cast their leading lady, and the Ballet Boyz had suggested that they got in touch.
The film synopsis was of great interest straight away being that the central character, Eva, was an ex professional ballerina. We got on tremendously from the start and I remember being slightly spooked about the uncanny coincidental similarities between myself and Eva. Post meeting we agreed to workshop together first, and then for all of us to commit, and come to a decision further on down the line. I went home that day with the biggest smile on my face; it was serendipity at its best.
Arionel Vargas: I was excited by the opportunity of portraying dancers as they really are: passionate about their work but worried where the next job is coming from, tired a lot of the time but generally loving life and being supportive of each other.
PR: On the subject of the representation of ballet in film, the most recent example is Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan, and of course not to forget Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's 1948 classic The Red Shoes. What are your thoughts on the depiction of ballet and ballet dancers in film?
CJ: I think it works when the dancers are allowed to let their natural skills tell the story. P&P chose Robert Helpmann to make the 13 minute ballet which is at the heart of The Red Shoes, and it found success because it was artist led with some of the best talent around: Massine, Shearer, Heckroth, Walbrook etc.
Black Swan has some surrealistic sequences, which always work well in dance, and I'm also a big fan of Natalie Portman who worked exceptionally hard preparing for the role. One of the most inspirational coach’s I have ever worked with was the great ballerina Georgina Parkinson who helped Natalie train at the same time as she was rehearsing me in my last performances of Mayerling at the Royal Opera House. So I know that the Black Swan team went to the best sources, and had all the right influences to help them create and work.
The result had the dance community divided, but I feel that it brought ballet to the masses, and gave the typical conservative image a bit of a revamp, which is great in my eyes.
On a side note, talking about The Red Shoes, keep your eyes peeled as there are a couple of interesting projects I’m involved with that will try to honour the Pressburger/Powell/Heckroth fantasies.
AV: I liked Black Swan - it's a great piece of entertainment; a psychological thriller if you like with amazing performances. If you are a dancer you can spot the stand-ins but it doesn't matter. The Red Shoes of course is a classic, and I know its Carlos Acosta's favourite ballet film and I love it too. With Love Tomorrow we of course wanted to make something less dramatic and more realistic.
PR: How would you surmise the way in which Love Tomorrow compares and contrasts to these and other films, and what does it bring to the cinematic depiction of ballet and ballet dancers?
![]()
CJ: There are similar ingredients: a story, ballet, music, and a film. But like cooking you can make many different deserts out of eggs, flour and butter! Love Tomorrow is a very spiritual film; it has no artifice, no gimmick, no makeup nor any big fireworks. It tackles real issues that professional dancers are faced with in their everyday lives. It looks more intimately at the people within the artists, and who we are once we step off the stage on a cold winter night when the curtain has come down, and the applause has stopped.
I also think that ballet is very underused in film narrative, and that's a real shame, perhaps because there are so few people who are comfortably versed in and understand music, dance, fine art, choreography and storytelling.
AV: We were a low budget film so we tried to play to our strengths of intimacy and a close relationship with the director and the producer. I think it's a great portrait of London as seen from the POV of two people who are not from here; people who don't have much money and spend a lot of time wandering the streets, going to auditions and parties; trying to get work.
PR: How would you reflect on working with Christopher Payne? Was it a collaborative experience and were you afforded an opportunity to shape the film?
CJ: Christopher was very open minded from the start. He expressed a real interest in ballet and was eager to be immersed in my world. There was real synergy between us, and the spirit of collaboration came naturally. We looked at Eva's back story together, and I remember digging out a few stories about my training as a petit rat de l'Opéra in Paris. I was also raised by my father and have the most amazing bond with him, which inspired us to make the scene with Eva's father even more compelling.
Finally we explored most aspects of my career; my personal aspirations post Royal Ballet both professionally and personally. The revelation scene about the injury which prematurely terminated Eva's dancing dreams was built around a very intimate meeting we had with one of my best friends who suffered the same fatality. Chris is a wonderful guy, and I’m so grateful to have had the opportunity to do this with him. Perhaps we will have the chance to do it again.
AV: Working with Chris was very much a collaborative experience. However, Chris gave me plenty of space to make suggestions and I believe he was happy with my input.
PR: In one particular moment in the film it seems that one of you is living for the moment, whilst the other is reflecting on a moment. It creates an interesting dynamic.
CJ: It's a great observation, and I really feel that this is exactly what Eva and Oriel teach each other in the film. The way they appear to be in Love Tomorrow, she is a guarded temple and he is a warrior; she calms him down, he fires her up again. I personally think that living in the moment is key, however, reflecting does bring another dimension to someone's life, a feeling of maturity and understanding that can serve and fulfill a purpose moving forward. We could also look at it from a dancer's natural perspective. Even if you see me on stage performing well in challenging roles, I'll always replay and think through what I have just done, and how I can improve it or show different facets next time. It's not unusual for us to be simultaneously totally invested in the emotion of the moment and for us to be reflective too.
AV: I love that idea. I hadn't thought of it like that, but it's true. Oriel is the life force trying to bring her back to the present.
PR: Speaking with Yayaying Rhatha Phongam who starred in Nicolas Winding Refn's Only God Forgives, I asked her whether she was able to channel her experience of dance and music into her acting. She told me, “I think they are intertwined. So say when you’re acting you use your musicality as you are using your voice, and you would use your movement (dance) as part of acting, and so it’s all connected.” I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on the question and the answer.
CJ: For me the performing element is essentially the same. You embody a different character and give it life in front of an audience. The real challenge was to find my voice and be able to own it after being used to acting silently on stage, expressing myself through movement for years. The music is very important too for dancers, and is key to how I personally always felt about what I was projecting. So I also worked on the text replacing the music. My background as a ballerina taught me to be confident in my body, my abilities and transcend any element of doubts when at my most challenged. I can say that I approached acting with the same heart.
AV: I'd love to meet her! It's true. I told Chris when we started that dancers can of course act. I am not sure he believed me. Only joking. We just act in a different way. Acting for the screen is about learning to listen. As a dancer you just know what to do physically with your body and so I concentrated more on being in the moment.
![]()
PR: When I interviewed Christopher, we spoke about discovering the drama naturally. Love Tomorrow is a painful, emotional and yet an equally humorous journey through which the drama emerges, defining Love Tomorrow as belonging to the cinema of emotion. What are your thoughts on this assessment of the film?
CJ: Well it makes me happy and very proud at the same time. Love Tomorrow has that fighting spirit, and is full of raw subtleties that can turn the rational into the irrational. For me, as I was right in the transition from the Royal Ballet Company with many key roles in my repertoire, there was going to be spontaneous and emotional interactions between the past 20 years of my life, and the exciting paths I'm following now.
AV: Personally I am more interested in emotion than drama. That's what we were going for. These two characters are not really in conflict. They kind of resolve their differences when she opens up in the café, and he realises she's not like the other girls he picks up.
PR: The film is a mystery from the point of view that it is a journey towards understanding the characters, and yet the film concludes with mystery through ambiguity. The film or rather Christopher has the courage to leave it in our - the audiences - hands to imagine the next chapter, as Love Tomorrow is a single chapter in the lives of your characters. It embraces imagination and subjectivity that are at the centre of the experience of art on both sides of the screen.
CJ: That's an interesting take away. I'd like all audiences to see the film and draw their own conclusions.
AV: Yes you are right. It's much better to use your imagination about the characters, because you feel like you know them more, that they belong to you.
PR: It would be wrong to not ask a question about working with the Ballet Boyz, and what they brought to the experience of making Love Tomorrow.
CJ: Michael and Billy are extremely talented at what they do. They have put their own stamp to the film as their shoot perspective is individual and relevant to the dance sequences you saw. Nothing was ever static, set in stone. We worked very organically, and our aim was to draw the audience right in whenever there was a dance narrative. I owe the boys for my debut starring role in an award winning feature film, and would work with them again in a heartbeat.
AV: Michael and Billy are great film makers, and are very well known in the ballet world. So having them on board was very important. They are great fun to work with. They work very fast, and have lots of ideas.
PR: What do you hope audiences will take away from the film, and if you could take away one memory from the film what would it be?
CJ: I do hope the audience will enjoy the multi facets that the film captures, and I'd like them to see what dance can do for bringing a narrative to life. There is also this message: you never know what tomorrow is made of. We all encounter obstacles and sometimes they feel like the biggest mountains, but if you don't resist life and if you let it guide you out of the darkness instinctively, and in complete trust, you will be rewarded with a beautiful white shining light. It's metaphorical I know, but it encompasses everything I feel Love Tomorrow is about. As for my memories; working with a team of dedicated individuals who put their ideas and dreams on the line. That's honourable.
AV: Trust in people. Most people will help you if they can.
Many thanks to Cindy Jourdain and Arionel Vargas for taking the time for this interview.
Love Tomorrow is available to own now on DVD. Purchase it via Amazon.
Paul Risker is a freelance writer and contributor to Flickering Myth.
Amongst a multitude of fascinating thoughts and reflection on life, work and art, they shared with us their thoughts on the representation of ballet in cinema, channelling their experiences of dance and music into their acting, working with the Ballet Boyz, and offered us a metaphorical and humanist reading of Love Tomorrow.
Paul Risker: What was it that attracted you to Love Tomorrow, and how did you become involved in the film?
Cindy Jourdain: Only a few weeks after handing in my resignation to the Royal Ballet Company, I received a call from Christopher and Stephanie about Love Tomorrow. They were looking to cast their leading lady, and the Ballet Boyz had suggested that they got in touch.
The film synopsis was of great interest straight away being that the central character, Eva, was an ex professional ballerina. We got on tremendously from the start and I remember being slightly spooked about the uncanny coincidental similarities between myself and Eva. Post meeting we agreed to workshop together first, and then for all of us to commit, and come to a decision further on down the line. I went home that day with the biggest smile on my face; it was serendipity at its best.
Arionel Vargas: I was excited by the opportunity of portraying dancers as they really are: passionate about their work but worried where the next job is coming from, tired a lot of the time but generally loving life and being supportive of each other.
PR: On the subject of the representation of ballet in film, the most recent example is Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan, and of course not to forget Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's 1948 classic The Red Shoes. What are your thoughts on the depiction of ballet and ballet dancers in film?
CJ: I think it works when the dancers are allowed to let their natural skills tell the story. P&P chose Robert Helpmann to make the 13 minute ballet which is at the heart of The Red Shoes, and it found success because it was artist led with some of the best talent around: Massine, Shearer, Heckroth, Walbrook etc.
Black Swan has some surrealistic sequences, which always work well in dance, and I'm also a big fan of Natalie Portman who worked exceptionally hard preparing for the role. One of the most inspirational coach’s I have ever worked with was the great ballerina Georgina Parkinson who helped Natalie train at the same time as she was rehearsing me in my last performances of Mayerling at the Royal Opera House. So I know that the Black Swan team went to the best sources, and had all the right influences to help them create and work.
The result had the dance community divided, but I feel that it brought ballet to the masses, and gave the typical conservative image a bit of a revamp, which is great in my eyes.
On a side note, talking about The Red Shoes, keep your eyes peeled as there are a couple of interesting projects I’m involved with that will try to honour the Pressburger/Powell/Heckroth fantasies.
AV: I liked Black Swan - it's a great piece of entertainment; a psychological thriller if you like with amazing performances. If you are a dancer you can spot the stand-ins but it doesn't matter. The Red Shoes of course is a classic, and I know its Carlos Acosta's favourite ballet film and I love it too. With Love Tomorrow we of course wanted to make something less dramatic and more realistic.
PR: How would you surmise the way in which Love Tomorrow compares and contrasts to these and other films, and what does it bring to the cinematic depiction of ballet and ballet dancers?
CJ: There are similar ingredients: a story, ballet, music, and a film. But like cooking you can make many different deserts out of eggs, flour and butter! Love Tomorrow is a very spiritual film; it has no artifice, no gimmick, no makeup nor any big fireworks. It tackles real issues that professional dancers are faced with in their everyday lives. It looks more intimately at the people within the artists, and who we are once we step off the stage on a cold winter night when the curtain has come down, and the applause has stopped.I also think that ballet is very underused in film narrative, and that's a real shame, perhaps because there are so few people who are comfortably versed in and understand music, dance, fine art, choreography and storytelling.
AV: We were a low budget film so we tried to play to our strengths of intimacy and a close relationship with the director and the producer. I think it's a great portrait of London as seen from the POV of two people who are not from here; people who don't have much money and spend a lot of time wandering the streets, going to auditions and parties; trying to get work.
PR: How would you reflect on working with Christopher Payne? Was it a collaborative experience and were you afforded an opportunity to shape the film?
CJ: Christopher was very open minded from the start. He expressed a real interest in ballet and was eager to be immersed in my world. There was real synergy between us, and the spirit of collaboration came naturally. We looked at Eva's back story together, and I remember digging out a few stories about my training as a petit rat de l'Opéra in Paris. I was also raised by my father and have the most amazing bond with him, which inspired us to make the scene with Eva's father even more compelling.
Finally we explored most aspects of my career; my personal aspirations post Royal Ballet both professionally and personally. The revelation scene about the injury which prematurely terminated Eva's dancing dreams was built around a very intimate meeting we had with one of my best friends who suffered the same fatality. Chris is a wonderful guy, and I’m so grateful to have had the opportunity to do this with him. Perhaps we will have the chance to do it again.
AV: Working with Chris was very much a collaborative experience. However, Chris gave me plenty of space to make suggestions and I believe he was happy with my input.
PR: In one particular moment in the film it seems that one of you is living for the moment, whilst the other is reflecting on a moment. It creates an interesting dynamic.
CJ: It's a great observation, and I really feel that this is exactly what Eva and Oriel teach each other in the film. The way they appear to be in Love Tomorrow, she is a guarded temple and he is a warrior; she calms him down, he fires her up again. I personally think that living in the moment is key, however, reflecting does bring another dimension to someone's life, a feeling of maturity and understanding that can serve and fulfill a purpose moving forward. We could also look at it from a dancer's natural perspective. Even if you see me on stage performing well in challenging roles, I'll always replay and think through what I have just done, and how I can improve it or show different facets next time. It's not unusual for us to be simultaneously totally invested in the emotion of the moment and for us to be reflective too.
AV: I love that idea. I hadn't thought of it like that, but it's true. Oriel is the life force trying to bring her back to the present.
PR: Speaking with Yayaying Rhatha Phongam who starred in Nicolas Winding Refn's Only God Forgives, I asked her whether she was able to channel her experience of dance and music into her acting. She told me, “I think they are intertwined. So say when you’re acting you use your musicality as you are using your voice, and you would use your movement (dance) as part of acting, and so it’s all connected.” I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on the question and the answer.
CJ: For me the performing element is essentially the same. You embody a different character and give it life in front of an audience. The real challenge was to find my voice and be able to own it after being used to acting silently on stage, expressing myself through movement for years. The music is very important too for dancers, and is key to how I personally always felt about what I was projecting. So I also worked on the text replacing the music. My background as a ballerina taught me to be confident in my body, my abilities and transcend any element of doubts when at my most challenged. I can say that I approached acting with the same heart.
AV: I'd love to meet her! It's true. I told Chris when we started that dancers can of course act. I am not sure he believed me. Only joking. We just act in a different way. Acting for the screen is about learning to listen. As a dancer you just know what to do physically with your body and so I concentrated more on being in the moment.
PR: When I interviewed Christopher, we spoke about discovering the drama naturally. Love Tomorrow is a painful, emotional and yet an equally humorous journey through which the drama emerges, defining Love Tomorrow as belonging to the cinema of emotion. What are your thoughts on this assessment of the film?CJ: Well it makes me happy and very proud at the same time. Love Tomorrow has that fighting spirit, and is full of raw subtleties that can turn the rational into the irrational. For me, as I was right in the transition from the Royal Ballet Company with many key roles in my repertoire, there was going to be spontaneous and emotional interactions between the past 20 years of my life, and the exciting paths I'm following now.
AV: Personally I am more interested in emotion than drama. That's what we were going for. These two characters are not really in conflict. They kind of resolve their differences when she opens up in the café, and he realises she's not like the other girls he picks up.
PR: The film is a mystery from the point of view that it is a journey towards understanding the characters, and yet the film concludes with mystery through ambiguity. The film or rather Christopher has the courage to leave it in our - the audiences - hands to imagine the next chapter, as Love Tomorrow is a single chapter in the lives of your characters. It embraces imagination and subjectivity that are at the centre of the experience of art on both sides of the screen.
CJ: That's an interesting take away. I'd like all audiences to see the film and draw their own conclusions.
AV: Yes you are right. It's much better to use your imagination about the characters, because you feel like you know them more, that they belong to you.
PR: It would be wrong to not ask a question about working with the Ballet Boyz, and what they brought to the experience of making Love Tomorrow.
CJ: Michael and Billy are extremely talented at what they do. They have put their own stamp to the film as their shoot perspective is individual and relevant to the dance sequences you saw. Nothing was ever static, set in stone. We worked very organically, and our aim was to draw the audience right in whenever there was a dance narrative. I owe the boys for my debut starring role in an award winning feature film, and would work with them again in a heartbeat.
AV: Michael and Billy are great film makers, and are very well known in the ballet world. So having them on board was very important. They are great fun to work with. They work very fast, and have lots of ideas.
PR: What do you hope audiences will take away from the film, and if you could take away one memory from the film what would it be?
CJ: I do hope the audience will enjoy the multi facets that the film captures, and I'd like them to see what dance can do for bringing a narrative to life. There is also this message: you never know what tomorrow is made of. We all encounter obstacles and sometimes they feel like the biggest mountains, but if you don't resist life and if you let it guide you out of the darkness instinctively, and in complete trust, you will be rewarded with a beautiful white shining light. It's metaphorical I know, but it encompasses everything I feel Love Tomorrow is about. As for my memories; working with a team of dedicated individuals who put their ideas and dreams on the line. That's honourable.
AV: Trust in people. Most people will help you if they can.
Many thanks to Cindy Jourdain and Arionel Vargas for taking the time for this interview.
Love Tomorrow is available to own now on DVD. Purchase it via Amazon.
Paul Risker is a freelance writer and contributor to Flickering Myth.