"I have always been interested in and inspired by the meeting of an individual with his destiny," says Donya Feuer, director of this exquisite documentary. "When this one body, this person, is a dancer, then it's something, for me, almost holy — because the body becomes itself an instrument. The muscles of the body support the skeleton, and the skeleton in turn is holding something else, and everything is moving. There's nothing that's not moving. Suddenly in a dancer, the moving is chosen and looked at and given some kind of articulation and limits and form."

The Stockholm-based filmmaker and choreographer charts three years of training at the Royal Swedish Ballet School by teenager Katja Bjorner. This disciplined young lady spends many hours in practice, careful to stretch properly before the strenuous movements she must go through in perfecting her art. The actor Erland Josephson, who has been seen films by Ingmar Bergman, is on hand to watch Katja dance and to ask her questions that we would want to ask her. "Does your body hurt?" She responds with a nervous laugh, "All the time."

The challenge is to make everything look effortless. To achieve this effect, she must put in merciless hours of practice and make sure that her body extends upwards. The life a ballerina is organized around the studio, other dancers, and teachers who do their best to draw out the best in these young girls and boys. Katja is quite taken with Valentina Savina, her Russian coach, and states that she would rather hear honest criticism from her than praise from others.

One of the most interesting sidebars in the documentary is a piece on how ballet shoes are made and the important role they play in the lives of ballerinas. When asked by Josephson whether she thinks in words when she dances, this young artists replies: "I may talk to myself, but there are no words for dancing." And with that she writes a poem on the floor with the graceful movements of her feet, legs, and outstretched arms.