Clever new cosmetic ad celebrates ageing
Advertisers who turn to ballet dancers typically want to convey prestige, or a message of physical power.
But a television ad for a cosmetic product - No. 7 Lift & Luminate facial serum - evokes a different ballet quality. It features Alessandra Ferri, one of the greatest ballerinas of the age.
After a long and celebrated international career, she retired from American Ballet Theatre in 2007. The serum ad makes no effort to conceal her age; she is wearing little makeup, and has the bare, lightly careworn skin of a down-to-earth woman of advanced years. In fact, Ferri's age is the central focus here, as she confronts a hologram of her 19-year-old self.
It's delightful enough that this ad gives us time to savour Ferri in motion, with her liquid smoothness and undiminished grace. But the ad also puts forth a meaningful narrative about looking back at one's youth, and realising that now is even better.
Youthfulness is not the goal (an interesting point for a cosmetics company to make). Openness, vitality, courage: These are much more important.
In her emphatic abandon, as well as her strong features, Ferri brings to mind Lauren Bacall and Anne Bancroft, stars who especially in their later years didn't let anyone set limits for them, and who showed us that being at peace with oneself is part of being beautiful, at any age.
There's a back story to why we're seeing a hologrammatic Ferri at 19, which was the exceptionally young age at which she became a principal dancer with the Royal Ballet.
The mature Ferri throws her arms open, spins toward the young girl and, in a bit of digital magic, shatters the hologram as she tornados through it.
It’s really quite a work of art. Watch the video above and prepare to be enchanted with a fresh take on ageing and a way to think of your younger self; paling in comparison to who you are now.
What ways do you think you’ve improved since your younger years? Let us know what you think in the comments below.
Written by Sarah L. Kaufman. First appeared on Stuff.co.nz.
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