Using the lyrical and elegant metaphor of a ballet classic about death, this film explores how a dancer fights age, the deterioration of the body over time and fear of retirement. Former Royal Ballet principal, 43-year-old Zenaida Yanowsky, plans to overcome knee surgery and fight her body back to fitness so as to perform a swansong, one of ballet's best-known of solos, The Dying Swan. For Zenaida, this is one of her last public performances before drawing the curtains on an acclaimed classical ballet career. The film also features an encounter between Zenaida and current Royal Ballet rising star principal dancer, the Russian-born-and-trained Natalia Osipova.

Experimental and original, choreographer Shobana Jeyasingh's tenacity has resulted in her dance company surviving for over thirty years. This film follows the research and development phase of her new work exploring a viral attack. The piece, called Contagion, will evoke the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, which killed over 50 million people, through dance. This film gives a unique insight into a choreographer's artistic process and their sources of inspiration as Shobana researches the pandemic and attempts to translate what she finds into movement as she workshops with dancers. Shobana meets Professor John Oxford, one of the world leading authorities on the Spanish flu, who shares with her a lung sample of a British victim of the 1918 outbreak.