Benjamin Millepied to the rescue! His fiance, and soon-to-be mother of his unborn child, Natalie Portman, may have won an Oscar for her performance in Black Swan, but critics are still questioning whether she was really dancing the part of a prima ballerina, or if a double was doing the work for her. Millepied, who actually choreographed the film, is now speaking up and defending Portman.
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Millepied recently spoke to the Los Angeles Times about his relationship with Portman and his career in dance. The dancer personally trained his fiance for the film, and here’s what he had to say about her dancing:
“It was so believable, it was fantastic, that beautiful movement quality. There are articles now talking about her dance double that are making it sound like [Sarah Lane, her body double] did a lot of the work, but really, she just did the footwork, and the fouettés, and one diagonal [phrase] in the studio. Honestly, 85% of that movie is Natalie.”
Portman studied ballet until she was 13, which gave Millepied something to build on with his intricate choreography:
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“[I made] things fluid and not too complicated.By getting more movement going, which in turn added to the camera movement — that is basically what I did. If we had kept things more classical, more restrained, less fluid, it would have been harder to trick the eye.”
The Huffington Post interviewed Kimberly Prosa, another one of Portman’s doubles, who also defended the leading actress:
“Natalie took class, she studied for several months, from the waist up is her. Sarah Lane, a soloist at ABT, did the heavy tricks, she did the fouéttes, but they only had her for a limited time, a couple of weeks, so I did the rest of whatever dance shots they needed.
“She [Portman] definitely put her work in. Just in a couple of months, she looked credible — all the dancers on the set were really impressed at how well she pulled that off — it was pretty amazing.”
If you’ve actually seen the movie, you can tell where Natalie is dancing and where she isn’t. It’s quite impressive, and I can’t think of any other actress who could’ve pulled it off better.
