Why Natalie Portman’s Black Swan Efficiency Angers Some Dancers

Abstract

• Natalie Portman’s award-winning efficiency in
  Black Swan
  stirred controversy relating to her dancing abilities.
• Portman’s protection of her position as a ballet dancer led to backlash from the skilled dancing group.
• The dispute highlighted the problem of portraying genuine dance abilities in movie, sparking debate amongst trade consultants.

Arguably essentially the most important position of her profession thus far, Natalie Portman‘s efficiency in Black Swan garnered her a ton of acclaim, together with her solely Oscar win thus far, amid three nominations. The movie was a triumph and raked in reward from the second it was launched. An intense, uncomfortable, and extremely evocative movie, Black Swan was a psychological horror movie directed by Darren Aronofsky. It starred Natalie Portman as Nina Sayers, a younger ballet dancer with the New York Metropolis Ballet who undergoes a darkish and twisted journey as she vies for the position of the Black Swan for Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake.

Natalie Portman’s efficiency within the movie was terrific, and nobody was stunned when she went on to win the Academy Award for Greatest Actress. Whereas it was extensively recognized that she labored alongside a double within the type of an expert ballet dancer, Sarah Lane, the movie’s intense dance scenes required Portman to bear grueling coaching that lasted greater than a yr. In spite of everything that, nobody doubted Portman’s dedication to the position in making ready for it.

Nonetheless, it was round this narrative that the movie and Portman thereafter sparked a saga of controversy — one that also will get beneath the pores and skin {of professional} ballet dancers to at the present time. Here is a have a look at why some dancers have an issue with Natalie Portman and her efficiency in Black Swan.

Natalie Portman and Darren Aronofsky Claimed She Did A lot of the Dancing

Not lengthy after Natalie Portman received her Oscar for Black Swan, the controversy surrounding her dancing within the movie erupted in earnest. Nonetheless, the build-up to it had begun someday earlier than when the publicity for the movie and its Academy Award ambitions had been in full swing. Throughout an interview with USA As we speak in July 2010, Darren Aronofsky said in relation to Portman’s dancing within the movie that:

She was in a position to pull it off. Aside from the huge photographs when she needs to be en pointe for an actual very long time, it is Natalie on display screen. I have not used her double quite a bit.

It was the same story that was repeated up till the Oscars. After Portman received her award in February 2011 however didn’t thank and even point out her double in her acceptance speech, she drew the ire of the dancing group, which started with a weblog submit by Dance Journal‘s editor-in-chief, Wendy Perron. In her submit, Perron posed the query of why a video clip exhibiting Sarah Lane’s face being changed by Portman’s, which was beforehand obtainable on-line, had been eliminated previous to the Oscars.

Perron described this as a “blackout” and questioned if it was “deliberate by the studio’s publicity machine?” The stir this precipitated prompted Aronofsky and Fox Searchlight to concern a joint assertion, once more mentioning that Portman herself did many of the dancing featured within the last movie. She summed up her annoyance with all of it by stating:

We all know that Natalie Portman studied ballet as a child and had a yr of intensive coaching for the movie, however that does not add as much as being a ballerina. Nonetheless, it appears that evidently many individuals imagine that Portman did her personal dancing in
Black Swan
.

Sarah Lane Publicly Refuted These Claims

The subsequent week, Perron adopted up her submit with a second weblog and interviewed Sarah Lane on the matter. Lane opened up about giving interviews earlier than the Oscars regarding her position because the double within the movie however was politely requested to not do any extra till after the Oscars. In keeping with her:

They had been making an attempt to create this façade that [Portman] had change into a ballerina in a yr and a half … So I knew they did not wish to publicize something about me.

Leaping Into the Fray

Whereas Fox Searchlight and Aronofsky had been each fast to defend their actor, Portman herself largely declined by means of her publicist to remark straight on the matter on the time. Even when the difficulty was talked about, like throughout an April 6, 2011 interview with E!, Portman selected to skirt the topic straight, saying of the accusations and her position within the movie,” I do not wish to tarnish it by coming into into nastiness.”

Then again, her then-boyfriend, Benjamin Millepied, whom she’d solely lately begun relationship on the time and had met throughout her coaching for Black Swan, was much more clear in defending her. The pair had been later married and had two youngsters collectively. Millepied, a dance choreographer who labored on the movie, precipitated a substantial stir in early 2023 when studies started rising that he had been concerned in an extramarital affair. Sadly, after separating for over a yr, the couple divorced on March 8, 2024.

Nonetheless, when he spoke to the Los Angeles Occasions in March 2011, again throughout all of the controversy, he had this to say:

…she [Sarah Lane] simply did the footwork, and the fouettés, and one diagonal within the studio. Truthfully, 85% of that film is Natalie.

Regardless of his vociferous protection of Portman again then, because the saga continued, Sarah Lane later had this to say to The Wall Avenue Journal:

I did all the dancing. Natalie and I alternated photographs. They’d do close-up photographs together with her, simply of her face and type of from her arms up…After which there have been a couple of photographs they did that had been nearer full physique photographs, after which they digitally put her face on my physique.

What Different Dancers Needed to Say

Given all of the controversy and back-and-forth feedback they sparked, it wasn’t lengthy earlier than different dancers started weighing in. Chatting with The Guardian, the Principal Dancer on the Royal Ballet, Tamara Rojo mentioned this concerning the movie:

The director appears to suppose that, in a couple of months, you may study a career that it takes years simply to know, not to mention be good at. And within the movie, Nina is meant to be superior.

In the meantime, not each dancer cared to take photographs on the manufacturing’s obvious fibs about simply how a lot of the dancing Portman did herself. Chatting with Thrillist, Michele Gifford, who was additionally a dancer with the New York Metropolis Ballet, took concern with how the movie depicted the position of the Black Swan character, Odile:

However within the ballet
Swan Lake
, the Black Swan just isn’t a sexual character. I believe she simply is aware of who she is. There is no such thing as a doubt. There is no such thing as a questioning. I might inform anyone, do not attempt to be horny. That’s ridiculous. Discover a confidence, discover a self-assuredness.

There Are Two Sides to Natalie Portman’s Black Swan Situation

Within the aftermath, it grew to become clear that what Sarah Lane and different dancers took concern with essentially the most was that Natalie Portman and those that defended her had been truly disrespectful to them by the narrative they pushed. In doing so, the primary assertion grew to become that Portman was some ballet savant who had mastered the artwork in a yr, which often takes skilled ballet dancers a lifetime of coaching to perform.

Then again, nobody doubts what a really magnificent actor Natalie Portman is or how a lot effort and dedication she places into immersing herself in characters. The truth that she even took on the position and selected to dedicate over a yr of her life to ballet coaching is certainly admirable. However, one can not help however spare a thought for the actual ballet dancers on the market who had been affronted by the movie.

In spite of everything, {most professional} ballet dancers start their formal coaching across the age of 5 – 6, and most by no means cease the depth of their coaching and quest for perfection their whole careers. Given the immense sacrifices and years and years of ache, dedication, and bodily discomfort they endure, it is comprehensible why the controversy was deemed to frame on vanity or, not less than, a disingenuous narrative.

Regardless of all of it, fortunately for Natalie Portman’s performing requirements, the performing world, and her tens of millions of followers worldwide, the controversy by no means harm her profession as she went on to earn one other Greatest Actress Oscar nomination in 2016 for Jackie and remains to be a extremely acclaimed actress right now. Whereas her private life has sadly been rocky since, nobody doubts that we’ve not seen the final of her brilliance on movie but. Black Swan is streaming now on Max.