30 D a n c e G a z e tt e I s s u E 1 — 2 0 1 1

Phantasmagoric... a poster for Black Swan, courtesy 20th Century Fox www.rad.org.uk Dance Gazette 31 When swans go bad

Black Swan is tipped for Oscar glory. Dance Gazette explores its delirious appeal, and choreographer Benjamin Millepied tells David Leventhal how he helped Natalie Portman dance 32 D a n c e G a z e tt e W h e n s w a n s g o b a d I s s u E 1 — 2 0 1 1

What does it take to be perfect?... Black Swan is no documentary. You Natalie Portman in Black Swan may recognise familiar figures from previous Photos © 20th Century Fox backstage and ballet movies. There’s the rapacious artistic director (Vincent Cassel) who uses the snog as a management technique, and needles Nina (‘You could be brilliant – but you’re a coward’). Familiar too are the a pushy mother (Barbara Hershey), sniping rivals and discarded older dancer (a mascara-smeared Winona Ryder). But Aronofsky takes the lurid clichés, ramps them up, and then makes Nina internalise them. It’s devastating. The camera swoops close to Nina, the microphone catching her shallow, nervous breath. Tucked tight into her soft pink coat and feathery scarf, Portman offers a continually anxious presence, all fragile voice and barely contained panic. She creeps into a senior ballerina’s dressing room and pockets a lipstick, like a little girl rootling in her mother’s vanity case in search of adulthood. She moves in peril, tremulous with wanting. As in the best horror films, anxieties work through the body. The film is intimate with self-hatred. Nina can’t flirt, can’t laugh, can’t pal around. Instead, she scratches at tiny cuts, the self-harmer’s minute assertion of control. Pleasure is indistinguishably entwined with anxiety. Things are very different for slutty Lily (Mila Kunis), her rival, understudy and trash-talking doppelganger. Lily has florid tattoos and a raucous, knowing guffaw; her greedy eyes sparkle with the scar-buzz already surrounds asks Black Swan? Must you lose your mind prospect of a good time. Black Swan, Darren along with your inhibitions? Aronofsky is a bold Don’t expect to see much daylight in Aronofsky’s audacious new filmmaker, whose dazzling visual style captures this film. Nina occupies a cloistered world, film set in the ballet world. extreme mental and emotional states. Pi, his going between home and studio. The ballet Natalie Portman, who jittery 1998 debut, explored mathematical company is a place of relentless work, and its plays the terrified heroine, genius; Requiem for a Dream (2000) was a demands are daunting – we hear the morning Ois heavily tipped for statuette duty. More smacked-out story of addiction. He had popular crack of stiff joints, see cracked nails and importantly, it’s a phantasmagoric, exquisitely success with The Wrestler (2008), with Mickey bleeding toes. At home, Nina’s bedroom is a discomforting story about the desperate desire Rourke as a washed-up athlete. smothering pink-on-pink fantasia. Her mother to prove yourself. Aronofsky approaches ballet without feeds her pillowy slices of sponge cake (Nina Nina (Natalie Portman) is a ballerina of reverence. When he first heard the story of sucking frosting from mommy’s fingers is a immaculate technique in a prestigious New Swan Lake, whose spellbound heroine becomes memorably icky image). Soft toys, plush and York company. She gets her big break when a swan by night, he thought ‘“Oh, a were- pink as candyfloss, crowd round her bed. It’s she is cast as Odette-Odile in Swan Lake. swan.” And I realised I was making a werewolf scarifying, being stuck in Nina’s tormented Nina inhabits the white swan’s crystalline movie.’ He recruited rising international head. By the time the delirious denouement untouchability, but struggles to locate her inner choreographer Benjamin Millepied (who also arrives, we’re craving release. black swan. A lifetime of rigorously schooled appears in the film), to put his fantasies on In The Red Shoes, aspiring ballerina Vicky good behaviour means that bad-girl Odile lies their feet. Millepied admits that, when he first Frost is asked why she wants to dance, and buried way beneath the skin. saw Portman in class, he thought: ‘How am famously replies, ‘Why do you want to live?’ ‘There are remarkably few horror movies I going to turn this person into a ballerina in Aronofsky’s detractors will hate the fact that he about the terror and violence of making art,’ three months?’ But the actress had studied ignores that answer. ‘Why do you want to die?’ mused Terrence Rafferty recently in the New ballet as a child, and threw herself into the might be his ballerina’s question. Because how York Times. What does it take to be brilliant, remorseless training. else can you be perfect? David Jays www.rad.org.uk Dance Gazette 33

Knight in shining armour Paris Opéra Ballet (Triade) and Het clearly given Millepied a first- What made you want to David Leventhal Nationale Ballet in the Netherlands rate choreographic education. work on it? interviews choreographer (One thing leads to another). In an art form that regularly It was really watching Darren’s Benjamin Millepied Millepied, 33, also maintains a eats choreographers for dinner, best work: Requiem for a Dream regular performing schedule as a Millepied has appeared as a had a big impact on me as a young When and if it hits, success can principal with the New York City knight in shining armour – a adult. It was hearing him talk strike quickly in the cloistered Ballet, a position to which he rose smart and versatile dancer and about the film, and the fact that world of ballet choreographers. a mere six years after graduating dancemaker with an impeccable from the start I felt that he had a While some toil away anonymously from the School of American Ballet. pedigree and looks to match. real ear for the music and the way in the sweaty basements of Success in dance seemed (Details magazine recently he wanted to use it – for me it was European opera houses, others inevitable for Millepied, whose wondered out loud if he were an interesting opportunity. possess the talent, luck and mother was a modern dancer and the Baryshnikov for our era). enviable connections that bring his first teacher in Bordeaux. He The French Minister of Culture As a choreographer, I assume them high-profile work. The ballet studied in Lyon before moving agreed, appointing him a you’re usually given pretty gods at this moment seem to be to New York as a teenager to Chevalier in the Order of Arts this free reign? handing Benjamin Millepied the continue his training at SAB. year, just before he completed Yeah, but when you’re making holy grail of choreographers: a Before he’d graduated, he was his 23rd ballet. It seems only ballets there are things that in schedule that’s booked for the selected for a principal role apropos that Millepied would be the end just don’t fit, and you just next three years with commissions in Jerome Robbins’ 2 & 3 Part hired to choreograph and appear throw them away. You always have from the world’s leading ballet Inventions – the same year he won alongside Natalie Portman in to be in service to the entirety of companies. This autumn alone, the Prix de Lausanne. Darren Aronofsky’s psychosexual the work you are making. My job his work was presented by New Working amidst the riches thriller Black Swan. was to be in service to the needs York City Ballet (Plainspoken), of NYCB’s platinum repertoire has Peripatetic and ambitious, of the film. It wasn’t about me Millepied is a hard man to pin making a really great dance. I had down for an interview. When we to suit the actors, and serve the finally connected, he was driving storyline. It’s interesting to work in a tunnel under the Hudson that way. River, and his GPS was blaring in the background. For a man so So it sounds like some of clearly on the right path, it was those constraints are actually somehow reassuring to know he inspiring for you. still needs a little help getting It’s nice to be given constraints where he’s going. sometimes. I was ok with that.

David Leventhal: I read that I wanted you to talk about what Darren Aronofsky felt that it was like working with people doors were closed to him in the who are primarily actors – even ballet world, that people were actors who did a lot of intense not immediately interested in preparation for Black Swan’s working on this project. dancing demands. Benjamin Millepied: I don’t Natalie was very serious about ‘I’m definitely interested in the camera.’... choreographer think that’s exactly accurate. it, and she took the training Benjamin Millepied Photo: Alessandra Benedetti/Corbis We were making the film at very seriously. She understood Nutcracker time, and Darren what it meant to look like a was looking for dancers: but it dancer and she worked very was really difficult because the hard. For my part, it was about dancers we were looking for giving her the right basics. It’s were some of the best, and the very important that the dancer companies just weren’t available. understands the basics of ballet It was pretty much that simple. and coordination and arms, so He was able to talk to a lot I really worked on the upper of professionals. Maybe they body a lot and I told people who weren’t as keen, but look at the were teaching her class as well. script! People might have been I supervised certain aspects of a little worried to be associated the training. In the end she was with the film. very, very good. 34 D a n c e G a z e tt e W h e n s w a n s g o b a d I s s u E 1 — 2 0 1 1

My guess is that she has a Were you able to work more You worked very intimately in So this was Darren’s very very high level of emotional specifically on close-up facial the creation of the film. What intense vision? intelligence but couldn’t help expression than you would was it like to see the final cut? I was impressed that Darren could with steps in the way that on stage? I was so involved, it was strange make it work in the way that he dancers might. I tried to come up with more for me to gather a real opinion did. It’s really remarkable that Well come on, being a professional upper body ideas, you know, that about the film because I was he had that vision and was able ballet dancer in a performing would look interesting close to so close to it. It’s hard to watch to pull this off. It’s also that the ballet company is a very difficult the camera. But I wasn’t directing myself on screen. I’m pleased with acting is so wonderful. thing to achieve. It’s years and Natalie. That was Darren’s job. a lot of the dancing – not all of it, years of work. But she had but some of it. Natalie Portman has said that rhythm, she had a good movement There were a lot of handheld it was a ‘very serious set, not quality, there was a lot there cameras used in the dance The film has a rather a funny, silly set at all. It was that I could use. I worked on the scenes. Could you control what fantastical, almost horrific, scary, disciplined, rigorous.’ articulation of her arms a lot and I the dance looked like? vision of the ballet world. It was. There was not a lot of time. worked a lot on using the elbows I could make sure the angles There’s a sense that it is so There was not a lot of money. and wrists and fingers correctly. were good, but I think it helped a cloistered and intense that it We were upstate at Purchase lot because not having the static changes your psychological [College, outside New York City], Which is so important in camera allowed us to see more. makeup. Was that something it was winter. We weren’t really Swan Lake. Having the camera move actually that you had experienced organised to warm up properly. Yes, the articulation of the arms is helped the movement in general yourself? And she has nothing but very key; but more than that, you have – the camera is almost another No. serious acting to do in it... a lot of to have a sense of how a swan dancer, a moving view. very serious emotions, so it was looks. In ballet, it takes constant Not at all? definitely a very focused time for reminders – using fingers and No. everyone. There was not a lot of elbows and making sure the head joking around – mostly we just will look up when it’s supposed to. had to get stuff done. She did really well.

‘The camera is another dancer’... Darren Aronofsky shoots the climax of Black Swan Photo © 20th Century Fox www.rad.org.uk Dance Gazette 35

Is that different from how you normally work in a studio? No, the only problem there is that you just sit around a lot each take. ‘I’ve never seen a There’s a lot of waiting around – it’s more tedious. In dance, you come, you do your work, you ballerina call in sick’ leave. The making of Black Swan How much did you go back to other sources? Darren Aronofsky Mila Kunis A lot, a lot. I watched Natasha Director Plays Lily, the rival dancer Makarova, and the Royal Ballet’s The ballet world was very hard to get into. The way a ballerina holds herself is very Anthony Dowell. I watched the Usually when you make a movie, doors open up, specific, and you can only fake that so much. old St. Petersburg, Mariinsky but the ballet world really couldn’t care. They’re The way they hold their arms, their shoulders Kirov – the first Kirov Swan Lake very insular and self-involved. Slowly we met are always kept back and the ribcage is tucked [on video], which was beautiful to a few dancers who were interested in sharing in. The physicality really was the hardest thing, watch. And Georgina Parkinson. their stories. Eventually, Benjamin Millepied just transforming your body at the age of 26. I came on board, and that gave us a stamp of think everybody in this production who played Is Petipa’s original choreography approval, because he’s very well respected. a dancer got hurt. Both actors and dancers in there? Very early on I knew I wanted to get the are incredibly competitive, but I think that There’s definitely some. But I redid camera onstage with the dancers, because dancers have a perception of perfection. Actors most of it, keeping a lot of it very I think when you’re in the audience, dance think that for every part there’s something simple, because I had to. looks effortless – these dancers train all their different they could do, that there’s no such lives to make all the effort disappear, and then thing as perfection. I’ve never met anybody as Do you see yourself working when you go backstage you suddenly see all disciplined as a dancer – ever. I’ve seen actors more in film? the muscles and tendons and blood and sweat call in sick, but I’ve never seen a ballerina call Yes, I just directed a short film, in and breath. As director, how was I going to in sick. It’s much more competitive, the ballet Paris. I’m definitely interested in show that? I would tell Benjamin what was world, much more than any other. the camera. And I’ve got another happening in the story, and he would then project coming up. turn it into movement. Usually when I work Vincent Cassel with actors, I watch them turn the story into Plays Thomas, the ballet director Is it something that you can emotion, so it was interesting to see the story Michael Bennett, the director of A Chorus Line talk about? transform into a different type of kinetic form. and Dreamgirls, was a good friend of the family Um, no, I don’t want to, it’s too He would choreograph something, and I would when I was younger. So I’d seen him work, cool! It’s my idea, and I’m working look at it, and we would eventually bring the and he was very close to what I’m doing in the with a composer. It will be a dance video camera out and start moving with it – so movie – meaning that he was a real jerk with film though. It’s very exciting. it was almost a third dancing partner. dancers. But it was only to get them where he wanted them to go. I also saw Mikhail Natalie Portman Baryshnikov directing a young dancer, and, Plays Nina, the ballerina interestingly, he wasn’t moving at all. There are Ballet dancers have an extreme devotion. also documentaries I’ve seen about Balanchine. [During filming] I was not sleeping much, not All these people have something in common eating and training all day. Combining the – they move like they owned the world, or at physical with the emotional was really hard: least the ballet industry. I was concentrating so much on what I was doing that half the time they were shouting at me not to let my tongue hang out of my mouth. It’s not cute. My trainer’s biggest focus was making sure I didn’t get injured. She was always there with my warm-ups, and if there was a longer break between takes, we would do a barre. We also did six months of Did you enjoy Black Swan? toe exercises before I went into pointe shoes. I Is Natalie Portman convincing? couldn’t believe how painful they were: they’re Let us know: [email protected] not the most pleasant of implements!