Phantasmagoric... a Poster for Black Swan, Courtesy 20Th Century Fox Dance Gazette 31 When Swans Go Bad

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.

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