14 DAY TRIAL // Director Darren Aronofsky is coming to the aid of his star, following claims by professional ballet dancer Sarah Lane that she, and not Natalie Portman, did most of the dance scenes in the Oscar-winning “Black Swan.”
After an interview the film’s choreographer and Portman’s fiancé, Benjamin Millepied, gave to the Los Angeles Times saying that what fans saw of Natalie’s dancing was 85 percent her doing, Lane fought back.
As we also noted over the weekend, the ballerina says she was Portman’s body double and that the actress’ contribution to the film as far as dancing goes was rather of 5 percent, and not 85 percent.
In other words, Portman lied in all those pre-Oscar interviews in which she talked about how hard she worked and train to become a ballet dancer in front of the camera.
Not really, no, director Aronofsky chimes in. Not only is he defending Portman, but he also brings hard cold evidence to the table: he sat down and counted the times the actress is seen dancing in the film.
In the end, his conclusion is only one: Natalie did about 80-90 percent of the dance routines, and the rest, the more complicated moves, were done by Sarah.
“Here is the reality. I had my editor count shots. There are 139 dance shots in the film. 111 are Natalie Portman untouched. 28 are her dance double Sarah Lane. If you do the math that’s 80% Natalie Portman,” Aronofsky says in a statement to EW.
“What about duration? The shots that feature the double are wide shots and rarely play for longer than one second. There are two complicated longer dance sequences that we used face replacement. Even so, if we were judging by time over 90% would be Natalie Portman,” he explains.
He also dismisses Lane’s claims that Portman was no ballerina because she couldn’t dance on pointe shoes.
“I am responding to this to put this to rest and to defend my actor. Natalie sweated long and hard to deliver a great physical and emotional performance. And I don’t want anyone to think that’s not her they are watching. It is,” he adds.