Black Swan FINAL V2-intl - Central-Kino

POINTE AND PUNISHMENT:
THE TRAINING AND CHOREOGRAPHY
Just as he had penetrated the starkly human yet hidden world of professional wrestlers in THE
WRESTLER, amidst the psychological thrills of BLACK SWAN, Darren Aronofsky submerses the audience
into the gritty, sweat-and-anxiety filled backstage reality of dance that few people ever see. While ballet has
long been a part of cinematic history, from Michael Powell’s classic THE RED SHOES to Herbert Ross’ 70s hit
THE TURNING POINT, Aronofsky’s film looks like no other dance movie before it.
To shoot ballet from the inside looking out would take a combination of personal research, intensive
actor training and visceral camera techniques. “As a filmmaker, Darren is obsessed with details,” says co-writer
Mark Heyman. “So despite the fantastical elements of the story – seeing your double and the transformation of
Nina – it was very important to him to ground the film in a lot of authenticity.”
As production neared, Aronofsky began to hone in on how he was going to create the film’s dynamic
stage performances which he wanted to have all the first-person intensity of the fight scenes in THE
WRESTLER, yet also capture the grace and lyricism that makes ballet a kind of poetry of the body…and do
justice to the legacy of “Swan Lake.”
To start, he recruited a ballet team headed by choreographer Benjamin Millepied, himself a star dancer
with The New York City Ballet and a globally acclaimed creator of new ballets. Though it was his first time
choreographing for film, Millepied took to it immediately. “I got really into the whole process, and I was
blown away by the actors,” he says. Millepied also had fun stepping in front of the camera to play the role of
David, the company’s lead dancer.
His task was to take key moments from “Swan Lake” and choreograph them so they would perfectly
integrate with both Aronofsky’s screen vision of Thomas Leroy’s idea of a fresh, “stripped down” production
and at the same time be performable by the two actresses who, devoted as they were, were not life-long
ballerinas.
“It was really important to Darren to keep true to a real “Swan Lake,’” explains Millepied. “But we
both knew that you can’t train someone to be a lead ballerina in six months, so we worked very hard on
choosing specific movements for Natalie and Mila that would work on film. Natalie had already started taking
dance classes before I was introduced to her and she had done some training in her childhood, but Mila had no
training whatsoever. So my role was to really refine their movements and to use the choreography to bring out
exactly what was needed. Fortunately, Darren has a great understanding of what good dancing looks like, so
that made my job a lot easier.”
For Portman and Kunis, it would be an intense education. To help train them further, Millepied brought
in a crew of ballet coaches, including the legendary Georgina Parkinson, a principal dancer with the Royal
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