Ballet or not ballet? That is the question

Hmmmm.    I'm letting you in on a guilty secret: I have been known to read gossip for fun.   Now, flinging around the internet (and most gossip columns and even some real news outlets) is the epic battle between the star and the director of Black Swan--that would be Natalie Portman of Oscar fame and Darren Aronovsky) and the star's dancing stand-in (that would be Sarah Lane.)    Lane is claiming she did most of the dancing with no real credit and is upset that people think someone could learn to be a ballerina in a year and a half.    She has been dancing for 22 years.     She went so far as claiming Portman couldn't even dance on pointe (on your toes, if anyone doesn't know.)

According to the always entertaining Ted Casablanca of E! News online's The Awful Truth:

Natalie's dancing partner (and now baby daddy fiancé) Benjamin Millepied took to her defense on the matter, claiming Nat did "85 percent" of the dancing.     Sarah Lane disputes this.

Director Aronofsky would like to take that one [too], as he tells E! News:
"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 percent Natalie Portman. 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. And to be clear Natalie did dance on pointe in pointe shoes. If you look at the final shot of the opening prologue, which lasts 85 seconds, and was danced completely by Natalie, she exits the scene on pointe. That is completely her without any digital magic. 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."   If you want to read more, follow the link to Casablanca's blog (I hope he doesn't mind my small borrowing.)

Read more: http://www.eonline.com/uberblog/the_awful_truth/b233315_black_swan_battle_heats_up_even_more.html#ixzz1HxfbE6qA

Lane is right, of course, you cannot turn yourself into a "real" ballet dancer in a year and a half.   But who actually thinks the dance sequences add up to a whole ballet?    Lane?     Who is she kidding?     With specific training to do a limited number of steps, moves, etc., a dedicated person with smarts and will power could very likely do enough to fool the audience into imagining her as a great ballerina.
  

But my interests lie elsewhere.    First, Lane's defense of the long hard work required to master ballet is admirable and completely true.    And who knows, maybe the film and all the discussion will get more people into the theater to watch an actual ballet.     I hope so.    If it is that simple to create a new audience, the dance world owes the film a debt of gratitude.    Ballet is a marvelous art form, and should be seen and enjoyed.    I saw Swan Lake for my last birthday, instead of an opera or a Broadway show, which I would normally choose.  It was glorious.    And the sad truth is, audiences for ballet are shrinking--noticeably.     Opera seems healthy in comparison.   If the controversy helps in any way, I'm glad for that,

But second, most of the people watching the film have to be thinking, who the hell cares?   If I want to believe Portman is a dancer, I will.    It's an acting role above and beyond everything else.   Personally, I don't care if she didn't do ANY of the steps.    It's an ACTING assignment.    And Lane cannot deny that Portman DID do some of it.    The counting of shots seems pretty conclusive to me.    He could easily be proved wrong if he is exaggerating.       Just like the dancing in Chicago a few years back, the question was did the actors do their own dancing?    Yes, they did.     They spent weeks learning them.    Most of them are shot in fragmentary form, so careful editing could eliminate false steps, mistakes, etc.    And the dancing did not make up a majority of the film.    The same holds true for Black Swan.    Are they any better or worse if the dancing is shared?    Or not?

NOOOOOOOO!     Stop being stupid.   It's a movie!    It's not a filmed performance!      Lane, get over yourself!     You have made the wrong point.   You SHOULD have said that true ballet is a decades long pursuit and hopefully, the popularity of this film will allow more dancers to be seen live.    Go get back on the stage and prove your worth there.     Movies are not "real."    They are put together of parts.   Shot out of order.    Created by computers.    Edited to make actors look better.    Have a music score to manipulate your emotions.   Only idiots think movie are just an actor's medium, and they will not be buying a ticket to anything even near a staged ballet, now, or in the future.      We all applaud the defense of unheralded performers.     But art forms are not equal.    Live performances will always be more difficult to pull off with great skill.     Of course they are!   Natalie Portman did not claim to dance everything all at once in one take.    THAT is the only "reality" that needs to be pointed out.  Only the same idiots who think movies are real, think acting in them is as hard as acting in a play, musical, ballet, or opera.      The same goes for dancing in them or singing in them.   The idea is preposterous to anyone who loves both film and live shows.    I defend great movie acting.    Some things can only work on film.    (Meryl Streep in Sophie's Choice, for instance.    Hell, Natalie Portman in Black Swan.)    But Derek Jacobi or Ian McKellen in a live King Lear will always trump ANYONE'S on film.   Stop puny arguments that hurt The Arts.    Hate-mongers in government are already doing that.

Bad for the Arts?

Well, Spiderman the National joke is now in its umpteenth very public revision, but with a huge catch this time: the director / co-writer is (all but) out, while the musical team finally gets off its collective ass to work on the damn thing as new writer(s) and a new director have been rushed in to save the day (and this irony is not lost on too many people.)     Will it help?    Who knows?    History would suggest "No."     For my purposes, it won't matter.      I doubt I would be interested in seeing it anyway, certainly not at those prices.    My interest lies in the humiliated director, Julie Taymor.    If mid-America did not know she was the creative genius behind The Lion King, her infamy is now front page news (or at least, of the Arts section.)     Yes, she refused to admit vast problems were not being solved.   Yes, she had some poor ideas no one could (or would?) talk her out of.     No, even in a fantasy world, a chorus of spiders can NEVER be made to work.     She seemed destined to go down in flames--and destiny finally caught up with her.     She is now considered a foolish egomaniac that destroyed the great work that could have been Spiderman.     Never mind, she was not working in a vacuum.    Others were designing sets (with her input), costumes (ditto), flying stunts, etc.   Not to mention, writing the score.   Was she really such a control freak that she FORCED them all to bow to her foolish whims?    I have begun to doubt it.     The world needed an excuse why Bono could not be the next Elton John.    They needed a quick and handy scapegoat.   They found a large one, one they would have us believe was trapped in a web completely of her own devising.     Well, she was the director but the buck did not stop with her: it stopped with the producers.  They were not pushing for new songs, better scripts, more coherent plot lines.    Unless they were doing it without ANYONE saying anything about it.     With this much scrutiny?    Get real.   They gave the woman more than enough rope to hang herself (and half the cast while she was at it.)     And sat on their hands while Bono and The Edge went on tour and ignored what was happening in New York.      And no one likes their score any more than they like the script.    So why are they not "fired'?     Have they not failed as well?    Yes, they have.    But someone with some name recognition had to stay around or the show would close, losing $65, 000, 000.     So a ready made villain was found and banished.  

So where does this leave us?    With someone with imagination, vision, courage, intelligence, and faith thrown to the wolves and disgraced.     And the theater world will be a poorer place for it.     I have no doubt she created her own downfall, but the spite and hate and arrogance of the "critics" was hardly unbiased.    Would this have happened if a man had done the same, as some have claimed?    Who knows that either?     The chances are, the show would never have gotten as far as it has with someone else attached.     And she made a HUGE mistake.     And now the thud that is the biggest musical disaster in history will echo down her career even past her death.     Frankly, had none of this "drama" happened, the show would have closed months ago.    In an ironic twist, the show is mostly full every night with audience members wanting to experience "one of the worst (musicals ever)" as Ben Brantley so pithily opined.     This press had allowed time to make changes.     So change it!     Maybe the new people can take the basic ideas and salvage them.   But let's not be too quick to chop off Taymor's head.     Her creativity is good for theater, good for opera, good for the Arts, period.    But who will ever trust her again?     In the world of live performance, nothing is written in stone.    But I predict her time of influence is over.    And THAT, more than any one show, no matter how big a failure, is the real disgrace.     We do not have enough imaginative people working on Broadway or in opera houses these days.    And now we have one fewer.

Loss

The part of the Oscars that recognizes those in the movie business that have died within the last year has me thinking of one of the people I have loved since I was young: Lena Horne.    I watched her in any film I could find, even as a child, because I found her beauty, style, and voice enchanting.    She could make you laugh, she could make you cry, she could make you love-sick, but she was rarely given a chance to display her talents in the ways they should have been.     She was a victim of the racist views of her time--a story many people know.    This is a tragedy, but I am still grateful for the indelible images she did leave behind.     I will never forget her singing Stormy Weather, a favorite song by a favorite singer.  Nor will the power of her one-woman show leave me (until everything has and I am at a loss for my own name.)    If you see on TCM that one of her films is being shown, do yourself a favor and watch it.   Even if her part is but a song, she makes it memorable.    Miss Horne, I will miss knowing you are in the world but I am happy you still live in some way, if just in image and sound.