Tag: Mila Kunis

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Kurt Froman on Training Natalie Portman to Dance

 

But his funniest, most interesting words are about Mila Kunis:

“Mila, and I mean this in the best way, she is such a loud-mouthed kind of broad. You know exactly where you stand with her, if she’s not happy with something. All she wanted to do is smoke cigarettes and drink coffee, where it was like, “Come on Mila, we’ve got to work!” And Natalie was like completely the opposite, in a way. She never complained once…

“Mila was the further behind in terms of training. She’s not — she doesn’t have a really good sense of her body, she’s not really a dancer or whatever.”

It’s funny, but I know exactly what he means about not having a good sense of your body… something I never knew about myself until I started trying to to dance.

Anyway, this is from an interview in Front Row Magazine, by Peter Simek, with Kurt Froman (former NYCB dancer- turned – Movin’ Out lead dancer and choreographer for Billy Elliot on Broadway.) Apparently, the interview with Froman was originally published around the time the movie came out, but these excerpts didn’t make the final cut. Simek decided to publish them now in light of the current who danced what controversy. Btw, you all probably already know this, but Sarah Lane gave an interview to 20/20 about said issue. Froman gave the interview a long time ago, without knowledge that this would become a controversy, so it has the air of truth. Scroll down to the bottom to read exactly what he said about Portman.

But I also find it really interesting what he said about training Kunis. At least at the beginning, their intention was to make her like a real Odile – marked by virtuosity. Froman choreographed while Millepied was busy with a prior commitment and that’s what he was trying to go for with Kunis – to make her as believable as a virtuoso as possible. But then when Millepied returned, he changed everything, making Kunis’s character more about her sex appeal, and her sexual comfort level with herself (as opposed to Odette / Portman’s lack thereof). So then they added things like Kunis’s dancing with her hair down, being so comfortable with herself that she didn’t care about messing up, etc., and they took out the virtuosity. This, he said, was okay because it went along far better with what Aronofsky wanted than what Froman had been trying to train her to do. I just find that interesting, because that was one of the parts of the film where I had the hardest time suspending disbelief – that the company director would seriously consider replacing the lead with a seemingly ditzy girl who thought it was funny when she couldn’t do a series of turns without nearly falling over. Of course everyone keeps pointing out that the movie wasn’t about dance but about sexuality, madness, etc. And they’re right. It’s just interesting to me that initially the film seemed to be a little more about the actual ballet than it ended up. Makes me wonder if things were changed after everyone realized how impossible it was to make a couple of very good actresses believable as high-level ballerinas.

Sorry this is all I’ve been blogging about lately! It’s definitely not all I care about. But I’ve returned to practicing law and so am now trying to juggle three things: my job, my book, and this blog. I apologize if it’s slow going from time to time. I definitely plan to cover as much NYCB and ABT as I can this summer!

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More BLACK SWAN Controversy, and The Paris Opera Ballet’s COPPELIA

 

 

I’m still crazy busy but just wanted to point out two things. First, if you haven’t already heard, there’s now a storm of controversy over how much dancing Natalie Portman actually did in Black Swan. Dance Magazine EIC Wendy Perron wants more credit given to Sarah Lane, Portman’s ABT double (whose dancing I love; for image credits above, click on the photos). Portman didn’t mention Lane in her Oscar acceptance speech (though she did mention the dancers in general) but, further, there was apparently also a special effects video produced about the making of the film in which Lane’s face was never shown, though her dancing body was, and in which Lane was never credited. Lane seems not to want to say too much, says she was asked to remain silent on the issue, to not talk about the film, particularly before the Oscars. Lane gave an interview to Dance Magazine in December about her role in the movie, saying she wasn’t “looking for any sort of recognition.” Millepied of course defends his muse, saying Lane did “just the footwork.”

Lane also mentioned in that Dance Magazine interview that Maria Riccetto did some of Mila Kunis’s dancing, which I didn’t know. Both Portman and Kunis must be very petite women!

Anyway, will the controversy surrounding this film ever end? Hopefully not! It’s keeping ballet in the minds of the public, if you ask me…

Thanks to reader Jeff (who I noticed is also mentioned in Perron’s blog, linked to above) for pointing me to the controversy.

 

Also, this Monday, March 28th, the Paris Opera Ballet will live-stream its Coppelia, via Emerging Pictures’ always excellent Ballet in Cinema series. Curtain is Paris time at 7:30 p.m., which is 1:30 p.m. here on the east coast. In Manhattan, it’s showing at the Big Theater again. For other times and locations, visit the Ballet in Cinema website.

Okay, all I have time for now. Thanks for continuing to read my blog while I remain swamped 🙂

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Natalie Portman’s Black Swan Acceptance Speech at the Oscars

 

So what did you guys think of it? I tried to find a YouTube video but couldn’t find a free one. Interesting that companies are going to start charging for subscriptions for that kind of thing… Anyway, I love that she thanked and named all the professional dancers who trained her this time, and that she expressed how wonderful and enlightening it was to work with them all. She honestly elevated the film with her speech in my opinion.

And how sweet was it for her to try to bring Millepied up with her onstage! I watched E!’s red carpet show – mainly to see her – but she arrived last and seemingly without Millepied (since she was interviewed alone). I was like, where is he?! But he was there, of course.

Speaking of the red carpet show, I loved Mila Kunis’s dress.

 

And Scarlett Johansson’s, though it didn’t seem to go over too well with Kelly Osbourne and the other woman who was hosting the show:

 

And Helena Bonham Carter noted that her dress was by Colleen Atwood, who is the costume designer who ended up winning best costume design for Alice in Wonderland. She said she preferred to celebrate the movies rather than fashion on this night:

 

I thought all of the best actor and best supporting actor speeches were good. Loved Colin Firth’s, loved him in King’s Speech, but still love Jesse Eisenberg as well. Love that in her excitement, Melissa Leo used profanity. How’d they bleep that out so quickly? And did Kirk Douglas actually grab her butt? Someone on Twitter said they thought they saw that. He was kind of acting in an antiquated sexist kind of way, with all his flirting with Hathaway and all, so I totally believe he may have. He would have made me so nervous if I were Leo. Poor Leo, I thought. This is her moment, not his. Interesting (and proper) move, to include Douglas as a presenter, because Anne Hathaway and James Franco seemed to keep sending the message that they were invited to host because they represented the young, hip generation. Is that true? She seemed like a big, clumsy, awkward goof – probably the nerves, and he seemed to have taken a bit too much Valium (or something else) to calm his. Does Hollywood feel the need to pander to the young ‘uns too? Like ballet and the opera? How odd – movies are generally for the younger generations, I’d thought… Anyway, they bored me, those hosts. And Kirk Douglas scared me. Isn’t there, like, someone in between, who’s not too unsophisticated to take on that kind of role but who can also keep from violating current-day boundaries?

Anyway, overall a decent night. The end of the evening speeches made up for the poor hosting. Kind of.

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My Take on BLACK SWAN

 

I saw it over the weekend. Overall, I thought it was hilarious. Totally campy and just plain funny. Way too silly to be scary though. And I think Aronofksy was going for both. So, to me, it failed to that extent. But it may have just been me. Maybe I just have a dark sense of humor, because I went with two friends – one a ballet fan of the Gelsey Kirkland era, the other not. They both loved it and were on the edge of their seats throughout, although they also laughed quite a bit (particularly Gelsey Kirkland friend). Gelsey Kirkland friend said it reminded him of Dancing on My Grave. I must read that! I don’t know why I haven’t yet…

Anyway, so if you don’t know the story, it’s about this young ballerina who dances with a New York City ballet company housed in the Koch Theater. The artistic director (played by Vincent Cassel) is basically Peter Martins but with brown hair and a French accent.  Peter Martins guy tells the company that they are doing a new production of Swan Lake and to attract new audiences, they are going to cast a brand new ballerina, a new face. The old prima, Winona Ryder, is approaching menopause anyway. Never mind that she looks the same age she did in Reality Bites, at least to me. Apparently this company doesn’t have a system of principals and corps members because no one has any idea who the new face is going to be.

Peter Martins guy soon reveals that he favors Nina (Portman), but thinks she can only do the White Swan. He thinks she’ll have trouble with the Black Swan (he never uses the names Odette and Odile, which I know annoyed some ballet fans on Twitter, but I think it would have alienated non-ballet audiences had he used those names). He tries to seduce her (literally) in the name of getting her into the character of the Black Swan, which of course in the film is characterized as a sinister, conniving slut. But maybe he goes too far and unleashes the inner beast in Nina. She suddenly seems hell-bent on destroying herself (and she’s had problems in the past with self-mutilation and, it’s hinted at, anorexia). Or, maybe it’s that a new dancer from San Francisco (Mila Kunis) is trying to destroy her in order to take her place as the lead. My biggest problem with the movie is that it’s billed as a thriller but we never really find out the answer to that question. At the end, you’re still left wondering WFT was that about??? I mean, you’re left wondering that with many David Lynch films too, but with those, if you think long and hard enough, you can piece it all together. This, I don’t think so. I think it was just meant to be scary, sexy, creepy, gory camp.

For serious ballet fans, you have to suspend disbelief. Natalie Portman I thought did an excellent acting job, and her dancing is very very good for someone with very little training. I know Sarah Lane was supposedly her double, but you never really see any stunning dancing. The camera mostly focuses on Portman’s arms – and Benjamin Millepied did say he focused on the port de bras when training her and Kunis because you just can’t teach someone with no training to go on pointe and do the fouettes and pirouettes and all. So, you simply have to suspend disbelief that someone at Nina’s level would land the lead in the first place. And if you’re looking for thrilling dancing – the fouettes, the lightening-speed chaine turns, a beautiful pas de deux, etc., you’re not going to get it.

When we were all walking out, I did hear a couple people say now they wanted to see Swan Lake. Of course I hope it renews interest in the ballet, but it does worry me a bit that people will be disappointed, because the film makes it seem like the black swan pas de deux is a sex scene. The Peter Martins character keeps yelling at Nina to “seduce me, seduce me!” During a break he rhetorically asks Millepied (playing the role of Siegfried) if he would ever sleep with Nina (except he termed it differently). No one in the audience laughed but me. What am I the only New Yorker who reads the tabloids??? But in the ballet, the ballerina seduces both Siegfried and the audience with her allegro dancing, with her athletics. It’s more dance than theater; the seduction is in the dancing not the acting.

The whole thing had a Valley of the Dolls feel to it. Barbara Hershey is Portman’s mother, and she seems a bit off herself. You sometimes wonder if the mother (who never made it out of the corps, and who left ballet to have Nina) is trying to sabotage her daughter as well. There are some really funny (though I’m not sure if they were meant to be) screaming screeching cat-fight scenes between the two of them. But I think the funniest are between Winona Ryder as the aging ballet star forced into retirement and Nina, particularly those involving discussions of how to get ahead in the ballet company (guess; not by great dancing)… I miss Winona Ryder. I miss movies like Heathers…

Anyway, I still don’t know how to feel about this movie. I’m happy that it’s put ballet on people’s minds again, but how misleading is it to what an actual ballet performance is all about? What do you guys think? It seems to have received fairly good reviews from the film critics.

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Benjamin Millepied Interviewed at Black Swan Premiere

This is actually a pretty interesting interview, by Amy Kaufman, of the Los Angeles Times, at the Black Swan premiere in LA. Millepied talks about the differences between working with trained and untrained dancers, and how he trained the untrained specifically for film. When asked whether Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis are ready to join a ballet company, he says “oh no”! 🙂

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BENJAMIN MILLEPIED CHOREOGRAPHING FOR "BLACK SWAN" MOVIE

There were rumors swarming around that NYCB’s Ben Millepied would be choreographing for the upcoming film starring Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis, and they appear to be true.

Says Director Darren Aronofsky:

“My sister was a dancer growing up and I was always in the background, so I always thought it would be a really interesting world to film in. And after wrestling and working with maybe the lowest form of art [in ‘The Wrestler’], it was kind of interesting to move to the highest form of art,” he said, adding that dance appreciation can be an acquired taste: “It’s taken a long time to develop an understanding of the details, and the more you get exposed to it, the more complexity you see.”

Click on that first link, by the way, for an interesting script analysis.

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WINONA RYDER & NATALIE PORTMAN IN MOVIE BASED ON NYCB DANCER

 

 

Oh cool — apparently, Winona Ryder, Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis are to star in a film called Black Swan, a thriller that follows the story of a fictitious NYCBallet dancer who may or may not be having delusions about a rival. All actresses play dancers with the company, and supposedly, there is some kind of “extreme” sex scene between Portman and Kunis. Hmmm… Can any of them dance, or will they have doubles to do the dancing, I wonder. Or will there actually be much dancing?

Directing is Darren Aronofsky, who last directed The Wrestler, and filming is expected to begin in New York next month, with a release date sometime in 2010.