Millepied is featured in a new Los Angeles Times article that focuses on both his career in dance and his relationship with Portman. The French-born former dance prodigy personally instructed Portman in her film dancing and even wrote her routine. The accusations are baseless, he says.
"It was so believable, it was fantastic, that beautiful movement quality," he told the paper. "There are articles now talking about her dance double that are making it sound like [Sarah Lane, her body double] did a lot of the work, but really, she just did the footwork, and the fouettés, and one diagonal [phrase] in the studio. Honestly, 85% of that movie is Natalie."
Portman spoke throughout the film's promotion of the tireless work she did in an effort to both perfect her dancing and her dancer's body, saying that at one point, she thought she was going to die.
Millepied revealed how he helped Portman's onscreen dancing seem so graceful; it just took some creative choreographing.
"[I made] things fluid and not too complicated," he said. "By getting more movement going, which in turn added to the camera movement — that is basically what I did. If we had kept things more classical, more restrained, less fluid, it would have been harder to trick the eye."
Portman studied ballet until she was 13 years old, giving her a foundation for her training. The Huffington Post interviewed one of her dancing doubles, Kimberly Prosa, who spoke about what Portman was able to pull off:
Read More: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/23/benjamin-millepied-natalie-portman_n_839530.html
