Natalie Portman’s Black Swan ballet trainer Mary Helen Bowers of Balletbeautiful.com
BalletBeautiful: I’m not in the habit of recommending other peoples ballet training regimens. However, Mary Helen Bowers Balletbeautiful.com: http://www.balletbeautiful.com/ did an amazing job working with Natalie Portman as her trainer for Black Swan. Women who are serious about working to develop lean long muscled bodies can’t go wrong having her as a trainer. About Mary Helen Bowers:
She began studying as a full scholarship student at the School of American Ballet in Manhattan at age 15. She was invited to join New York City Ballet at age 16. She danced for 10 years with the New York City Ballet at Lincoln Center and on stages all over the world. She graduated from Columbia University with a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature. And, she created Ballet Beautiful™ method as a highly targeted and effective approach to fitness. At the heart of the Ballet Beautiful method is Mary Helen's expertise; the exquisite grace, beauty and strength that are the essence of a ballerina's form.
The 2011 Oscars: I’m having a small group of friends over this afternoon to watch the 2011 Academy Awards presentation. Usually it doesn’t make much difference to me what pictures and actors and actresses win but this year I have two dogs in the fight. My picks are:
The King’s Speech for best film
Natalie Portman for best actress in Black Swan
Colin Firth for best actor in The Kings Speech
Long time reader’s may recall that my mom was English and my biological father (Great uncle John) was Welsh, so I’m predisposed to favoring inspirational films about the Brits. I think The Kings speech has greater appeal – to the Academy – than Black swan.
I hope I’m wrong, but I think the film The Kids Are All Right with Annette Bening will probably win best picture and Bening best actress as I fear the film has more general appeal to the Academy. Sigh!
Update: I’m delighted to say that I got three for three (above) of my Oscar pics for this year!
People my age and younger don’t realize what a tremendous role-model King George VI was to the English people during WW II. The story of the Kings Speech provides some insight into what went into helping George VI be the leader he was.
I’m so pleased that Natalie Portman got the recognition she deserves for her frighteningly realistic portrayal of a ballet dancer who deteriorates mentally under the stress involved in competing with rivals for the lead in Swan Lake and in making the role of the Black swan her own.
In addition, Natalie, in her acceptance speech, thanked Mary Helen Bowers for helping her train for a year to make her into a believable ballerina.
Breaking news! Natalie Portman won Best Actres Oscar for her role in "Black Swan"!
ReplyDeleteYES!!! That was so richly deserved by Natalie!
ReplyDeleteI thought the Aronovsky thriller actually trashed ballet. I don't think it was well received in the ballet community with its cartoon renditions of characters and genres. Hollywood can't seem to do anything but string caricatures and stereotypes together.
ReplyDeleteMs Portman may have tried for several months of slimming and coaching but she does not present as a prima ballerina. She has no epaulement... her back is too stiff and most of the footwork was done by Sarah Lane with her head stuck on it.
Toss in some lesbian sex scenes, the archetype crazed driven stage mother, the jealous aging ballerina, the dumbass boys, drugs and clubs and you get pretty much a pop movie which does a good job of not portraying the hard work and artistry and dedication of ballet dancers, ADs and so forth.
There are issues with ballet in that students begin so young, are so isolated because of the demands of training and can be emotionally immature and at such a young age expected to portray adults, with nuanced emotions and do it within the bounds of choreography.
Perhaps Nina's childishness and room full of stuffed animals was trying to send that message. Of course her rite of passage, per Aronosfsky was to stuff them down the trash chute and have lesbian sex.
What Portman and Millipied did off stage is another story.
J
Jill,
ReplyDeleteHere's what a balletomane write on BalleTalk which pretty much sums up my take on her dancing:
"I just saw Black Swan, or the first hour of it - after that I knew exactly what was going to happen and I had a good enough impression of Natalie Portman's acting and dancing, which is what interested me. Despite all the publicity given her training and weight loss, I see New York City Ballet several times a week in season and there is no way she is going to make me think she's a dancer. The director wisely shows her mostly from the waist up, and even utilizing only a truncated version, she is awkward. Her back is stiff, she never shows a backbend which Swan Lake often calls for, and her arms are very disjointed. I don't mean this with malice - I hope it's not taken as that - but that if you are exposed to real ballet dancers at the top of their profession like at City Ballet, what Black Swan is depicting is a poor substitute. She has no musicality in her movement, dance does not live within her as it does within Benjamin Millepied, for example, who briefly partners her. Natalie Portman carries off the acting demands very well as we'd expect, but the dancing? That's not dancing, that's careful execution of taught technique, and it is too late at 28 to acquire the flexibility ballet demands. Though perhaps her stiffness is what the director called for, to demonstrate her rigidity. But then her being chosen as Swan Queen is completely inexplicable based on her demonstrated lack of dance talent."
I am surprised that as a former SAB student and instructor you can't see how awful she really was. No sophisticated ballet person would see it otherwise.
J
Everyone is entitled to their opinion.
ReplyDeleteOn the whole the ballet dancers I've talked to about Black Swan thought it was good. One must keep in mind that this was a film for entertainment and not a documentary.
“but the dancing? That's not dancing, that's careful execution of taught technique, and it is too late at 28 to acquire the flexibility ballet demands. Though perhaps her stiffness is what the director called for, to demonstrate her rigidity. But then her being chosen as Swan Queen is completely inexplicable based on her demonstrated lack of dance talent."
ReplyDeleteWhat a load of drivel from a self-satisfied snot… for Gods sake! It’s a thriller film set in a ballet background! That person and others like him (or her) needs to lighten up and get a life!
If Darren Aronofsky had wanted a ballerina he could have asked Julie Kent or her equivalent to take the role. I’m sure it made the person writing that critique feel important…which was undoubtedly the purpose of him or her writing it.
People in the real world seeing the film didn’t expect to see Principals from ABT or NYCB in the parts. I hope Alexandra or another Moderator will moderate that sort of stuffed shirt preening.
That's not the point. Unfortunately way too many people BELIEVE Hollywood, or are confused enough to accept some of it as factual.
ReplyDeleteI know it's "just entertainment", but when there is distortion in something like what ballet is, people who are deeply into the genre are understandably offended.
It's not about ballet and is only uses Swan Lake and the dualism of Odile/Odette as a cheap trick to show how the dark side lives with the light side.
When I see "perversions" of what sailing is it disturbs me a bit as well.
I don't care for the "horror genre" and the sloppy short hand techniques of Hollywood. As someone who loves ballet, I was bothered by this movie. Portman did a decent job acting.
Pray tell, why not have one of the beautiful and talented ballerinas play this role? Oh I forgot, they don't have the time since their career would not let them.
Stuffed shirt preening is pretty common on sites where self professed experts are allowed to opine.
J
In Black Swan almost all of it is factual – dramatized, yes, but factual: eating disorders, the rigors of continuous training, competition for parts and learning to deal with our sexuality while working in a cloistered environment. Other than perhaps the part about going insane and even there some dancers have psychiatric problems.
ReplyDeleteI know you want to believe that ballet dancers are pure (the perfect and unattainable female) and don’t even perspire, but in the real world we have very real lives with the bad and disagreeable mixed with the good.
As far as a cheap trick using the dual roles to cause a dancer to mentally destroy herself while desperately trying to succeed and please her AD, I think it was inspired. We will never know how many times that has nearly happened in real life. It’s the sort of thing that no one wants to advertise.
As far as getting an A-list ballerina to play Nina Sayers, again, keep in mind that Black Swan is entertainment, not a documentary. They needed a dramatic actress who could plausibly play a ballerina, not a ballerina who couldn’t act.
Additionally, the only instance I can recall where a major ballet talent played a dancer in a successful film was Moira Shearer in The Red Shoes (in 1948) and that did not turn out well for her as it put her in direct competition with Margot Fonteyn for the adulation of British and American audiences and caused Shearer to be ostracized by members of the company for ‘not taking her art seriously.’
So if a Ballet Principal was to be asked and pleaded lack of time it would have probably been true as well as a prudent defensive position against rivals.
For a ‘Balletomane’ to nitpick Portman’s performance as a ballerina is just sad. S/he must be delusional to have expected a ABT-NYCB level of performance in a film drama and then to have written about it in that way just broadcast the writer’s total disconnect from reality to more rational readers.
My jaw dropped at 'Mary Helen Bowers' website gallery. Those are incredible photographs and they hold true to the 'Ballet Beautiful' name. Sigh, makes me want to take a class!
ReplyDeleteI've not seen Black Swan yet so will hold off any thoughts... good to see Natalie win though!
Paul S.
It was entertainment and bad entertainment in my opinion (obviously not in others!).
ReplyDeleteI stand my stereotype comment. This is how Hollywood communicates and it lacks nuance and subtlety and falls short of being art because of this.
But entertainment is not art.
Ballet on the other hand IS. And no I don't think ballerinas don't sweat. I know some ballerinas and they are humans and some are sheltered and so have emotional and maturity problems and others are quite normal like Julie.
Ballet is perhaps the most demanding endeavor anyone can embark on and the hard work shows. Many are entertained by ballet and some are seeing art - in motion. As architecture is frozen music, ballet is flowing architecture.
But as an architect I understand all the technical things which go to make a work or frozen music. Lots of nuts and bolts and "technique."
J