Black Swan Ballerina Says Natalie Portman Basically Didn't Dance

I was almost positive we'd never have to talk about awful-ass Black Swan again, but here comes a kick-ass, scorned ballerina with a tale to tell: Sarah Lane, a 27-year-old American Ballet Theater soloist who worked as a body double on Black Swan, tells EW that there's a "cover-up" to prevent people from knowing she performed 95% of the cygnet moves in the movie. Now, I can't guarantee that Sarah isn't wearing black wings and circling her house right now like a crazed Sean Young type, but her quotes sound legitimate.

You can see why Lane would dislike being reduced to the title of "hand model" if she performed as much of the on-screen choreography as she claims.

"Of the full body shots, I would say 5 percent are Natalie," says Sarah Lane, 27, an American Ballet Theater soloist who performed many of the film's complicated dance sequences, allowing Portman's face to be digitally grafted onto her body. "All the other shots are me."

Lane's claim follows a March 23 L.A. Times article in which Portman's fiancé and Black Swan choreographer Benjamin Millepied said Lane's work in the film was far less significant. "There are articles now talking about her dance double [American Ballet Theatre dancer Sarah Lane] that are making it sound like [Lane] did a lot of the work, but really, she just did the footwork, and the fouettés, and one diagonal [phrase] in the studio," he said. "Honestly, 85 percent of that movie is Natalie."

Lane disagrees. "The shots that are just her face with arms, those shots are definitely Natalie," she says. "But that doesn't show the actual dancing." Lane admits that she was never promised a particular title for her six weeks of work on the film, though she was disappointed to see that she is credited only as as "Hand Model," "Stunt Double," and "Lady in the Lane" (a brief walk-on role). [...]

According to Lane, Portman's dramatic transformation into a ballerina -- a narrative firmly at the center of her successful Oscar campaign -- wasn't as impressive as the public was led to believe. "I mean, from a professional dancer's standpoint, she doesn't look like a professional ballet dancer at all and she can't dance in pointe shoes. And she can't move her body; she's very stiff," says Lane. "I do give her a lot of credit because in a year and a half she lost a lot of weight and she really tried to go method and get into a dancers head and really feel like a ballet dancer."

Nothing is better than a jilted dancer. Those girls always have so many opinions, and they know when a prima ballerina is just a flab-faced tippler lost in a tulle husk. They'll just tell you. They'll write it in your program. I also like to picture Lane stalking the corridors of her house and mumbling that she's not sure Natalie could ever play the white swan, like Vincent Cassel, but while wearing a Sean Young-sewn swan outfit, see.

Not that Natalie's moves really affected her performance, but Lane's stroke of revolt is necessary if it's true. Don't go making claims about people's ballet abilities, Benjamin Millepied, if the real artiste is a barely credited extra who doesn't have the media in her backyard. But who knows. Maybe this is all a crock -- like Black Swan! Remember: It was terrible.

What do you think? Is Lane exposing a great sham? Besides Black Swan, which was a great sham?

'Black Swan' double claims Natalie Portman only did '5 percent' of full-body dance shots in the movie [EW]