Black Swan director Darren Aronofsky has more or less dismissed claims by dance-double Sarah Lane that Natalie Portman performed only a small fraction of her ballet scenes in the film. Aronofsky’s official statement, released through Fox Searchlight, says Portman performed 80% of of the dancing seen in the film.”
“Here is the reality,” his statement reads. “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% 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.”
Lane claimed in a 3.28 Wall Street Journal “Speakeasy” story that Portman performed about 5% of the dancing in the film.
In other words, Lane has faux-pahhed herself out of Aronofsky, Portman, Benjamin Millipied‘s and Fox Searchlight’s good graces.