The Black Swan Story Of The Year
Glendora Spink
But what is the original story of Swan Lake? The main characters tend to remain constant across productions: the White Swan Queen Odette, Prince Siegfried, the owl-magician Baron Von Rothbart, and his Black Swan daughter Odile. Baron Von Rothbart has cursed young women so that they are swans by day and human by night, trapped in a lake deep in a forest. The only cure for this curse is faithful love.
The ballet often begins with Prince Siegfried at his coming-of-age celebration, where he receives a crossbow and a firm reminder from his mother the Queen. She insists it is time for him to pick a bride and get married. Distressed, Siegfried leaves the party and goes into the woods to hunt with his new crossbow. He stumbles upon a lake filled with beautiful swans. He takes aim, but before he can shoot, his target transforms into a beautiful woman! This is the first meeting of Siegfried and Odette, the White Swan. Despite his poor first impression, the two quickly fall in love. Siegfried promises his love to her before they are interrupted by Baron Von Rothbart and must flee.
Whether a happy ending or a tragic ending, the original steps or new choreography, structured in two or three or four acts, Swan Lake is a classic tale and a beautiful ballet. Twenty-four Trainees will take the stage alongside the BalletMet 2 and BalletMet Company dancers to tell the story of the swans. We cannot wait to share it with you!
In 1500s London, a black swan was used to denote something impossible. However, when black swans (Cygnus atratus) were later observed in Australia by a Dutch Explorer in the late 1600s, this turned the belief that all swans were only white onto its head.
In more recent times, the metaphor has been used to describe something that challenges the foundation of any system of thought. In other words, the entire premise that swans could only be white was undone as soon as a single black swan was observed.
Black swan events are rare and unexpected events with severe consequences with the potential to cause a change in a formerly held belief or system of beliefs. In his book, Taleb notes the three defining attributes of a black swan event:
Although black swan events seem to come with a negative connotation, the concept does not only apply to negative events. Whether the event is positive or negative depends on the perspective of each party involved.
For example, Taleb argues that a black swan event for a deer that gets shot is not one for the hunter who shoots the animal. A disastrous day in the stock market may be seen as a positive event for an investor with aggressive short positions but a negative event for an investor who has heavily bought into the market.
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Everything about classical ballet lends itself to excess. The art form is one of grand gesture, of the illusion of triumph over reality and even the force of gravity. Yet it demands from its performers years of rigorous perfectionism, the kind of physical and mental training that takes ascendancy over normal life. This conflict between the ideal and the reality is consuming Nina Sayers, Portman's character.
Her life has been devoted to ballet. Was that entirely her choice? Her mother, Erica (Barbara Hershey), was a dancer once, and now dedicates her life to her daughter's career. They share a small apartment that feels sometimes like a refuge, sometimes like a cell. They hug and chatter like sisters. Something feels wrong.
The film seems to be unfolding along lines that can be anticipated: There's tension between Nina and Thomas, and then Lily (Mila Kunis), a new dancer, arrives from the West Coast. She is all Nina is not: bold, loose, confident. She fascinates Nina, not only as a rival but even as a role model. Lily is, among other things, a clearly sexual being, and we suspect Nina may never have been on a date, let alone slept with a man. For her, Lily presents a professional challenge and a personal rebuke.
Thomas, the beast, is well known for having affairs with his dancers. Played with intimidating arrogance by Cassel, he clearly has plans for the virginal Nina. This creates a crisis in her mind: How can she free herself from the technical perfection and sexual repression enforced by her mother, while remaining loyal to their incestuous psychological relationship?
No backstage ballet story can be seen without "The Red Shoes" (1948) coming into mind. If you've never seen it of course eventually you will. In the character of Thomas, Aronofsky and Cassel evoke Boris Lermontov (Anton Walbrook), the impresario in that film, whose autocratic manner masks a deep possessiveness. And in Nina, there is a version of Moira Shearer's ingenue, so driven to please.
Portman's performance is a revelation from this actress who was a 13-year-old charmer in "Beautiful Girls" (1996). She has never played a character this obsessed before, and never faced a greater physical challenge (she prepared by training for 10 months). Somehow she goes over the top and yet stays in character: Even at the extremes, you don't catch her acting. The other actors are like dance partners holding her aloft. Barbara Hershey provides a perfectly calibrated performance as a mother whose love is real, whose shortcomings are not signaled, whose own perfectionism has all been focused on the creation of her daughter.
The tragedy of Nina, and of many young performers and athletes, is that perfection in one area of life has led to sacrifices in many of the others. At a young age, everything becomes focused on pleasing someone (a parent, a coach, a partner), and somehow it gets wired in that the person can never be pleased. One becomes perfect in every area except for life itself.
I probably missed more make-able putts per round as a competitive player than anyone I knew. It drove me out of competitive amateur golf, at age 25. In desperation, I turned professional, thinking if I played more, my putting would improve. Nope. Got worse.
Luckily for me, I was hired to solve a complex geometry problem, for Pratt & Whitney Aircraft Engines, back in 1985. It dealt with compound angle errors in Turbine Blade Production Tooling. Solving it gave me a decade long job solving other Turbine tooling problems. Why is that important? Because just like the Turbine Tool Engineers, the Putter Designers for over 150 years have also had tunnel vision on the issue of compound angle effects that were not apparent to the eye, but completely affected the ability to Make Putts.
It was so stupid making so many putts after all these years, and I was so stupid, that I tested for four more months. It never changed. Took it all over the country looking for bent-grass and mountain courses. I made extreme numbers no matter where I putted. Thank God for those Six Smart Engineers.
Great story. My putting game has always been the best. Would like to try the Black Hawk and Black Swan Putter to see if improvement is possible. Unfortunately a recent injury has put me on the sidelines with regard to my golf swing, but putting is never in the swing . Love to have a lesson sometime with the Black Hawk and Black Swan Putters!
I met you FL. a few years ago. We played a round a my putter head fail off. You let me finish with your Black Hawk. Loved it. Do you still do the lesson? We do a annual outing that I we like to see if there is enough interest. Please send information.
Having seen Darren Aronofsky's dazzling and disorienting ballet thriller "Black Swan" a second time, I'll stick to my original position that it's one of the best movies of the year. Synthesizing Aronofsky's previous work and foregrounding a breakthrough star performance from Natalie Portman as its tormented protagonist, this is a marvelous construction that's in line for multiple Oscar nominations: Portman, Vincent Cassel and Barbara Hershey for acting awards, Matthew Libatique for his amazing hand-held cinematography, Thrse DePrez for production design, Andrew Weisblum for editing and Clint Mansell for a mesmerizing score that blends techno and Tchaikovsky.
Aronofsky himself should walk away with the Academy's directing prize, in large part because he takes a clumsy, crazy script -- which seems to combine "The Red Shoes," "All About Eve" and a woman-centric rewrite of Aronofsky's last film, "The Wrestler" -- and makes a memorable near-masterpiece out of it. A second viewing also exposes some of "Black Swan's" flaws, most notably the fact that Cassel's character, a ramrod-straight martinet choreographer modeled after the legendary George Balanchine, is largely in the story to provide explanatory footnotes: "You must complete the metamorphosis into your evil twin!" (On the other hand, watching Cassel's perfect carriage, his hips and shoulders exactly aligned as he prowls the rehearsal room like a medium-size predatory cat, is pretty much its own reward. Even getting to use the word "carriage," in that sense, is a kick.)
There's plenty of room for legitimate debate on "Black Swan," and a lot of it will surround the question of whether it's yet another exploitative male-crafted thriller about a female nutcase or something more ambitious and more universal than that. I'm not sure there's a right or wrong answer -- Aronofsky is deliberately employing the conventions of misogynistic genre movies, while identifying strongly with Portman's Nina Sayers and her insane, impossible quest for artistic perfection. I'm never quite sure how I feel about thrillers with art-film ambitions: The film-snob part of me believes they're limited by the traps, tricks and gimmicky resolutions demanded by the genre, while the populist part of me honors the fact that they're delivering ambitious cinema in a pop context. (One could have exactly this discussion about, say, "Vertigo" -- in fact, I recently did.) We'll be talking about this one all winter, and I look forward to your feedback. Here's my initial review from the Toronto premiere, stripped down for context and clarity:
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