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Marjorie Gottlieb Wolfe
Syosset, New York
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*The Yiddish word for perfect is "perfekt.'
In the tense thriller film, "Black Swan," directed
by Darren Aronofsky, Natalie Portman plays Nina, a prima ballerina
in
New York She dances the Swan Queen
("Malke" in Yiddish) in Tchaikovsky's Swan
Lake as her first starring role. She must
portray both a "vays' (white) swan and a
darker ("shvarts") black swan.
The white swan represents "ziskayt" (sweetness), innocence, and "likhtik" (light); the black swan is "sakonedik" (dangerous) and "beyz" (evil).
Natalie Portman was born in Jerusalem, Israel, on June 9, 1981, to an artist mother, and doctor father. She moved to New York when she was 3 and was raised in Syosset, Long Island, New York. Her birthname was Natalie Hershlag. She has a bachelor's degree from Harvard, and has recently become engaged to dancer, Benjamin Millepied. She's "shvanger" (pregnant).
According to JewishJournal.com, Portman has said that she hates playing Jewish women on screen. In Feb. 2010, she told Elie magazine, "I've always tried to stay away from playing Jews. I get like 20 Holocaust scripts a month, but I hate the genre."
JewishJournal.com continues, "Though 'Black Swan' is a far cry from the death camps of Europe, its emotional depth is palpable, as are the psychological pressures real. This is the kind of emotional turmoil that stems from fame, performance and artistic PERFECTIONISM."
In the movie, Nina is an overprotected, driven perfectionist and finds herself having a "nervez" (nervous) breakdown. Her eyes flicker with anxiety.
Portman, studied ballet as a child. To prepare for the film, she undertook 10 months of intense physical training. This included swimming, weight lifting, and cross training. Note: She danced 90% of the film's ballet scenes herself. Sarah Lane played Portman's double. Newsweek (1/31/11) reports that during Black Swan, Portman dislocated a rib. She said, "They just changed the lift from then on to under the armpits"
There's a ballet term, "bunhead," which means dancers so obsessively devoted to the art that they have no life outside it. A "bunhead" lives, breathes, eats and sleeps in a pale pink pointe-shoe world.
Nina starts out as a "gut" (good) girl. In order to tackle the role of Odette/Odile-- she is required to be an enchantingly "reyn" (pure) princess and her villainous alter ego.
Her "toytn-tants" (death dance) is simply spectacular.
Pioneers like Baryshnikov and Nureyev have opened up ballet to bigger audiences. Now, Natalie Portman exposes the dark side of the role.
"We dance for laughter, ("gelekhter")
We dance for tears,
We dance for madness, ("meshugaas")
We dance for fears,
We dance for hopes,
We dance for screams,
We are the dancers,
We create the dreams."
Anonymous
"Ikh bin tsufridn" (I am glad) to report that Natalie Portman is up for an Oscar for "Best Actress" for her part in "Black Swan."
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