Wendy Perron over at Dance Magazine has been venting a fair bit of spleen (well, insofar as I imagine she ever vents spleen) over how ABT dancer Sarah Lane has been “blacked out” of coverage of Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan around Oscar time. If you don’t know who Lane played, well, she’s Natalie Portman’s body when Portman’s dancing. Anyway, the backstory is over at Perron’s blog, worth checking out. If you’re curious how it was done, well, here’s a video showing the use of digital effects to replace Lane’s face (among other tricks), which is an oddly disturbing artistic concept in its own right. All the conversation about dance and bodies and appearance turns around concepts of identity: the degree to which some people judge dancers for their appearance tends to relate to the degree to which they see the dancer as a physical object rather than a person. So it’s fascinating to watch a film quite literally obliterate a dancer’s identity. Someone tell me some visual artist or dance filmmaker has already played with this concept, because it’s just begging for it.
The “Blacking Out” of Sarah Lane
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4 responses to “The “Blacking Out” of Sarah Lane”
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[…] Aren’t People Anyway: Just yesterday I linked to Wendy Perron’s discussion of how ABT dancer Sarah Lane was both literally and figuratively deleted from Darren […]
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I'm pretty sure it was in Sarah Lane's contract to keep it quiet. "Quiet"ance doubles have been around since, at least, Flashdance. And nobody lied about Portman not doing her dance. No news, in my opinion.
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Enh. I tend to not care much myself, honestly. Like I said to a friend, "Hollywood is exploiting someone? God forbid!" Certainly there are all kinds of doubles, and in a celebrity culture it's no surprise that the identity of the face is what's so important. But not news? Please. People are shitting themselves over this awful piece of crap, and everyone in the dance world is wondering if it means a renewed or at least slightly increased interest in the art form. So yeah. As much as Hollywood might like to believe that their movies and completely their own and that's the end of it, the truth is that the dance world made this dance film work however well everyone wants to think it worked, and outside the cinema, the dance world is hoping to garner some benefit from a ridiculous meta melodrama about a ridiculous melodrama. So it's the dance world's story too. Sheesh. I know we all like to be cynical about Hollywood but still…
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Actually Darren Aronofsky made this film work with the help of the dance world. The dance world didn't make this film with the help of Darren Aronofsky.
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I just came across your response to my Studio 360 interview over a year ago. Let me answer your questions:
"One, five years? How long does he think the average start-up theater company survives?"
I'm not certain what you're saying: five years is too long or not long enough? I'd say that a startup theatre that had sufficient support to work at it full time for five years should be up on its feet by then. Currently, startup theatres are created on the backs of the artists, who try to fund it out of their own pockets while working day jobs. That is counter-productive.
"Two, underserved communities? The most recent Americans for the Arts Vitality Report says the number of cultural and ethnic-oriented institutions has doubled in the last decade. “Underserved communities” are where the lion’s share of growth is already."
The recent study of non-profit funding showed that 55% of the funding went to the 2% of non-profit arts orgs with budgets over $5 million. Those are mostly urban, mostly wealthy, and mostly white. While there may be growth in the number of underserved arts orgs, the money is still going to the wealthy.
Three, if a community already doesn’t have a theater, why do we assume they’ll ever be able to support one absent government funding?
Why do we assume they won't? Is interest in the arts confined to a handful of communities? To a certain type of person? I don't think so, although I think many arts people like to think it so.
And four, why should everyone else accept the moral argument that only this sort of theater is what should be supported?
Because the first word in NEA is "national," and an endowment devoted to the national arts scene ought to be more democratic.
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