Got my new DVD of Matthew Bourne’s “Swan Lake” today! I forgot how unbelievably wonderful this work is. Bourne is a genius. Ballet companies and modern dance companies are equally at fault for their dwindling audiences and shoestring budgets; they’re boring! But Bourne makes dance a living breathing organism. His embrace of over-the-top theatricality and his strengths as a storyteller make his ballets so irresistibly compelling. I adore his aesthetic as a choreographer with his penchant for off-kilter angularity and exaggerated lines; it’s strangely beautiful.

The production was recently recorded for a second time in 2011, and this is the DVD to own. The first DVD is quite frustrating with its fussy editing and bizarre angles. Here, the director knew to stay back and capture the whole picture. Also, Dominic North makes a much more convincing Prince than the original danseur.

If the dance world looked more like this, I’d have stayed in the game. Meanwhile, thank god we have Mr. Bourne.

Sarah Lane, Natalie Portman’s Double for “Black Swan,” speaks out against the claims that Portman did 80% of her own dancing in the film.

One of the fucking coolest FX sequences ever in a film!

“If someone had told me what the opera world was actually like, I would’ve just continued playing the dancing fork in “Beauty & the Beast.” There was even talk of promoting me to dancing egg-beater when the dance captain saw how good my fouetté turns were…”