White-hot dancer, choreographer, actor - Benjamin Millepied is on the move. When we spoke on the phone over a patchy cross-country iPhone connection ("You're on an iPhone?" "Yes, I'm on an iPhone" "I'm on an iPhone") the principal dancer of the New York City Ballet was just about to board a flight to his native France, where he'd spend the next week or so filming a movie in the countryside with some friends. Ever since choreographing the agonized, Polanski-inflected version of Swan Lake in Darren Aronofsky's ballet psychodrama Black Swan, in theaters today, visions of Hollywood have been dancing in Millepied's head (he also acted the part of the Swan Prince). Like Baryshnikov before him, Millepied brings to the fusty art form of ballet - one that he believes is desperate for infusions of young blood - a contemporary sensibility and a multidisciplinary approach. He's worked with Brooklyn-based composer Nico Muhly, art-house directors like Aronofsky, and runs his own dance company, Danses Concertantes. Then, of course, there's that famous girlfriend of his, Natalie Portman, who he met while filming Black Swan. Millepied's not exactly sure which spotlight he'd like to leap into next, but he's "doing exactly what [his] heart wants to do." Here, Millepied talks about the future of ballet, helping to realize Aronofsky's vision, and Natalie Portman, who is "nothing short of extraordinary."

BB: You’ve been dancing since you were a little boy. Did you ever consider doing anything other than ballet? Music, I guess. As a child, music was a big part of my family. My father and my brother were musicians. My whole father’s side of the family. But I didn’t really consider doing it professionally. Dance was really it for me when I was young.

BB: What drew you to the States? Why not stay in Paris and dance there? I started to get interested in ballet when I was eleven or twelve. It was the time that the movie White Knight came out and we were starting to get video tapes from the American Ballet Theater with Baryshnikov in Europe, and there were also documentaries about the Paris Opera School, and I really very quickly felt that there was something greater going on in the U.S. that I wanted to be a part of. Also, knowing that the Paris Opera was a disciplinary and very tough school did not make me want to go there. People with sticks, you know (laughs). That was a turn off.

BB: You’ve been earning a lot of comparisons to Baryshnikov. The only reason that people are doing this is because…(long pause) I just really feel that as dancers we have nothing in common.

BB: I once heard someone say that all dancers are either Baryshnikovs or Nureyevs. Most dancers would be so lucky to fall into one of these categories. I don’t even think that’s true. The kind of dancers that they were, you just don’t find today. They really were so specific and one with themselves, and had a kind of way to look at technique and artistry that is…we just don’t have anything like that today. They’re different. There’s a larger amount of good dancers than there used to be. But, no, it’s different.

BB: What else is different about dancers today? There’s a larger amount of good technicians. Before, dancing was like life, life was dancing (laughs). Today, you get a scholarship, you go to school, and it’s very easy. You know you’ve got the cafeteria downstairs. For example, there are a lot of great, great male dancers coming out of Cuba, and part of the reason is I think it’s a little…being on the street versus being in a ballet school. These people really work. It’s a different thing for them. There’s an urgency and a necessity that’s not necessarily there [for American ballet students]. Also, there are more dancers who continue school while they’re dancing than there used to be. There’s more curiosity, but it’s really that they love themselves. The unfortunate stereotype of ballet dancers as being kind of narrow-minded is slightly true. The discipline is so important that there’s often this intensity of work, doing one thing. It’s funny because in Black Swan that's very much the case. Nina is very much that kind of girl. She lives and breathes ballet.

BB: One of your jobs on the set of Black Swan, aside from choreographing, was making sure that Mila Kunis and Natalie Portman looked and behaved like real ballerinas. How did you police that? They did their own research, as far as all that work. I was on set to make sure of that, and also to make sure that the script seemed realistic, but it was just a matter of being very observant and indicating my concerns. Obviously, I didn’t tell them how to do it. Natalie had her own ways to go about that.

BB: Did Darren Aronofsky have a specific idea of what he wanted his version of Swan Lake to look like? He had a very clear idea of what he wanted. He wanted it to feel like it was Swan lake, that it was still rooted in the classical idiom, but he wanted me to make it modern and be smart about using the qualities of the actors, making them look good and making it believable and making sure that every scene conveyed what he wanted it to.

BB: Had you worked with someone like that before? No, no. It was super interesting. It wasn’t about me showing off. I was there to care and support.

BB: What made you decide to step out from behind the scenes and take on the role of the Swan Prince? Well, um, ha ha. It just so happened that it made sense. It made sense because I was partnering with the girls in rehearsal, it wasn’t a big role, and it just made things simpler. Kind of an obvious choice.

BB: You’re off to make a movie in just a few hours in France. I frankly would rather be behind the camera. It’s just that when we proposed the project with my friend we wanted movement in it, so again, it made sense at the time. But now I would just rather be behind the camera.

BB: So does that mean you’d like to be a director? I’m interested in doing more film. And dancing. They are very similar in feel, in the way they create images on a stage, the way you use time and emotion to tell a story. Rather than just putting the action in front of the viewer, you can control how you want the viewer to see it. It’s very much like choreography.

BB: How did you get in to choreography? You started out as a dancer. It was linked to my upbringing. There was music around the house, and basically I started dancing because I love moving to music. So since my early years, I was making dances in my room, and very quickly my mother [a dance teacher] let me choreograph my own numbers. I choreographed numbers for school when I was a kid, when I was like 10 or 12 years old, you know (laughs). I always knew I wanted to do that. Always, always, always.

BB: Do you think ballet is going through a moment of change, becoming younger and more modernized? I wish! I don’t think that’s the case, but I wish it were.

BB: What do you think would have to happen for change to occur? Is it an American problem? There’s a big problem right now. We’re facing a time when ballet has been the same old dance for a long time. They have the same old dances, and it's somewhat of a conservative audience - they are older. The audience is dying, basically, so large companies suffer from the decline in subscriptions. So directors are being forced to be safe, and being safe means putting on Swan Lake, the old old ballets, what people know most. And if you do put on new things, it doesn’t necessarily attract the audience. Ballet is in a crisis. What to do you do? Do you take more chances? It’s really what everybody should be doing (laughs) but they are hard to take, people want to keep their jobs. For me it’s really key to work with all these young composers, because I think its more a reflection of our time to do so, to work with artists of our time, and I think the key is really in the collaboration, more composers writing serious music for ballet, having artists being fiercely interested in the art of ballet. It’s trying to bring those worlds together to make the future of dance.

BB: Is anyone in the ballet world looking to Peter Gelb, the director of the Met Opera? He’s been very good at making opera more appealing to a younger, more diverse audience. For example, he brought in William Kentridge and Prada… It’s very one step forward one step backwards. The opera is different – you have to realize the Met is a very important institution that attracts a lot of tourists and a lot of people in New York. It’s one of those landmark institutions, you know? Peter Gelb has done an amazing job with it, making it famous around the world, in fact. The New York City Ballet does not belong in the category of 'landmark institution.' It’s not the Met, it’s not the MoMa. There’s a very small tourist percentage that comes to see us. So if you step forward, then you have less people. We had a season last year where we did mostly full-length and the audience responded very well, but is that what we want to do? And then you have the critics who are unhappy one way or the other. You do the classics and they’re unhappy, they say you need to do new and take risks. And then they are unhappy when you do this...The best way to avoid it all is to try to be as creative as possible. But it’s hard!

BB: Some critics say you should be concentrating on dancing now that you’re in your prime years, rather than focusing on other projects. How would you respond? I’m doing exactly what my heart wants to do, where my heart leads me. That’s my answer. I do what drives me, I do what interests me. To me it’s such a journey and a discovery, and if it’s to go back and do something that I’ve done a lot already, it doesn’t interest me. That’s been my personal satisfaction in life. I like the new.

BB: Going back to Black Swan for a moment, what was it like working with Natalie Portman? She worked super hard. We were quite a team, working on the project. It was myself, it was Mary Ellen Bowers, who worked with her for months before the shoot started, it was Kurt Fullman, who I hired to be an assistant and also work with her on a daily basis. We also had Olga Petriski, the Russian teacher, and the women, like Georgina Parkinson - I brought in women who know more than I do about Swan Lake and the arms… I can only use my eye. So it was nice to have the expertise, and I felt like Georgina in particular brought a refinement to Natalie's upper body that was really impressive. I have to say, Natalie had coaches and eyes to look at her but it was really an impossible challenge. It was like, how do you put a principle dancer in Swan Lake who's only had four years of training from when she was a child?

BB: She really pulled through. She was nothing short of extraordinary. She looks very natural - an amazing achievement. BB: Would you and Natalie Portman work together again in the future? Ha! I don’t know. Maybe. We’ll see.