Benjamin Millepied
The screen work is a side effect. Millepied is a French dancer and choreographer who joined New York City Ballet in 1995, became a soloist in 1998 and a principal in 2002, made pieces for that company and for other major ones, and retired from NYCB in 2011.
Film found him through the ballet world rather than the other way round. The two animated Barbie features built on Tchaikovsky ballets list him among the New York City Ballet dancers who supplied the movement. Then Black Swan cast him on screen as David, the company's leading man and the Prince to Nina's Swan Queen, in a film about the physical cost of the discipline he had spent his life inside. He choreographed it as well as appearing in it, which is the credit that actually matters there.
Since then he has moved behind the camera, directing the 2023 feature Carmen. This catalogue holds four titles for him, which badly undersells a career that has mostly happened on stages.
Movies (4)
Where to start with Benjamin Millepied
One film, essentially: Black Swan. He is the calm working professional in a picture going quietly mad around him, and the dancing on screen is his own design, which makes it the rare acting cameo that doubles as a portfolio.
Carmen is the interesting follow-up, his own feature as director, and best approached as an extension of his choreography rather than as a conventional drama.
The two Tchaikovsky Barbie films, Barbie in the Nutcracker and Barbie of Swan Lake, are for children and for ballet obsessives, the second group being the ones who will spot how much real company movement is buried in the animation.