Thanks, jimi! After reading this, I stand by my support of Lane. People are describing her as grasping, greedy, whiny, nasty, etc. I don't see it. She didn't start the whole discussion. The most vitriolic comments haven't been coming from Lane. I really think people are confusing what Wendy Perron said with what Sarah Lane said. Also, I watched and read a lot of pre-Oscar coverage of this movie, and people were acting like Natalie Portman became a prima ballerina overnight. Until I saw the film, I was actually under the impression that she HAD done all of the dancing. I'm not gullible, and in other dance films I've assumed there have been doubles, but there was definitely a concerted effort to make it seem that in this particular movie, there was no double. When people (NOT SARAH LANE) started talking about it, instead of coming out and saying, "Natalie trained hard and did a lot of the dancing, but of course, we used a trained dancer for the harder moves," Millepied and Aronofsky said things like, "Lane just did x, y, and x" and "Lane only did blah blah blah." They really tried to downplay her role when they could have just said the truth and everyone could have gone on their merry way. Because they didn't, Wendy Perron rebutted their arguments, and Sarah Lane only spoke up trying to set the whole thing straight.
I have to say, Portman's acting was amazing, but for me, the dancing was "everything" to this film. If it had been about a singer rather than a dancer, I wouldn't have gone to see it. (Not that there's anything wrong with singers; I'm just into dancing.) I know a lot of dance fans who feel the same way.