![]() Fortunately I managed! I did our Sleek Technique barre workouts for it all. Also, my back and arms were showing, so I had to make sure they were as slim as Lily's. What did you have to do to train for it? I had to focus on strengthening the abs at the front and the back. When they offered me the role I was already in good shape, but I had to be in peak shape. But I'm a dancer, so I'm used to sore feet and hard work. Getting out of the costume, I was so achy. I'm a fitness person, so I knew how to hold my body while dancing in that dress. I had to be corseted, and that already restricts some of your breathing as a dancer. So how heavy was the actual dress? I wouldn't know exactly the weight, but I can tell you it was heavy. Spoiler: she didn't actually dance in the glass slippers. I had sores around my middle where the material had rubber afterwards!" (Makes you thankful you get to wear Spandex while you work out, right?)Įven with a gown that felt heavy as a kettlebell (the underskirts weighed at least 20 pounds alone), Swan managed to transform into a twirling Cinderella. ![]() "You're turning your back and your core, but you have to turn the material with you. "You need some serious core strength and dance experience to do that take after take," Swan says. Swan, a London-based professional ballerina and the co-founder of barre workout Sleek Technique, is actress Lily James' body double-er, dancing double?-in the ballroom scene in Disney's new live-action Cinderella, out today.Īnd kind of like how the princess had to put up with her evil stepmother and do a lot of sweeping before meeting Prince Charming, Swan had to endure tons of physically challenging training in order to pull off dancing in a corset and the huge, heavy costume dress. But for dancer Flik Swan, that dream actually became a reality. Solid A.Lots of little girls grow up wanting to be Cinderella (minus the whole involuntary servitude part). It is a great movie, with authentic heart. ![]() We applauded Braddock's wins, suffered his defeats. The audience was like a prize fight audience, cheering, booing, gasping, groaning during the fights. I didn't expect to be able to watch, but like Braddock's terrified wife Mae, I was unable to tear myself away. These were among the most exciting last twenty minutes I've seen on film. Analogous to watching Howard's film "Apollo 13", you may know the outcome, but there's wonderful suspense in the details. If you don't know, DON'T look it up before you see the movie, and if you DO KNOW, DON'T TELL, but go. Doubtless many people know the history of James Braddock, and know the outcome of his fights, including the championship bout with Max Baer, who had already killed two men in the ring. But when Braddock is later asked at a press conference why he is fighting at his age and after so many poor showings, all he has to say is "milk" to be supremely eloquent. Crowe as Braddock with hat in hand and tears in his eyes, begging for twenty dollars so he can get his children back into his home, is the personification of pride sacrificed to desperation. The bleakness of the times is the graininess and the sepia/greyness of the camera shots the images are stark but completely descriptive. Without using violins or cliché' pull-back shots showing the numbers of people homeless and in soup lines, Howard makes the Depression a visceral reality with scenes of near-hopeless men at the docks, pleading for a day's work a stolen salami Crowe's giving his daughter his breakfast piece of bologna, telling her he dreamed he was full. Ron Howard has made of the real life of Depression-era prize-fighter James J. But for all of Russell Crowe's reputation for being "difficult", it is hard to think of actors who can equal his personal force on the screen. You have to believe they are at the top of their game. It is not that Renee Zellwegger and Paul Giamatti, Paddy Considine, Bruce McGill and Craig Bierko, among others, give less than stellar performances: they all live up to their justifiably great reputations. I feel like I am being punched, as Renee' Zellwegger's character Mae Braddock says, and I'm not as tough as these prize fighters. I've already seen "Million Dollar Baby" and "Raging Bull" this year, and accidentally watched part of one of the "son of Rocky" serial movies on a Saturday afternoon. The dilemma: I hate boxing movies I love Russell Crowe movies.
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