Benjamin Millepied ...dancing with the stars

When you belong to a big ballet company, you want to get to the top. Nothing else matters,' declares dancer and choreographer Benjamin Millepied. But it wasn't his grace and dexterity as principal dancer at the New York City Ballet or his choreography work on

It's not hard to see what drew Portman's eye when I meet Millepied at Le Royal Monceau hotel in Paris. He has the slightly neurotic, intellectual sexiness of a French film star. His eyes are large and blue, his facial hair somewhere artfully between stubble and beard, and a few strands of chest hair poke out of the top of his crisp white shirt. (The tattoo on his stomach is an abstract inspired by the Bauhaus painter Oskar Schlemmer.) He is compact, with a lithe athleticism and impressive thigh muscles that strain the fabric of his grey YSL trousers. No wonder the French fashion house has made him the face of its new fragrance L'Homme Libre. While I wouldn't call him precisely macho, he's a good deal more rugged and manly than one might expect of a male ballet dancer.

Pacing around the room, debating with himself whether or not to drink a black coffee, he exudes an uneasy combination of tension and exhaustion. Ever since he began work on Black Swan, the dark drama that landed Portman an Oscar, Millepied has found himself the subject of unwelcome attention and controversy. First, a mole from the set complained to the New York Post that Millepied was so focused on helping Portman that the other dancers were left floundering. Then there was the rumour that their courtship overlapped with his relationship with the American ballerina Isabella Boylston, with whom he lived in the East Village (questions about this caused him to walk out of a previous interview). And finally, there is the delicate issue of exactly how many of Millepied's moves were performed by Portman and how much by her 'dance double' Sarah Lane (said to be a friend of Boylston).

According to Millepied, Lane 'just did the footwork, and the fouettes, and one diagonal in the studio. Honestly, 85 per cent of that movie is Natalie.' Lane hit back on ABC News in April, claiming that Portman's head had been digitally superimposed on to her body. 'I've been doing this for 22 years, and to say that someone trained for a year and a half and did what I did is degrading not only to me but to the entire ballet world,' she said. 'They threaten the entire principle of ballet.'

Perhaps it's not very surprising that Millepied says he and Portman have no plans to work together again: 'That's not on the agenda.' He is allergic to any suggestion that he is riding on her coat-tails. His own career in dance cost him years of dedication, practice and extreme physical pain. When Black Swan came out, stars of the dance world queued up to complain that the claustrophobic neurosis of the world it presented - all that vomiting and sadism - was an inaccurate stereo-type: prima ballerina Tamara Rojo denounced it as 'a very lazy movie, featuring every cliché going', but according to Millepied, Black Swan is rooted in reality. 'When you belong to a big ballet company, it's as if you belong to a sect,' he says.

Millepied was born into a musical and athletic family. His father was a decathlete and musician; his mother a dancer; his two brothers are professional musicians. He spent his early childhood in Senegal, where his father coached Olympic athletes and his mother taught contemporary dance. His own interest in dancing began as soon as he could walk. 'I was a creative kid, I loved to design the garden, I cooked, I liked to make things. When I heard music, I saw things in my head.' His mother taught him to dance and encouraged his dreams of stardom.

The family returned to their native Bordeaux when he was five. At 12, he left home to study ballet at the Conservatoire National Supérieur in Lyon. Three years later, he took a summer course at The School of American Ballet, the New York City Ballet's school. ('I wanted to stay, but my family were like, "Whoa!" ') The following year, having received the Bourse Lavoisier, a scholarship award from the French Ministry of Culture, he moved to the States for good. He barely had time to be lonely or homesick. 'I was super-motivated. I did it because I loved it, but you have to give so much of yourself and so much time to dance that you get this tunnel vision. You have issues with your body and your relationship with the mirror, and if you put on 2lb, you think you're fat.' Did he feel himself getting obsessed like that? 'Oh yeah. Everybody does.' By 2001, he was a principal dancer at the New York City Ballet. He would practise six days a week 'for hours', and danced on through injuries. 'That's hard, hard, hard,' he says. 'The pain people deal with is crazy. But if you cancel, someone else is going to dance in your place. It's your lead and someone else is going to do it. There were times when I said, "I'm going to dance tonight," and it's been crazy pain. I tore the bottom of my foot on both sides. That was the most painful injury I ever danced on.' How did he manage to do it? He shrugs. 'Pills, and ice. I performed in a show, and I was on crutches the next day.' The reality, he says, is even worse for ballerinas. 'Female dancers deal with the toe shoe every day and that's more tedious.' He cracks a smile and his whole face lights up. Talking about dance, even its dark side, is more to his taste than talking about his new amour. Portman, in contrast, is positively gushing about him, describing him at the Oscars as 'my beautiful love, who has now given me my most important role of my life'.

At only 34, Millepied could have several more years at the top, but has decided to focus instead on choreography and modelling. He began choreographing in 2001, employing his charisma to lure fashionable collaborators. In 2006 alone, he worked with Mikhail Baryshnikov, for whom he created a solo ballet Years Later; Marc Jacobs, who designed the costumes for his ballet Amoveo; and the composer Philip Glass. Next year, he's working with Rodarte, the design team behind the Black Swan costumes and Natalie's designers of choice - she wore Rodarte to the Oscars after ditching Galliano in light of his anti-Semitic rant.

Choreography may be less physically demanding than dancing but, says Millepied, 'Performing is much easier. It's scary to see your own moves on stage. You put yourself in a very vulnerable place.' When his first major work, Triple Duet, was put on at Sadler's Wells in 2002, he was 'petrified'.

He now has several new projects on the go, including a reworking of Les Sylphides and Le Spectre de la Rose. Next year, he starts work on a new ballet with the American wunderkind composer Nico Muhly (who's just written a new opera for the ENO), with whom he previously worked at the Paris Opera.

And inevitably, given his fiancée's profession, he's also dipping a toe into film - he says he has a few dance-related projects in the offing. Funding these projects will have become a good deal easier since he was signed by YSL. Now his brooding gaze smoulders out of the Patrick Demarchelier-shot campaign against a New York skyline. There is an accompanying TV advertisement, shot by the 21 Grams director Alejandro Gonzalez Iñarritu, in which Millepied pirouettes down New York's streets to the astonishment of passers-by, before soaring effortlessly into the sky. 'It's great to have a dancer for a change, someone who's involved in the arts rather than an actor or a model,' he says.

But I can't escape the conclusion that Millepied, far from being a free man, is trapped by his new celebrity, pestered as he is about his fiancée, photographed wherever he goes and forced to adopt the celebrity dress code (sunglasses, scowl, baseball cap) to discourage the paparazzi. 'It is hard to cope with,' he admits of his sudden visibility. 'It was a curve ball. I had to adapt and learn how to live without worrying about it.'

A couple of days after our meeting, Aleph made his involuntary debut when his parents had dinner at the trendy Paris fusion restaurant Market. They attempted to conceal him from the cameras, but to no avail: Millepied was photographed through the window gazing adoringly at his son. No wonder he feels Aleph's birth has added a new dimension to his discomfort with media intrusion.

I ask him how he feels about being a father, but although he flashes a charming grin, his response seems rehearsed. 'The responsibility feels really wonderful and I am very proud and excited to watch his every step,' he declares. Does he change nappies? 'I am absolutely hands-on. Being a dad is fantastic.' And would he like to see his son join him on stage? 'Oh, no, no, no!' he says, sounding shocked. 'He already has his own personality. He'll make his own choices.' ES