"Black Swan" choreographer Benjamin Millepied and his wife, actress Natalie Portman, will soon be saying bonjour to the City of Lights. The French dancer-choreographer was just named the new director of the Paris Opera Ballet and will begin September 2014, the New York Times reported on Thursday.
The couple, which met on the set of the 2010 film "Black Swan," will be moving to Paris with their young son, Aleph. According to France's Le Monde, Millepied will take over for the current director Brigitte Lefèvre, who has directed the Paris Opera since 1995. The general director of the Paris Opera, Nocolas Joel, made the announcement at the Palais Garnier on Thursday morning, the Times reported.
"I certainly knew about the position, but I also knew that there were candidates from within the company," Millepied told the NY Times. "I was surprised, but I felt very quickly that the artistic dialogue between us was an exciting one. After a while I did feel there was a really good chance I might get the position. Which made my head spin."
Millepied currently heads the L.A. Dance Project, which he founded in 2011. According to the NY Times, Millepied, 35, trained at the Lyon Conservatory and the School of American Ballet. He became a professional dancer with the City Ballet and rose the ranks to become a principal dancer in 2002. He retired from dancing in 2011 to focus on choreography.
It was through choreography that the French dancer-choreographer met his wife. Portman starred in the lead role of Nina Sayers, a ballet dancer that is chosen to perform as the Swan Queen in "Swan Lake" but slowly loses her mind and becomes more like the Black Swan.
According to E! News, the couple welcomed their son, Aleph, in June 2011. They later married in August 2012 in a Jewish ceremony in the coastal California region of Big Sur.
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