He made his pointe.
A principal dancer at the famed New York City Ballet — the same company Timothée Chalamet’s mother and sister performed with — went viral this week for his jaw-dropping video clapback at the actor for saying no one cares about the classical art form.
“Timothee you wouldn’t last a day in my shoes . . . or socks,” Jovani Furlan captioned the clip, where he is balancing on a bosu ball on demi pointe and lifting his leg in two different positions — no easy feat.
“This alone is more impressive than anything Timothée has ever done,” one commenter noted of the Brazil-born dancer.
“Your legs are bigger than his whole body,” another quipped.
Someone else pointed out the obvious, “Ballerinas are some of the greatest athletes in the world.”
“People forget about that, because our job is to make it look easy,” Furlan said.
The video racked up almost 10 million views on Instagram and TikTok.
Ironically, the Oscar nominee’s mom, Nicole Flender and his sister, Pauline, both studied at the School of American Ballet, whose students perform with New York City Ballet — so he should know the innate talent, intense training and rigorous schedule it takes to be a ballet dancer.
“We have seven performances a week. So we have a ballet class for an hour and up to six hours of rehearsal and then a performance,” said Furlan, who started dancing at the age of 11.
“I also do Pilates almost every day. I go to the gym for weightlifting. And because of injuries, I go to physical therapy.”
Furlan, who lives on the Upper West Side, had just finished a ballet class and was scrolling on Instagram when he first learned about Chalamet’s comment.
“I don’t want to be working in ballet or opera, or things where it’s like, ‘Hey, keep this thing alive,’ even though it’s like, no one cares about this anymore,” the actor said at a CNN and Variety town hall event.
Furlan did not take kindly to the quote.
“Any profession, but especially in the arts, when you hear someone kind of dissing it, it never feels good. When it’s your livelihood and you put so much effort into it. It really rubbed me the wrong way,” he said.
He had actually filmed the bosu ball balancing act a few days before he heard the Chalamet diss, so felt it was the perfect time to share it.
“I was like, ‘I’m going to post it now. Now I have something to say,’” he recalled.
He has been trying to keep up with comments praising his “Olympian level” athleticism, and bashing Chalamet, who is nominated for Best Actor at Sunday’s Academy Awards for his role in “Marty Supreme.”
But Furlan said Chalamet shouldn’t be canceled.
“I don’t think Timothée needs to be like villainized,” he said. “There’s a lot of good that we can take out of it . . . People are coming out and saying ‘I care about the ballet. I care about opera.’”
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
