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NYCB's Swan Lake (NYCB)by Mary Cargill
Any new production of a beloved ballet like Swan Lake must satisfy an audience who wants to see a version just like their favorite one, only better. My touchstone is the Royal Ballet's of the early 1970's, which was set in the vivid, but still mythical Middle Ages and had the beautiful Ivanov second act, with its clear and dramatic mime. Peter Martins has shown, in his Sleeping Beauty, that he can revive the great Russian ballets honorably, and though reports out of Denmark, where this version was originally seen, were not uniformly positive, I was looking forward to seeing this Swan Lake, remembering what a glorious surprise his Beauty turned out to be.
The Martins' Swan Lake was a surprise too--a staggeringly dull, flat, undramatic, underdanced disappointment. The most obvious problems are the sets and costumes. The first act seems to take place in a third-rate abstract expressionist's loft, with the prince as the poor painter (he cannot afford much furniture), with a few friends who happen to like wearing bright orange and green. There is no sense of place or time period, or hierarchy, no magic and no beauty.
The lake scenes take place before another painted backdrop, with yet more paint streaks--no forest, no lake, and certainly no swans. And the third act, the palace scene (which even the clap-happy gala audience refused to applaud) took place in a sparsely furnished brown chamber, inhabited by a few courtiers dressed in black clothes with yet more paint drips on them.
After the numbing effect of the drab sets and scenery wore off, the ineffective staging came into play. Swan Lake is a fairy tale, and it should tell a story about specific people. Like any good story, it has dramatic highlights which should be the focus of the production. In the first act of Swan Lake, the Queen Mother tells her son that now that he is a man, he must do his duty and find a wife. The prince should show that he wants something more than a conventional marriage. This uneasy, unsatisfied yearning is the point of the first act. The point of this Swan Lake appears to be the jester, who spins and spins, and spins some more.
This energetic fellow first turned up in Swan Lake in the 1920's, as an addition by Gorsky. He seems to me to be the 20th century balletic equivalent of the eternal fool of 19th century Russian opera, but instead of eternally moaning about the fate of the poor Russian people, he is the happy peasant jumping for joy because he lives in the great Soviet state. Communism has fallen most other places, and I wish it would die out in Swan Lake too, and return the first act to the lovely and eternal story of Siegfried's dilemma. (And perhaps if Peter Martins was not so involved in adding unnecessary steps, he would have realized that having Siegfried tell Benno in no uncertain terms in the first act that he want to go hunting alone, and then meeting up with Benno at the beginning of the second act is not really dramatically consistent.)
Ivanov's second act is usually sacrosanct, and some of the outlines are there, but Martins has rechoreographed much of it. The flat unromantic backdrop would probably drain the poetry from the Ivanov version, so it may not be fair to compare them (and Martins' Vision Scene in the Sleeping Beauty was gorgeous), but this version was cold and uninteresting. The lovely traditional ending of the pas de deux, where Odette does a slow, luxurious developé and falls trustingly into Siegfried's arms is gone and a more bouncy ending is substituted. This is the music Tchaikovsky wrote, but Petipa/Ivanov quite rightly realized it didn't suit Odette. And the music for the two large swans is given to Siegfried for an unnecessary solo, breaking the mood and diluting the importance of his solo in the third act.
There is no mime, so Siegfried, and the audience, is never told anything about Odette and the curse. The magnificent ending, when Odette bourées out turning into a swan, is muffed because she exits in front of von Rotbart--Martins drops the "h"--in a bright orange cape, which distracts the audience's attention from Odette.
The third act, in a dreary brown-paneled room--is equally undramatic. The jester capers, the character dancers are introduced, and then Odile and von Rotbart enter. Siegfried and Odile leave quietly, and the entertainment starts--since it is his birthday party, it always seems quite rude of him to abandon the party. (ABT cleverly avoids this gaffe by having Odile arrive after the entertainment and going right into the Black Swan pas de deux.)
The Hungarian and Spanish dances are the best part of this Swan Lake, done in proper character shoes with real sparkle. Martins has inserted a Russian dance to infrequently used music; unfortunately (modeled perhaps on Coffee in the Nutcracker), he has a couple, the man bare chested and the woman in a rhinestone bikini top, do a tasteless hoochie-koochie number. How sweet, I thought; the Queen Mother has rented him a stripper for his birthday.
The dramatic high point of the act, Siegfried's declaration of love for Odile, is again diluted. At the end of the pas de deux, Siegfried goes to one side with his mother, Odile to the other side with von Rotbart and they chat for a while, while the courtiers dance the Polonaise in the middle of the stage. They continue dancing center stage, and then we notice Siegfried looking agonized--every Swan Lake I have ever seen has staged this moment more effectively.
The last act is the most problematic, though I think the Ivanov (in ABT's traditional production) works the best. In Denmark, as I understand, Martins had Odette and von Rotbart die and Siegfried survive, but here he has von Rotbart die from the force of their love, and Odette turn back permanently into a swan. Since poor Siegfried was never told that he would condemn her to eternal swanhood if he broke his oath, it is hard to follow the logic of all this. But Odette and Siegfried dance around a bit, von Rotbart rushes around and dies (from what looks to me like a heart attack), Odette bourées back among the corps, and Siegfried rolls on the floor in agony to the lovely, serene music of the apotheosis. For Peter Martins, apparently, love has the power to kill, but not to save.
It would have been hard for anyone to be effective in this production. Darci Kistler, who used to be such a radiant Aurora, was the worst danced Odette\Odile I have ever seen, but it was by no means the worst performed, and, while she did not convey the tragic sense of fate that a great Odette has (I did see Fonteyn in her last performances), she was, in a restrained way, lovely in the white acts. Her black act needed more sharpness. Damian Woetzel was enthusiastic, but without any help from the costumes or the production, was not a convincing prince. He is a wonderful dancer, but cannot command a stage standing still.
I doubt if there was a wet eye in the theater, except for mine, but I was only crying because that lovely music made me realize how much I really wanted to see Swan Lake.