Oberon's Grove: SWAN LAKE @ ABT

Saturday July 2, 2011 - "The best-laid plans..." Polina Semionova (above) and David Hallberg were to have been the Swan Queen and her Prince at this evening's SWAN LAKE at ABT. I was very taken with Semionova in the DVD film of Mauro Bigonzetti's CARAVAGGIO and was excited to read that she would be dancing at ABT this Summer. When the detailed casting for the season came out, the Semionova/Hallberg SWAN LAKE jumped out at me. I bought tickets right away.

In June I ran into David Hallberg during the intermission of a performance at New York City Ballet and he was really exicted by the prospect of dancing with Ms. Semionova. But then, two days before the long-awaited performance, David sustained an injury while performing Rothbart at Jose Manuel Carreno's farewell. ABT pulled off some quick cast changing: Marcelo Gomes replaced David in this evening's performance while Mr. Carreno obliged the Company by agreeing to dance today's matinee with Julie Kent, despite the fact that he'd just retired.

Much as I was looking forward to seeing David's Siegfried, you won't hear any complaints from me about having Marcelo Gomes (in a Matt Murphy portrait, above) in his place. Marcelo is one of the great danseurs of our time and one of the handsomest men to be seen on any stage. The atmosphere in the House was palpable as SWAN LAKE began tonight.

Semionova and Gomes were superb, both individually and as a partnership. Together they overcame the many problematic aspects of this production, winning repeated waves of applause all evening and a lavish ovation at the end.

There's no point in cataloging the shortcomings of this version of SWAN LAKE. Aside from the traditional staging of the scenes in which Odette/Odile appears, the evening is weighted down by uninspired choreography, stylistic lapses and dramatic vapidity. The excellent dancers of ABT deserve so much more. But we're stuck with it and we have to make the most of what we've got.

The clumsy presentation of Rothbart as a split personality - part creepy monster, part dangerously handsome nobleman - works against the ballet from start to finish. Roman Zhurbin, one of my favorite ABT personalities, did what he could as the lakeside ghoul; Sascha Radetsky's striking presence rescued the scene where the sorcerer puts the whole court in his thrall.

Purely from a dancing perspective, a major highlight came early in the evening with a sparkling rendering of the pas de trois by Daniil Simkin (Benno), Stella Abrera and Maria Riccetto. Such attractive and polished dancers! Each seized the moment and the cumulative effect was truly pleasing.

The Act II national dances can't hold a candle choreographically to Peter Martins' settings at New York City Ballet. As each representative princess is ushered to a hot seat where she must sit awkwardly chatting with the prince while her countrymen dance, one began to see why the prince's mind wanders back not only to Odette but to the superior (standard) choreography of the lakeside scene. Vivid dancers like Simone Messmer, Julio Bragado-Young and Mikhael Ilyin strove to inject brilliance into these set pieces but basically it's simply a matter of spinning wheels til Odile arrives.

The ABT swans look fine in the choreographic patterns of Act I, but later - at the opening of the final scene - they are given the most random choreography I've ever witnessed in a major dance presentation. This is by far the production's low point.

But all such negative musings were swept away when Semionova and Gomes took matters into their own hands and reveled in the poetry, passion and desperation of the hopeless love of the errant prince and his Swan queen. Have they ever danced together before? In my imagination I see them in the studio all day Friday (following David Hallberg's injury) putting together a partnership that on Saturday night radiated both technical security and personal chemistry.

The ultra-slender ballerina seemed from the outset to be an impressive adagio dancer; supported lovingly by Marcelo's peerless strength and tenderness, Polina's long arms and elegant attitudes were lavished upon the iconic images of Odette. The couple performed the adage in an atmosphere of breathless silence in the House, basking in the heart-rending beauty of the Tchaikovsky melodies. As they struck the final pose, a tidal wave of cheers swept thru the theatre. Polina's nuanced dancing in the solo expanded on the splendid impression she'd made in the pas de deux; throughout this first lakeside scene, Marcelo's depiction of a man who has unexpectedly found his ideal and seeks only to hold and treasure her was a theatrical tour de force.

Following a richly danced and dramatically spine-tingling Black Swan adagio, Marcelo's spacious and fluent dancing in his solo was answered by the bejeweled clarity of both technique and expression that Polina brought to Odile's variation. Sweeping onward in the coda, Polina whirled into the fouettes with such mind-boggling velocity that one could not tell a triple from quadruple. Then she enticed Marcelo up the diagonal, ever eluding his grasp as the audience erupted in yet another ovation. For all her bravura technique, perhaps Polina's most memorable moment came in utter stillness: near the end of the Black Swan adagio she sustained a low-arabesque balance that went on and on and on. For once those over-used words 'awesome' and 'amazing' seemed truly inadequate.

Unable to overcome Rothbart's curse, thanks to Siegfried's unwitting duplicity, the couple make a last stand against the magician. But only death will release Odette now: she leaps into the lake and soon thereafter her prince follows her. Marcelo flew into the air, arching his back into a spectacular inverted "C", providing the audience with a final magnificent image.

During the curtain calls (above image by Kokyat), some of the most moving moments I have witnessed at a ballet performance, the traditional mutual homage and gratitude that great partnerships always evoke took on a deeper sense of genuine shared admiration between these two dancers who seem - on short notice - to have accomplished a dual triumph of the first magnitude.