The Australian Ballet have been at Lincoln Center this past week, presenting a mixed bill as well as four performances of their much-admired Graeme Murphy production of SWAN LAKE. Due to other commitments, I was only able to see SWAN LAKE (twice) which, despite excellent dancing from everyone onstage, proved to be a production which tested my patience in more ways than one. I'd been looking forward to these performances for months, and I really wanted to like this SWAN LAKE. An absurd late seating after the 'prelude' was a major distraction on Saturday night, and all around me people were eating and drinking throughout the first act, periodically checking their cell-phones and texting. If this is the 'new audience' for ballet, you can have it.
If one watched this production without reading the program notes, it would be hard to fathom what is going on. Updated to Edwardian England, the ballet is presented as a romantic triangle with the Siegfried figure inexplicably marrying the Odette figure rather than his true love, the Baroness von Rothbart. If you can't marry the person you love, why get married at all? Well, but he does...and then instantly Odette becomes aware of the situation between Prince and Baroness and she has a Giselle-type mad scene and is hauled off to the lunatic asylum. That the production reminds some people of the Princess Di/Prince Charles/Camilla story is understandable, especially when Odette/Diana arrives for her wedding in a gown with an extended train.
The first act is a real jumble: the setting pretty but uninspiring, the choreography uninteresting, the drama rather lost in the large theatre. The production might in fact be a fine candidate for a Peter Gelb HD treatment since it needs close-ups to register the moods of the main characters. In Act I, it seemed the choreographer had worked from a recording of the ballet set on random play. Famous music from the beloved Tchaikovsky score is heard helter-skelter. The men (throughout the ballet) are hampered by wearing trousered suits or military uniforms; they look bulky and weighted down. There are some dances for miscellaneous characters: there's a princess royal, a duchess-to-be, an earl and his equerry (who are inseparable), etc. The Playbill doesn't tell us who the dancers are in these roles (only the three main characters are listed) so despite their titles they remain anonymous.
At my first of two performances, I was ready to leave after Act I but decided to give the production another chance by seeing how the lakeside scene was staged. Locked away in the psychiatric clinic, Odette observes the swans on the nearby lake and imagines herself among them, dancing with her beloved. Here, for a while, we find choreography that approximates the more usual 'classic' version of the ballet, but it's marred by ballroom-style partnering in the pas de deux (Siegfried's outfit - dark trousers, open white shirt, his tie un-tied - even looks like what a ballroom dancer would wear). The four cygnets number is quickly deconstructed; the choreographer cannot seem to leave well enough alone even for three minutes. Rather as in some works by Alexei Ratmansky, Mr. Murphy seems always to be saying: "I must do something different with this music." But the lighting and the dancing itself managed to make the act work, and even to be somewhat moving. On Saturday night, I left at this point. On Sunday afternoon, curious as to how it all ends, I stayed to the end.
The first scene of Act III seemed interminable: the Baroness is hosting a party in her night-clubbish salon; Odette makes an appearance, apparently recovered, and wins Siegfried over with her beauty and charm. For this scene, one lamenting adagio tune follows another as the three main characters express their states of anguish, despair and uncertainty. Ultra-slow tempi are favored as the situation is drawn out tediously until finally Odette vanishes from the party.
Siegfried, not the first man to want both his wife and his mistress, pursues Odette to the lake where she eventually drowns herself - quite effectively staged - leaving her husband to his remorse.
The dancing, as I said, was uniformly fine. The Saturday evening cast - Madeleine Eastoe, Kevin Jackson and Lucinda Dunn - were rather lost to me as I attempted to connect with the staging and could not really concentrate on individual interpretations. At the Sunday matinee, now accustomed to the production, I was impressed by three dancers I had gotten to know during their visit to New York City last Autumn: Amber Scott, Adam Bull and Lana Jones.
Overall, this SWAN LAKE seemed most definitely in need of editing: both the first act and the first scene of Act III needed tightening to be more effective; yet in the end the music and the underlying tale of passion and betrayal casts its spell. Ironically, Australian Ballet have announced a "new, traditional" production of SWAN LAKE for their upcoming season choreographed by Stephen Baynes (does anyone remember his lovely TWILIGHT COURANTE for New York City Ballet in 2002?)