Swan Lake

On Sunday, October 12, I had the opportunity to see the Australian Ballet's Swan Lake by Graeme Murphy at the exquisite Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles, California. I was told before going to not expect the typical Swan Lake. I am glad I was so informed as it was definitely not the traditional ballet. Mr. Murphy created a version that was vastly different, changing the plot entirely with occasional nods to the original.

Act 1

The ballet opens with a love affair between Prince Siegfried and the Baroness Von Rothbart (loosely Odile). However, in the next scene, we find Prince Siegfried being married to Odette. The lively wedding party takes place near a peaceful lake and is brought to a sad close when Odette sees Prince Siegfried and Baroness Von Rothbart have a seemingly significant exchange. Realizing that the man she just married is actually in love with someone else, she goes insane. She attempts suicide by jumping into the lake but is hindered by a couple of men nearby, catching her just in time. A mental institution is contacted to retrieve her.

Act 2

The act opens with Odette at the mental institution, the workers taking care of her. Prince Siegfried comes to visit, and she reacts hysterically. 

When he leaves her, she enters a dream world in which she is a swan dancing with a flock of other beautiful swans. In her dream, Prince Siegfried falls in love with her and her only. There is a swan corps de ballet, including the big swans and the famous cygnets, and the pas de deux between Odette and the prince. Odette then wakes up from her dream.

Act 3

The curtain opens on a very dark stage, where everything is black except for a few dark colors and lots of glitter. We have jumped ahead a few months, and Prince Siegfried and Baroness Von Rothbart are having a party. 

All of a sudden, Odette crashes the party. She has been released from the mental institution and has come to try to win back her husband. She is composed, and conducts herself in a very respectable manner. Prince Siegfried is attracted to her and notices anew her serene beauty. He dumps the baroness in favor of Odette. Baroness Von Rothbart is enraged and calls the mental institution to come pick up Odette, claiming that she is going crazy again. At the sight of the director, Odette panics and flees the room to the lake where she had wed.

Act 4

Prince Siegfried runs to the lake searching for Odette. When he sees her, she is dressed in her wedding gown and coming down the dais. It is nothing more than a trick of the prince's eyes, but it is a powerful moment that catches him off guard, suspending him in time. The dress disappears as their pas de deux begins. By the end of the pas, Odette concludes that this relationship just isn't going to work out for whatever reason.

She jumps into the lake and drowns herself, and Prince Siegfried is left onstage in agonizing despair, forsaken and without a complicated love life forevermore.

The curtain closes.

My opinion

The choreography was amazing. There were some spots in which I thought the steps did not fit and match the music. However, the vocabulary was ingenious. Mr. Murphy created a pas de deux in the wedding scene between the prince and Odette. Her wedding gown had an enormous train, and it was amazing to see how Mr. Murphy successfully choreographed with all that material. I thought the cygnets were very entertaining, not only because of the skills of the dancers, but also the numerous ways Mr. Murphy found for the dancers to move about and weave in and out whilst remaining linked by all arms. I enjoyed myself immensely, watching the cleverness of his movement.

There were two scenes in the ballet I thought unnecessary. The opening scene took place during the overture, slightly startling me. Generally, an overture is music played without dancing accompanying it, purposed to tune the audience to the show at hand and push out the noise of their distracting lives. Having no overture felt like the show started without me, leaving me to do a bit of catching up. Perhaps they could keep the overture and make the scene a prologue to the ballet.
Besides that, the scene itself was uncomfortable and inappropriate. There are young people in the audience. I'm pretty sure there are myriad ways to portray a relationship that doesn't offend the sensibilities and innocence of some of the audience members.
The other scene was the opening of the second act as the workers of the mental institution took care of Odette. They bathed her, and her costume was her nude liner. Honestly, is there no other way to portray looking after someone's wellbeing? Why does it have to be a bathing scene? 

The music was interesting. I suppose it was okay--it just caught me off guard. As I said earlier, there was no overture to the first act; but I believe there was one for every following act (maybe not the fourth as it did not follow an intermission). The music was also arranged differently than in the original score. It had Odile's 32-fouette pirouette coda in the first act, a piece of one movement here, a piece there, and sometimes the same exact section repeated later on in the ballet. I found myself on several occasions humming the expected music next on the list and being surprised by another. It was not unpleasant--just different and unexpected. And the music always matched the story line, so it worked out well.

Now, what is my overall opinion of this Swan Lake revision? It was a nice ballet and definitely worth my time and money. However, I would not call it Swan Lake--I would call it something completely different that happened to have swans and the same music and characters as Swan Lake. I did not mind watching this ballet--I rather enjoyed it--but I would not watch it if I wanted and expected to see Swan Lake. I prefer Petipa's classic.