The status of Swan Lake has changed. Once it was first among equals in the traditional three-acter stakes, combining Tchaikovsky’s score with a heartbreaking story of sacrifice and love and some magnificent choreography by the 19th-century master Marius Petipa and his protege Lev Ivanov.
Now it’s seen as the brand ballet, an automatic seat-filler, and hence coffers-filler. This explains its presence in the repertoire of the Royal Ballet until 28 June, with 11 different casts taking their turns as sad Prince Siegfried, his bewitched love Odette and her evil double Odile. Yet I wonder what people seeing the ballet for the first time make of the cumbersome production that the company is currently dancing.
Commissioned in 2018, from the late Liam Scarlett, it is handsomely designed by John Macfarlane, and lit by David Finn in ways that fill the lakeside with a yellowish light. But it isn’t a convincing dance text, and it fiddles with the story in ways that are irritating rather than revelatory.
It seems to me to ask the wrong questions. Faced with a tragedy about a melancholic prince who can’t tell one woman from another, and a princess turned into a swan by an owl-man magician, I am not sure anyone is asking, “What’s the owl’s motivation?” Yet a great deal of time here is devoted to answering that.
The dancers’ artistry transfigures such worries. Marianela Nuñez and Vadim Muntagirov dig deep into their classicism to produce a refined and emotional pairing, surmounting the technical challenges with ease, but also finding time to gaze into one another’s eyes and tell a story. In a different cast, William Bracewell’s innate sense of drama makes Siegfried understandable while Fumi Kaneko dazzles as Odile but is too unyielding as Odette. The film Black Swan gets it wrong; it’s Odette that’s the harder character to convey, and Nuñez’s flexible back and ability to melt her arms into swan-like wings are the most beautiful part of a sensational interpretation. The corps de ballet is a wonder.
In among all these swans, a triple bill of ballets celebrating the Royal’s great dramatic choreographer Kenneth MacMillan gets only a handful of performances, yet it’s a fine insight into both his work and the history of British ballet. Some of today’s dancers struggle with the sharp oddities of Danses Concertantes (from 1955, to Stravinsky’s score), but all rise to the serene, grief-filled thoughtfulness of Requiem (1976), set to Fauré, and powerfully led by Lauren Cuthbertson and Bracewell.
In between, there’s Different Drummer, from 1984, an eloquent advertisement for the power of dance to tell stories that matter, its expressionistic treatment of Büchner’s Woyzeck as wrenching as ever and performed with remarkable commitment by Natalia Osipova and Reece Clarke.
Star ratings (out of five)
Swan Lake ★★★★
Danses Concertantes/Different Drummer/Requiem ★★★★
Swan Lake is at the Royal Opera House until 28 June
Danses Concertantes/Different Drummer/Requiem is at the Royal Opera House until 13 April
