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The National Ballet of Canada 'Swan Lake'
March 11, 2010 -- Four Seasons Centre, Toronto Prologue: To be absolutely clear, with few exceptions, little fault could be found with the dancing. The National Ballet of Canada has a core of established bolstered by a number of emerging talents, and the dancers did the best they could with “Swan Lake”. They are in no way at fault for the production and its shortcomings. The Main Show: In short, Kudelka's "Swan Lake" is an absolute waste of the company's time and talent. The wonderful designs and holiday cheer might cover up some of his shortcomings in "The Nutcracker", but this mess of a "Swan Lake" reveals quite clearly what happens when a choreographer rips the narrative out of a ballet. Let's just say it's not pretty. Even if you can somehow ignore the gang rape… According to preview articles, Kudelka approached the creation of his production with an eye to increasing the role of the men in the ballet. That might work if you have the audacious creative talent of Matthew Bourne, and the freedom to dispense with the classical idiom. But you can’t change the focus from the women to the men without a radical and cohesive re-conceptualization of the story. Kudelka does the opposite -- he gives up on the story all together. Which is a problem in a so-called story ballet. In a nutshell, Kudelka dispenses with the whole concept of Odette being a princess turned into a swan by a spell cast by Rothbart. Instead, she's actually a swan and Rothtbart is an avenging angel sort of guy bent on creating havoc with his swanly minions. Possibly an interesting idea, but that's not “Swan Lake,” nor is Kudelka capable of making it make any sense what so ever. The ballet starts with a prologue where we see (or rather are supposed to see) the massively winged Roth-Angel stabbing his massive sword into a massive rock. According to the program he's supposed to a "harbinger of ruin" silhouetted by the sun as he stabs the "terrible sword" with an "emphatic and menacing gesture". The only problem is that our Roth-Angel is apparently only silhouetted against the sun if you are sitting in the dead centre of the theatre. For the other 99% of the audience, he blends into the faux-rock peak, and this terrible sword not very noticeable at all. Not only is it 10 minutes of ‘huh?’, but it's quite clear that no one has learned from ABT's “Swan Lake” ending faux paux. To make a long story short, if you aren't lucky enough to be able to spring for a ticket in the lower two levels of the Met, you probably still don't realize that Siegfried and Odette are re-united in the rays of the sun after they jump to watery death. Problem being that the fake sun which the dancers stand behind is so high on the backdrop that it's not visible if you are above the first or second tier. Moral of the story: make sure your cool effects are visible from all parts of the theatre. Otherwise you go from drama to dud. In summary, Kudelka's prologue is pretty much a waste of time, and makes ABT’s “the Swamp Thing” and his “Stuffed Swan” prologue seem sensible in comparison. It doesn't get better in Act One proper. What is usually a generally joyful, so much as moody late teenage boys can be joyful, scene of dancing and carousing prior to Siegfried's birthday, becomes an all male rut-fest. The NBoC male corps actually gets some pretty meaty choreography, which they pulled off with great flair. Yet, the almost totally absence of women makes little sense. First of all, we are talking about young men, and one soon to be married man in particular -- do you think they'd be out without some female companionship? Didn't think so! Also on Kudelka's chopping block is any semblance of real mime, truly unfortunate because NBoC has a number of fine character dancers who are more than capable of telling a story. Poor Victoria Bertram, normally a dancer possessed of formidable acting chops, is here overwhelmed by a truly hideous headdress and reduced to repeatedly pointing at her ring finger. At one point she actually gives Siegfried a ring -- which is one of the most ineffective mimetic actions in a large theatre because the ring is totally invisible to 99% of the audience. Kudelka shares Siegfried’s solo with Benno, which was a shame because Brett Van Sickle lacked the power and technique to keep up with the dramatic music. We were, however, treated to some fine bravura dancing from Keiichi Hirano's Fool, and an interesting foreshadowing of the Black Swan Pas de Deux from the Wench. And then the Wench gets gang raped. To be fair, the audience doesn’t actually see anything, but the blatant hand movements of the crowd in the corner make it oh so clear what's happening. It's gratuitous, and worse, the implied rape climaxes with the music, so we are thrust into the position of feeling that if we applaud the end of the musical phrase, we are also applauding a rape. Appalling. Ballet has certainly tackled some pretty horrible themes, but never so awfully gratuitously. Perhaps Kudelka thought he was emulating "The Judas Tree", but Kudelka is and will never be anything close to a Sir Kenneth MacMillan. And "The Judas Tree" takes an unapologetic, gritty and harsh look at the horror of gang rape. But in this Swan Lake rape is just used as a convenient reason for Siegfried to leave and go chase swans. If there was any story to tell, it unraveled in Act Two, where the story and choreography massively failed the brilliant Guillaume Cote and Heather Ogden. Firstly, though Santo Loquasto's sets and costumes are lush, the settings of the various acts seem to have no historic or thematic relation to each other, which further fragments the story that Kudelka already gutted. The costumes of the court and the silhouetted castle suggest some medieval Germanic town, but we seem transported into an Egypt infested with giant reeds in the second, returning to a castle with wooden walls for the third, and back to our biblical reeds for the finale. The big issue in the second act is the lack of any semblance of believable narrative. The program indicates that Odette is a swan -- not a maiden turned into a swan, but a swan. Unless the process of finding a wife has turned Siegfried truly mad, why would he even become the least bit infatuated with a bird? That would be a bit difficult to explain to the queen mom. Not being human aside, there's little to like about swans -- they aren’t pleasant creatures. Reality check: for those who've never read “The Ugly Duckling” in the original Danish, when the ugly duckling finds out he's actually a swan, it's not all happily every after. Turns out that swans are not particularly nice to their own, especially to those who are outsiders. If we buy this much of Kudelka's version, we then have to swallow a Rothbart who now looks like the Fakir escaped from “La Bayadere.” There's nary a clue that he's the same being as our Roth-Angel, and it's bewildering as to why he spends so much time in the marsh with the swans. In last season's "Carmen", Noah Long had his "boy becomes a man" breakthrough role, and was notably powerful and edgy. Kudelka's clunky choreography does him no favors, and the fact that the role lacks any power suggests that the role is flawed, not Long. In addition, by getting rid of the story, Kudelka gets rid of the point for Act Two and any tension in the drama. The whole point of the curse is that Siegfried can't just run off with Odette, and it's why Rothbart stays in the shadows until his curse is threatened by Siegfried & Odette's love and then has to show up at the Prince's party to spoil the evening. When the female swan corps first appeared on the stage, things appeared to be going from bad to worse. Arms were everywhere and the spacing of the entry of each swan on to the stage was completely irregular. However, it appeared that the fault was not such much the dancers as Kudelka's strange variations on Petipa. Once the corps returned after Odette and Siegfried and Roth-Fakir's brief interlude, they went from worrisome to wow! Despite some questionable choreographic choices by Kudelka, the corps from then on moved and breathed as a whole. It was refreshing to see some classical purity left in the ballet, and the corps deserved a great deal of praise. The four cygnets pas de quatre seemed muddied at times, however. Despite the fact that Odette is a swan, and there's no curse to lift to make her human, somehow she and Siegfried manage to fall in love. The whole premise of the ballet in tatters, one isn’t sure what one is supposed to expect from Heather Ogden's Odette. Odette is not a particularly natural role for her -- or maybe she's not real sure what the role is supposed to be either. There's no doubt she has the technical chops, but she didn't appear very bird like, and there was none of that initial fear or wariness of Siegfried. In a recent article, Odgen and Cote mention that while their off-stage relationship has often helped their on-stage partnership, they got comments from the company coaches that they were too familiar with each other in “Romeo & Juliet.” One wonders if this familiarity also came though too much in “Swan Lake” -- the pair seem to click too quickly for people (or a person and a bird) who bumped into each other in a marsh. Cote, as is his usual, was nearly flawless in his solos. There did, however, seem to be a slight stiffness in his back, but this was gone by the third act. Perhaps a tiny bit of opening night nerves, or a body that wasn't quite 100% warm from the very beginning? Between the rather wonderful deep blue clad courtiers and the colorful princesses, Act Three is a riot of color. Yet while Loquasto sometimes hit the target with color, he missed by a mile with the rabbit ear-like headdresses of some of the ladies of the courts. A further problem is that with the dismantling of the story in Act Two, the whole premise of Act Three is very shaky. While it's conceivable that Rothbart (now Roth-mystery ambassador) could return with Odile to screw more with Siegfried, this Roth-dor being the avenging type. But if there's no curse on Odette, why does Roth-dor care so much about getting Siegfried to swear his love to Odile. And why would he bother with Odile instead of just hauling along his Odette. Then again, there might be just a wee issue with bringing a swan into a castle. They hiss, they shed, the smell and they aren't house-trained -- not really traits to impress a future royal mother in law. In another costume-trophe, Roth-dor is outfitted in a rather dull black costume that actually tends to blend in with the blue of the courtiers at times. He looks a bit fiendish, but we get no sense of the evil that he possesses. Because we have no curse, we have no evil sorcerer, just an avenging malcontent. Which just doesn't make for a very interesting character. There needs to be a real driving force behind his evil -- the original concept is that's he's having a hissy fit of major evil magician epic-ness because Siegfried and Odette's love is threatening his curse. And having that curse broken not only is bad for the ego, he loses the chick and possibly his life. For the plain old avenging type, it's not real clear what he has to lose. Or why he cares so much about promises. Fallen angels just work much better in the Bible than in ballet. Kudelka has completely tossed the dances for the various country-groups, which is a real shame because it's one of the rare places to give up-and-coming dancers a chance at meaty choreography. The upside is that we get the four dances for the soon-to-be spurned princesses, which are the highlights of the ballet in many respects. Elena Lobsanova, Tanya Howard, Jillian Vanstone and Stephanie Hutchison were all outstanding, and in this rare occasion, the choreography really worked together with the music to create distinct characters. For all the delights of the princess, we had one big problem -- no prince! At some point during the first or second princess, Cote disappeared offstage and didn't return until the end of the princess solos. It’s not clear that this absence was planned, but it seems silly to have the prince, who is the one trying to find a mate, completely offstage. Most, if not all, versions of Swan Lake make it pretty clear that while Siegfried has to get married, he gets to make the choice, not his mom. So one hopes that Cote had to make an un-scheduled exit to deal with something rather than Siegfried being so bored he couldn't bother to stay in the story! She may not be an entirely natural Odette, but Ogden takes full delight in Odile's sinfulness. No doubt as to why Siegfried was falling all over her. She whizzed breezily through the fouettes, blowing off some easy multiples on her easy way to 32+. Cote is equally talented in the turning department, but perhaps tried to finish off with a few many rotations in second without coming back to releve, and ended up slightly stumbling out of his coda. By no means anything more than a minor bobble, but a reminder that less is sometimes more. The difference in this Act Three is that when Siegfried makes his fatal promise -- though it's not clear why he needs to promise anything to anyone and why he's confusing a swan with a princess -- he doesn't just condemn himself; he condemns the whole court. Why this Rothbart has a grudge against everyone there is not real clear, but all but Siegfried and Odile (and Rothbart) meet a watery grave. It might have been an interesting idea if the execution wasn't so amateurish. The effect of water rushing over the court was created by a giant sheet and some slightly off-center projections of watery patterns on said sheet. Aside from a rather neat final swooping flourish at the end, it didn't seem worthy of a major ballet company. Kudelka, like some choreographers, chooses to put his fourth act swans in black tutus. When done well, it can be very powerful, but the combination of the less than attractive blue-black velvet bodices on the tutus and the haphazard staging ruined what effect might have been. Worse though, was the completely distracting disco-ball like patterns flashing against each side of the backdrop. It appeared that it was an attempt to create the impression of moving water, but it was utterly distracting. End result was that this reviewer could barely concentrate on the dancing, and remembers little of the swans in Act Four. Ogden and Cote did the best they could with the final pas de deux and have created a remarkable partnership, but when there's not much meaningful story behind it, the final parting didn't quite have the intended emotional effect. It didn't help that Rothbart -- in yet another un-memorable black outfit -- returned to chase Siegfried around, seemingly pinching some male-male pas deux moves from Bourne. Rothbart dies, then he revives, then the water engulfs them and when all clears, it's Siegfried who dies. The swan survives. So he breaks his promise and she's the one left to suffer. Then again, do swans feel emotional pain, at least outside of HC Andersen fairy tales? The verdict: a very ugly duckling. Kain would do well to find a version for NBoC that is worthy of the talent that the company has and is nurturing. Giving more chances for men to dance is no excuse for eviscerating the poor swan. The orchestra was generally fine, but seemed very muffled in the beginning. David Briskin conducted.
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by Kate Snedeker