by Leigh Witchel
The National Ballet of Canada’s relationship with “Swan Lake” . . . as Facebook would say, “It’s complicated.”
Toronto’s “Swan Lake” canon doesn’t seem to connect to canon in New York, London or, from what I’ve seen, Saint Petersburg or even strongly to Paris Opera Ballet’s 1984 version by Rudolf Nureyev. NBoC’s current version, newly created by former Artistic Director Karen Kain, makes a lot more sense knowing the performance history and bloodlines.
The company has previously produced three versions of “Swan Lake”: Celia Franca’s from 1955, Erik Bruhn’s from 1967 and James Kudelka’s from 1999. Franca’s was based on what she knew from her training and career in England. Bruhn’s centered on a fraught relationship between Siegfried and the women in his life. Franca herself played the Black Queen, an Extra Special Guest Villainess who replaced Von Rothbart, and Bruhn opted for a tragic ending where love did not conquer all.
In Kudelka’s staging, Odette was never human, always a swan, and he added an implied rape of a secondary character. Unsurprisingly, his version also didn’t end with any hope. In a move both artistic and political, Kain, who had danced with Nureyev in Bruhn’s staging, wanted to bring back at least aspects of Bruhn’s version.
Back up from the present more than 60 years, past Bruhn’s staging, to John Cranko’s. In 1959 he was arrested in the UK and fined for soliciting gay sex. By 1961, he left the country and went to Stuttgart, where he created his version of “Swan Lake” in 1963. His philosophy that “Swan Lake” chronicled Siegfried’s personal tragedy most likely influenced Bruhn’s staging: several details are similar, particularly the ending. In the minds of these gay men, living in a society that still criminalized homosexuality, this denial of self could easily be seen as a thinly-veiled metaphor for the closet.
Kain used much of Bruhn’s choreography, but did not wish to restore his version in its entirety. She wanted to create a “Swan Lake” from a woman’s perspective and called it a “feminist take.” She used a female design team, Gabriela Týlešová making the sumptuous décor and costumes and Bonnie Beecher creating the lighting. As importantly, she wanted the women to be seen more as women than swans: captured and abused.
NBoC’s new version was done in two parts with a single intermission between the Act 2 lakeside scene and Act 3’s ball at the court. The production began with a prologue behind a scrim. Odette (Jurgita Dronina) was definitely a woman, portrayed dancing with friends. The prologue was an example of what-you-read-is-not-what-you-got. The libretto stated Odette and her friends had ventured deep into the woods looking for adventure: Kain reclaiming Odette’s agency by having her set the story into mention. That’s not exactly what was onstage. The idea of Odette searching with her friends wasn’t clearly depicted, especially as she was wearing something that looked like a nightgown. The cues indicated she was closer to home, and Rothbart stalked and abducted her.
Spencer Hack, here simply called Rothbart instead of Von Rothbart, was a bird with enormous wings made of black feathers and an arresting headdress that looked like the twisted branches of a tree top. He grabbed Odette; her friends tried to flee with her to no avail. There was no seduction here; Rothbart was a predatory beast.
The action seemed to be taking place mid-19th century. Siegfried (Harrison James) and family lived in a small elegant chateau; an afternoon garden party was in progress. This was one of the most psychologically deft sections of the production; in small but detailed brushstrokes Kain gave you a clear impression of who these people were. She started not with a group dance to the waltz, but rather with Naoya Ebe as Benno dancing at first with Siegfried’s two sisters, then two men, then a larger group joined in. There was no emphasis on symmetry or huge patterns; you saw quickly that this was an intimate, domestic court. There was a reference back to the Cecchetti tradition in Canada; the dancers braced their arms en haut in opposition to the shoulders. Later on, when the Tutor, Tomas Schramek, came in with Siegfried, he gave Siegfried a book as a gift. Siegfried then joined in the dancing.
While the party danced, and later as the guests relaxed, they didn’t only pair off into heterosexual couples, occasionally men danced with men and women with women. (New choreography was not done by Kain, but by Christopher Stowell and Robert Binet). There was a gay couple at the party as well, one man with his head on another’s shoulders, in a way that was more than friendly. As welcome as that was in terms of representation, it could miscue the narrative. In some ways it was more interesting if that relationship wasn’t interpreted as sexual, but a demarcation of informality inside this little court: everyone was more relaxed when they were not in public.
Throughout Act 1, Kain painted a social picture as observant as Mary Cassatt. After the dancing, the older adults came in with the Queen, Stephanie Hutchison, and you could see the difference immediately in maturity. Siegfried started out uncomfortably with his mother; their relationship felt strained and adolescent. The Queen told him to marry. He instead went to the tutor, so she said it more insistently: Marry!
Benno and the sisters made an egregious but pretty costume change in the interim, and danced to entertain us. The Act 1 pas de trois was largely re-choreographed. It was classical, but unrelated to the generally accepted versions. Ebe did huge scissoring jumps to enter in the coda. Accurate and technical, Ebe seemed to function both as Benno, but also as the Jester might in Soviet productions.
The Queen’s Confidante, Rebekah Rimsay, danced a small number with the Tutor, which reinforced the intimate domesticity Kain was laying out in the first scene, but also set up a foreshadowing of happy older relations that would not be fulfilled.
At the end of the scene, as darkness fell, Kain brought forward from Bruhn a handsome adagio solo for Siegfried that looked a lot like Lensky’s adagio in “Onegin.” Parallel bloodlines: John Cranko made “Onegin” in 1965, and it entered NBoC’s repertory in 1984, to become a touchstone in Toronto. There were the same sorrowful poses in fourth position, step-over turns where the leg moved in a long circle, and slow eloquent arabesques. James looked his best showing off a slow, sustained line.
The Tutor was a witness to Siegfried’s melancholy and tried to comfort him, putting his hand on Siegfried’s shoulder but then making the improbable suggestion of telling him to take his crossbow and shoot birds in the dark. The scene transitioned to a lake in front of an enormous moon. Siegfried went alone; for a big ballet, this version felt minimally staffed. Still, there was a full contingent of swans.
The lakeside scene first choreographed by Ivanov is usually the least changed. Same here, but it wasn’t particularly close. The swans revealed Odette. She lost the applause she should have gotten had she entered in her usual leap to center stage; people weren’t cued who she was. Rothbart made a striking appearance. He was very active in this version; he didn’t just control Odette from a distance, he separated her from Siegfried and controlled the flock. Odette did not stop Siegfried from shooting the swans, Rothbart did.
The music for the mime explaining her predicament was instead used for a pas de deux. There was no explanation of who anyone was or the importance of swearing fidelity. That moment happened during the ball with no warning. There were also several small musical inserts into the usual score that didn’t seem to come from anywhere familiar, including the unused portions of the score.
The group dances looked the most familiar, but there were some variations that seemed to be change-for-the-sake-of-change tweaks. A group step with wiping arms that is usually a jump with a beat was here just a change of weight. The famous clock-like head positions done by the four little swans were changed to being side to side. Dronina did the familiar solo for Odette; as Siegfried already had a solo interpolated into the end of the first scene, he didn’t get another. In the coda, Odette’s fouetté diagonal was slow as molasses, but Dronina did it reliably.
As a prince, James looked the part, but was not the partner. At the opening of the pas de deux he had Dronina back on her leg, forcing her to come off point. His final press lift was also shaky. This was not her problem; she had no trouble balancing on her own, holding several unsupported balances in the Black Swan pas de deux.
Act 3, as it often does, went its own way, but it wasn’t a great way. This staging was awkward both narratively and musically with strange editing choices.
It was staged as a masked ball; Benno wore a Venetian carnival mask, and had to dance wearing it briefly but mercifully removed it. As with Liam Scarlett’s production at the Royal, Siegfried was late to the ball, so Benno and Siegfried’s sisters danced to cover that up, using the act’s mazurka and some unfamiliar music to give all three short variations danced attaca that were exhausting and unmusical.
When Siegfried showed up, he acted the brat, eyerolling his mother. Really? In a classical ballet? When the princesses appeared, he was barely polite and then moped across the front. James lacked the things anyone who was going to one day be a leader needs: emotional restraint and a poker face.
Each princess tried to push Siegfried to dance with her; the fear of women (and the panic about homosexuality being the reason for that fear) felt so thick. This scene would have worked better if Siegfried just watched from a slight distance as the women danced for him. Rothbart appeared wearing a skull mask. Odile also appeared, but Siegfried didn’t leave with her; he had to watch the beginning of the Russian dance and awkwardly leave during that.
This staging fell down on the national dances: they were dense, difficult and used classical vocabulary to music more suited to character. The Russian dance was a long trio to the violin piece Tchaikovsky wrote that was removed from the St. Petersburg revival; here the lead princess clapped soulfully and then did gargouillades.
After that came a Neapolitan dance where the men and the princess ignored their props, a Spanish dance where the usual steps for two couples were given to the Spanish princess, and a French dance to music repurposed from Tchaikovsky’s pas de six.
The Black Swan pas de deux, restoring Bruhn’s musical choices, seemed even more arbitrary. The pas de deux itself was to Tchaikovsky’s later interpolation for Anna Sobeschanskaya. This wasn’t as strange a choice in 1967 as it might seem in 2022, when Balanchine’s choreography to this music is so well-known. The music had only been rediscovered in 1953 and Balanchine used it for “Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux” in 1960, the year Bruhn was a guest with New York City Ballet. But the duet used most of the familiar steps, which felt cut and pasted to the different music.
Siegfried’s variation was to the usual music. Odile danced to the oboe variation from what was originally the pas de six. That change can make a case for itself; the music has a haunting, bewitching quality. The coda went back to the familiar music. Cut, paste, cut, paste. Dronina attempted double fouettés at the end of each phrase, but fell off pointe towards the end. However, she recovered quickly and finished well. The Queen had a quizzical acceptance of Siegfried saying he wanted to marry Odile. Probably she surmised this was better than other options.
When the betrayal was revealed, it was done with a striking effect, a dark parachute silk that swallowed Rothbart and Odile in their ball attire and revealed the sorcerer as a bird with Odette. The swans raced around and the action traveled immediately back to the lakeside. To the familiar opening, Kain staged a large corps, grieving. Odette arrived on the agitated phrases; Rothbart entered and mocked her, forcing her to dance with him. Siegfried raced in on the huge crash in the music. His encounter with Odette didn’t follow the usual logic. She wasn’t concealed in the groups of swans when Siegfried looked for her; she bourréed in afterwards. In a sad duet to slowly rising music he echoed her steps, and tried to take her hands. He carried her round the stage, pressed her overhead – most of the usual elements of their reconciliation were there but shuffled. They danced a pas de deux before he had begged her forgiveness, but wouldn’t he apologize first, then dance?
And then things got weird.
The swans surrounded Rothbart; he pushed Siegfried away. Rothbart lifted Odette overhead. Siegfried collapsed. When she tried to go to him, Rothbart carried her away. The sky reddened as she left. Finally, she was able to reach Siegfried . . .
And he was dead.
Odette mourned over him as the curtain fell. From the libretto, again not perfectly apparent onstage, what happened was that Rothbart created a massive storm and Siegfried drowned in it.
The most awkward intersections in the production seem to be at the spots where Kain’s intention in 2022 to make the ballet about Odette collided with Bruhn’s desire in 1967 to make it about Siegfried. It’s not easy to restore a feminist perspective from a version that was arguably coded to be about a hero’s homosexuality.
If Siegfried lives in a world where his sexuality and affections could be called into question, it muddles his story. The pieces don’t fall into place easily if the reason Siegfried objects to his mother’s demand to marry is because he’s in the closet. Is Odette just a desperate hope that Siegfried clings to – a woman captive and unattainable, so a safe choice to imagine falling in love with? Without a complete rewrite, as in Matthew Bourne’s version, a closeted Siegfried shrinks the ballet.
As little narrative sense as Siegfried-in-the-closet makes, Bruhn’s version of “Swan Lake” was made at a time when mainstream art couldn’t do more. Consider “Victim,” a 1961 British film starring Dirk Bogarde and Sylvia Syms that was the first to use the word “homosexual.” It was made in protest to the UK law that ensnared Cranko, which was finally repealed in 1967. Canada’s law reforming the penal code, Bill C-150, was introduced that year and passed two years later. Bogarde’s character, Melville Farr, was portrayed as having homosexual feelings, but not acting on them. Bogarde’s own homosexuality was not a secret in the film industry, but he never publicly came out.
An intersection between the heroine of “Victim” (Farr’s wife Laura), and Odette: they both ask for the same thing in return for their love: fidelity. It was still her husband’s story, not hers, but what gave Laura’s character strength even at a time when so much could not be said, was her insistence on her right to know the truth. At the end of the film, it is implied she may stay with her husband, but she makes her choice based on knowledge.
There’s something painfully realistic about a “woman’s perspective” in “Swan Lake” where there may be no good actions or options available to Odette. And there are many kinds of victims, men like Siegfried and Melville Farr, who get to act in their story, and women like Laura and Odette who are only allowed to react. If feminism is a goal, until Odette gets a hand in her narrative, will there ever be a feminist “Swan Lake?” And feminist or not, tragic or not, doesn’t Odette – and the audience – deserve a Siegfried worthy of her?
copyright ©2022 by Leigh Witchel
“Swan Lake” – The National Ballet of Canada
Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, Toronto, ON, Canada
June 17, 2022
Cover: Harrison James, Jurgita Dronina and Karen Kain in rehearsal for “Swan Lake.” Photo credit © Karolina Kuras.
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