A lamentation of swans
Swan Lake
The Australian Ballet
Tuesday 19th September, 2023
Tuesday 26th September, 2023
State Theatre
Choreography: Marius Petipa
Originally produced by Anne Woolliams after Petipa, additional choreography Ray Powell
Director: David Hallberg
Guest Repetiteur: Mark Kay
Dramaturgy and additional choreography: Lucas Jervies
Choreologist: Mark Kay
Guest Coach; Sylvie Guillem
Guest Coach: Marilyn Rowe
Music: Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Costume design: Mara Blumenfeld
Set design: Daniel Ostling
Lighting design: T.J. Gerckens
Featuring
Artists of The Australian Ballet with Orchestra Victoria
The ending may alter (sometimes Prince Siegfried saves Odette; sometimes they both drown in the lake; sometimes they are shown interwoven in the afterlife. Sometimes von Rothbart dies too, by Siegfried’s hand or pecked by the swans he has ensnared, and on the list goes); the cast of characters may too (sometimes Siegfried has a friend, Benno, and other times, a Jester, who, through their springs and tumbles, serves as a foil. Sometimes von Rothbart is owl-like and other times, in the case of Murphy, von Rothbart is a Baroness); and the setting as well (Medieval German castle, Victoria era, present day, take your pick). Many things to many people, on or off stage, but the one constant that remains is the poetry, the essence of Swan Lake. To this fairy tale, there is the lure of the white and black contrast of Odette/Odile and Siegfried’s Love Duet and Black Swan Pas de Deux; Odile’s 32 fouettés; a lamentation of swans, thanks to the corps de ballet; the Dance of the Cygnets (to which someone seated around you will more than likely hum or tap along to, if it is not yourself); and in new hands, each cast, each generation, each variation, they interpret the steps differently and in doing so it keeps transforming.
Dance to the Letter, my response to The Australian Ballet’s Swan Lake, drawn up especially for Fjord Review.
Looking to the alphabet, many letters have been used to describe a swan, from the S of their long necks to the letters V and J to describe the overhead appearance of the flock echelons of them in flight. But on the opening night of The Australian Ballet’s Swan Lake, originally produced by Anne Woolliams after Petipa, and reimagined in 2023 by David Hallberg, with additional choreography by Lucas Jervies, the letter S could stand for shimmering, sublime, sincere; the V for the dancers’ virtuosity; and the J for a jewel that befits the company’s 60th anniversary.
Artists of The Australian Ballet in Swan Lake, photographed by Kate Longley
In 1962, it was Swan Lake that Dame Peggy van Praagh chose to launch The Australian Ballet’s first season. In 2002, The Australian Ballet premiered Graeme Murphy’s Swan Lake, and in 2012, for their 50th anniversary, Stephen Baynes’s Swan Lake brought things full circle, or so it seemed. For a ring is round, it keeps revolving, and so does a timeless tale of eternal love; beauty ever draws us back to the lake.
This Swan Lake, with sets by Daniel Ostling, heightens the longed-for contrast between states of place and being, with the forest always visible, magnetic, be it from inside the palace ballroom or the surrounding garden. The deciduous trees are reminiscent of a John Nash landscape and the subsequent mood they evoke (think: The Lake, Little Horkesley Hall and Interior of a Wood, Whiteleaf). Had Joseph Caley’s Siegfried brought with him a pair of binoculars instead of a crossbow, who knows how things might have unfolded for him. But then, as the mournful oboe of the overture foreshadowed, tragedy lies ahead, and I am transfixed.
Benedicte Bemet and Joseph Caley, with Artists of The Australian Ballet, in Swan Lake, photographed by Kate Longley
From up in the circle, the V formation of perfectly aligned swans, luminescent in costumes by Mara Blumenfeld, is as exquisite as in nature, where each migratory bird flies slightly above the one in front to conserve energy through reduced wind resistance and takes turns in the various positions. This ingenious sky choreography ensures they can glide for longer, and keep an eye on one another, which is not unlike the long-distance migration, orientation and communication on the stage. In the rehearsal period, “the dancers make constant adjustments to their head, neck and arms to create vital symmetry”, and now, having been transfigured into swans by the commanding Jarryd Madden as von Rothbart, the corps de ballet put into practice the hours spent “cultivating the art of special awareness”[i], as former The Australian Ballet corphée, Lisa Craig explains. The dancers’ eyes “scan marks on the floor to set formations consistently, and spaces between each swan are measured and memorised”. Stage markers like celestial cues to navigate ensure a “complex, unique map forms in the mind of each dancer,” and with Lead Swans Valerie Tereshchenko and Rina Nemoto, this drift of swans is fiercely, beautifully, immutably protected; none more so than the light-footed, interlaced Cygnets, Yuumi Yamada, Jill Ogai, Jade Wood, and Aya Watanabe[ii]. From where I sit, it is as if, like swans, they can ‘see’ Earth’s magnetic field lines.
Benedicte Bemet and Joseph Caley, with Artists of The Australian Ballet, in Swan Lake, photographed by Kate Longley
From the captivating, winged grace and strength of Odette to the beguilement and directional attack of Odile, as sharp as the shards of gold metallic net in her tutu, if I am to talk of magnetism, the night surely belongs to Benedicte Bemet. Bemet’s Odette/Odile is part Wooliams’s intended of-this-world reality to the fairy tale[iii], to a ripple away from flight. Partnered by Caley, their entwinement upon the stage reads true, when I return the following Tuesday week. Lakeside, once more, but this time in the stalls, by the time they reach their Act IV pas de deux, I am reminded of the power of art, and all things human; a mixture of the sublime and the earthly, such is the captivation. For a suspended moment in the theatre, I am overwhelmed by what humans can achieve. A rare sensation! A rare bird indeed!
The Australian Ballet’s Yuumi Yamada, Jill Ogai, Jade Wood, and Aya Watanabe in Swan Lake, photographed by Kate Longley
[i] Lisa Craig, ‘Beneath the lake: a swan’s perspective’, Behind Ballet, 1st September, 2023, https://australianballet.com.au/blog/beneath-the-lake-a-swans-perspective, accessed 20th September, 2023.
[ii] From the Hungarian, Spanish and Italian divertissements in the ballroom to the joy of the Pas de Six, with Nemoto, Ogai, Mason Lovegrove, Nathan Brook, Yamada, and Watanabe, spells are cast not just upon maidens and hoodwinked princes, but upon a willing me, sat in the audience. Transformations occur, not just in the spinning of the tale, but upon dancers in the company as they make their debuts or return to various roles, and meld technique with emotion and their own unique response. As such, it is proving hard to single out various dancers and keep my awe in check.
[iii] “As well as the avian nature of the swans, Wooliams wanted to bring out the human incarnation. Michela Kirkaldie [who performed the principal role when Marilyn Jones snapped her Achilles tendon at the dress rehearsal] says, “She drew out the womanly part of the swan, she really worked on the rapport in the pas de deux, the moments when you look at each other, the body language. She bought reality to the fairy tale.”” Rose Mulready, ‘Divine Fire’, The Australian Ballet Swan Lake programme, p.27.
Tuesday 19th
Melbourne / Naarm
Odette/Odile: Benedicte Bemet
Prince Siegried: Joseph Caley
von Rothbart: Jarryd Madden
Queen Mother: Rachel Rawlins
Chamberlain: Sakis Michelis
Jester: Marcus Morelli
Pas de Six: Rina Nemoto, Jill Ogai, Mason Lovegrove, Nathan Brook, Yuumi Yamada, Aya Watanabe (Tuesday 26th: Rina Nemoto, Larissa Kiyoto-Ward, Mason Lovegrove, Nathan Brook, Yuumi Yamada, Aya Watanabe)
Lead Swans: Valerie Tereshchenko; Rina Nemoto
Cygnets: Yuumi Yamada, Jill Ogai, Jade Wood, Aya Watanabe (Tuesday 26th: Yuumi Yamada, Samara Merrick, Jade Wood, Aya Watanabe)
Interestingly,
“The first time Odile appeared as “the Black Swan” in a 1920 revival of Alexander Gorsky’s 1901 production staged by Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchanko at the Bolshoi Theatre. In the west, the tradition spread after a 1941 production staged by Alexandra Feodorova-Fokine for the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City. This production was staged under the title, “The Magic Swan” and starred Tamara Toumanova as Odette/Odile. At the time, the only part of Swan Lake that was known in the west was the famous second scene and in an effort to have the audience distinguish Odile from the well-known Odette, Fedorova-Fokine had Toumanova dance Odile in a black costume and almost by accident, Odile began to be referred to as “the Black Swan” and it was this 1941 production that seems to have set the tradition in motion in the west.”
’Swan Lake: Ballet fantastique in three acts and four scenes’, The Marius Petipa Society
“Why has this dance been singled out for enduring fame from all the great music in Act II? Perhaps because of its traditional role in showcasing up-and-coming dancers from the corps de ballet, or the novel choreography requiring four identically-moving dancers. But its fame surely has something to do with its striking instrumentation, which contrasts so strongly with the lush orchestration in the rest of the ballet. The dance highlights the double reed instrument family at their quackiest. The bassoon plays a bouncy bass line while two oboi play the melody in parallel thirds, much like the dancers stepping together.”
Matthew Lorenzon, ‘Deep Listen: Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake’ , June 10th, 2018
Image credit: The Australian Ballet’s Joseph Caley and Benedicte Bemet in Swan Lake by Kate Longley