In the images above, replete with photo album corners, you can see the Ballet Russes performing Swan Lake as part of their Australian season in the year 1939. In anticipation of The Australian Ballet's 50th Anniversary Gala (featuring guests from American Ballet Theatre, Stuttgart Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, National Ballet of China and The Tokyo Ballet, and which I will be lucky enough to be seeing twice!) and charmed and amazed by Gracia's recent Swan Lake response especially for Fjord Review, they seemed a good way for me to share a little of my excitement and joy and love of all things ballet.
Lest you missed it, here is Gracia's beautiful response to The Australian Ballet's 8th performance of Swan Lake with choreography by Stephen Baynes:
It is circles I see, and always have, whenever I listen, and often I do, to Piotr Illyich Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake.
For me, one stimulates the other, and the composition upon every visit
sets to the business of drawing its familiar beloved circles, from the
large and sweeping to the tightly coiled. Melodic circles that anyone
can hum or whistle, or with finger tap out on the table; such a union of
the senses is what Swan Lake is for me. That is what I hear in
the music, and see in the choreography, a melody and a romanticism
impossible to resist or ignore.
In anticipation of Stephen Baynes’ Swan Lake,
an Australian Ballet premiere, I listened often to a recording (split
over two discs) by L’Symphonique de Montréal, conducted by Charles
Dutoit. I watched on DVD the Royal Swedish Ballet with Nathalie
Nordquist as Odette/Odile and Anders Nordström as her Prince Siegfried
(with choreography by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov, and Sir Peter
Wright). And I watched an episode of A year inside The Australian Ballet,
"Dressing the Ballet" in which we follow senior artist Amy Harris
through the costume department of the Australian Ballet to view the
exquisite work of designer Hugh Colman and team. In this sixth episode
of a planned ten behind-the-scenes appetisers, set amidst the brocade
and tulle, we learn that the pearls upon the bodice of the Swans speak
of the tears the parents of Odette have shed. Their tears have formed
pearls, such is their anguish; their grief has formed a lake, in this
ballet tale familiar to so many. Familiar and loved by so many, to see a
production of Swan Lake is close to some kind of magical love
affair. The preparation I have briefly spoken of here reads almost like
the preparation one does to meet a loved one: the polishing of ourselves
in order to best present a handsome, ravishing, knowledgeable picture. Swan Lake
is a ballet loved by many, few would disagree, and to the ballet, we,
the audience, bring with us all our memories and devotion.
Earlier
in the year, I was invited to see a little of the 19th century styled
costumes designed by Colman for the Australian Ballet’s then forthcoming
production of Baynes’ Swan Lake. (Such stuff to whet the
appetite! Delirious emersion!) There, with own eyes I saw, hanging in
neatly ordered and labelled rows, white swan tutus awaiting only a
dancer to bring to life their beauty and elegance, the moving dream that
is the power of costume. Seeing the Black Swan’s tutu brings me closer
to imagining how it might feel to perform Odile’s thirty-two fouettés.
(Of interesting note: the black swan first appeared in 1941 ‘in a
performance by the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo in New York. Today the
black swan is an essential element of the story, though few realise how
recent an addition she is.’[i] Previously she appeared in disguise, but
not sporting black feathers.) Seeing the costumes made for the Queen, to
be played by former Australian Ballet principal Lisa Bolte, I feel as
though I have stepped into the year 1890, the year in which this new
production is set. This is what one would wear in a Prussian court.
To
then see those very costumes on stage worn by Lucinda Dunn as Odette
and Ty King-Wall as the Prince, the night was as magical as long I’d
hoped, with their final intimate pas de deux a beautiful pull at the
heart strings. At glorious end, I am left full of gathered and
marvellous impressions that I scarcely know where to begin.
Hearing the orchestra play, I am reminded of a journal entry in W.N.P Barbellion’s The Journal of a Disappointed Man:
January 30, 1915
I love the way in which a beautiful melody flits around the Orchestra and its various components like a beautiful bird.[ii]
Where I hear circles described by
music’s tempo—sometimes tightly revolving, sometimes wide in lyrical
sweep—for Barbellion, a bird in flight. Perhaps this ability to
transform from one thing to another ensures a certain timelessness. A
little musical metamorphosis, much like Odette’s own painful
transformation. We all bring different things to Swan Lake.
Some identify with the anguish of the Prince (which in Baynes’
choreography, the Prince’s suffering is deeply etched and adds to the
narrative), others are held transfixed by the beauty of sorrow. For
some, it is the choreography replete with its multiple turns of the
body, back and forth, changing direction, changing pace. And everybody,
it seems, loves those cygnets in perfect unison. We give ourselves up
freely to sink into the beautiful tragedy of it all, with its promise
and hope at the tail, and its fantastical lake so inky and becoming. And
what a lake it is we are treated to in this recent production. It is
mesmerising stuff, this wild, untameable nature that has held in its
spell Byron, Wagner, Shelley, Wordsworth et al. This lake serves almost
as another character in the tale. It shimmers and is ever present. It is
more than mere background fodder. Choreography, costumes, set design:
this Swan Lake is connected to and pulled by water. We are not flying through the air and light. Real and human aches are explored.
I
had been forewarned of a particular brief though no less fantastical
and powerful moment that occurs twice in the production. No more about
this was I told. Wait and see; you’ll know it. Indeed I did. A subtle
yet effective use of projection by designer and director Domenico
Bartolo (of the design group 21.19), the brevity of this projected
symbolism ensured it struck the right chord: a visual punch that adds
but never distracts.
As principal artist Amber Scott explains in
“Becoming Odette”, ‘in the current company, no one has danced the full
four acts of the classical Swan Lake; everyone is making a debut this season.”[iii] In Baynes’ Swan Lake,
the narrative arcs that Odette and Prince Siegfried wend are of
greatest importance. Characters are fleshed out and extended, and new
meaning and import given. Of the choreography, Scott continues,
‘…because it is so pure, you have to have this really uncluttered
technique. Every little nuance and ruffle of your feathers, there’s a
lot of really fine detail that needs to be clarified and personalised as
well.’[iv] As Baynes’ himself expresses in his Choreographer’s Note,
this new production is traditional. ‘Apart from [act II] and the Black
Swan Pas de Deux, all the other choreography for the other three acts is
my own. In act II I have adhered mostly to the Kirov version, although I
have made several alterations, including the choreography for the Lead
Swans, which is essentially my own.’[v]
I leave you with this
quote from W.N.P. Barbellion after spending an evening listening to
Tchaikovsky: ‘Came away thoroughly delighted. Wanted to say to everyone
“Bally good, ain’t it?” and then we would all shake hands and go home
whistling.’[vi] It sums up, in part, how I felt as I left the State
Theatre. Exhilarated. Entranced. Connected. Capable of whistling.
Referenced in the words above:
Behind Ballet; Episode 6, “Dressing the Ballet” in the series A Year Inside The Australian Ballet, produced by The Apiary for The Australian Ballet.
"A Dip in Waters of Another World”, a look at the costumes for The Australian Ballet’s Swan Lake choreographed by Stephen Baynes earlier in the year.
Behind Ballet; "Becoming Odette", produced by The Apiary for The Australian Ballet.
Notes:
[i]
Karen van Ulzen, “Black Swan of Trespass: In the European imagination,
the black swan was first an impossibility, then an oddity”, The
Australian Ballet’s Swan Lake programme, 2012.
[ii] W.N.P. Barbellion, The Journal of a Disappointed Man (United Kingdom: Little Toller Books, 2010), 167.
[iii] Amber Scott interview, “Becoming Odette”, for The Australian Ballet blog, Behind Ballet, 2012.
[iv] Scott, “Becoming Odette”.
[v] Stephen Baynes, “Choreographer’s Note”, The Australian Ballet’s Swan Lake programme, 2012.
[vi] Barbellion, The Journal of a Disappointed Man, 160.
For those of you who did not catch Swan Lake recently, here is a closer look on Behind Ballet.
I am especially keen to read what G writes about for her response to Pierrot lunaire.
(The two images in this post are courtesy of the State Library of Victoria and are out of copyright. They depict the Ballet Russes stars and corps de ballet in Swan Lake. The Ballets Russes Australian season was from the 30th of December 1939 to the 19th of September, 1940.)
