Swan Lake

Last night I went to see Swan Lake, by the Paris Opera Ballet. Odette was danced by Agnes Letestu and Jose Martinez was Siegfried.

I was expecting not to like it because my ballet teacher saw it on Tuesday and was very unimpressed. But I guess I’m easily pleased! I haven’t seen much live ballet in my life and besides, I was sitting so far back they could probably have been doing hip hop for all I knew. It was ballet, and they were good dancers, and the music was wonderful, so how could I not have enjoyed the evening?

I can however understand my teacher’s dislike of Nureyev’s tampering with the story. I’d read about the subtle homoerotic theme in Nureyev’s version so I was unsurprised when some of Act 1 now included a long, blokey dance that wasn’t there before. It was ok, and they danced very well, but what about the bits they cut out? Could we have them back, please? I’m getting a bit disturbed by the whole gay agenda thing that is hijacking productions of Swan Lake these days. I support the right of male dancers/artistic directors to be gay in their private lives, but please, seriously, don’t fuck with Swan Lake. It's bigger than you are.

Swan Lake is and always has been all about the women. The men are just there to wander around in the background propping women up as required and occasionally pointing effetely into the distance. That’s the way it is – deal with it. I think part of Nureyev’s idea was to explain how the prince came to be screwed up about women and start chasing swans, but seriously, who gives a damn about the prince’s motives anyway? And forget trying to explain the story. It’s a silly fairy tale, and if you can’t handle that then don’t go to the ballet! There’s lots of talk in reviews about newer versions being more sophisticated, but I fail to see how that is achieved by a lot of leering and poncing around by the men, as if homoeroticism is automatically sophisticated and heterosexuality isn’t.

I also thought that the scenery could have been better. The show didn’t have an enchanted feeling about it. The palace scenery was pretty spartan. The colours could have been richer, I think. Also, I wish they’d done something to hide the palace scenery during the swan scenes. It looked like they were dancing in the palace! I suppose they were constricted in their scenery as they were on tour, but a bit more blue light might have helped. I’m a big fan of blue light and smoke machines in Swan Lake (probably a result of many hours squinting through the interference at terrible quality recordings of the ballet on video!) - corny, I know, but that’s how I like it!

The ballerina was nice enough, though she was no Markarova. I spent the day at work watching Markarova as Odette on You Tube, to get me in the mood, but maybe I shouldn’t have! Markarova had some amazing stage presence. Maybe Letestu did too but I was so far away it would have been wasted on me! At least I know now where my ideal seat would be. It was a bit hard choosing from the seating plan when I was ordering the tickets as I’d never been in the theatre before. The ticketing was done by Ticketek. They didn’t know, when I asked them if the seats would be good, and even if they had, I suspected they wouldn’t give a damn anyway.

So now you’re wondering if you read correctly that I enjoyed the evening. Well, I did. Those were just my criticisms. It was really nice and I’d go again if the opportunity came up. In fact, I am going again but to see Jewels, next week, and I’m looking forward to it.