Not so much Swan Lake as Swiss Lakes! Despite the performance taking place next to Lake Lucerne and opening in a prologue set beside Lake Geneva, this production of "Swan Lake" contained neither lake nor swans. Instead, Chinese choreographer Yabin Wang, has harnessed the rich emotional power of Tchaikovsky’s ubiquitous ballet score, albeit in an unfamiliar arrangement, performed live by the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra, to tell a different but equally well-known story: that of Frankenstein’s creature, as imagined through the eyes of its creator, Mary Shelley.
That prologue was an imagined conversation (in German) between Mary and Percy Shelley with Lord Byron during their infamous sojourn on the shores of Lake Geneva, swapping ghost stories one stormy summer night, thus giving Mary the inspiration to write Frankenstein (or The Modern Prometheus). Wang successfully infuses the aura of Mary’s real-life tragedies (her husband, three children and Byron were all to die before or soon after the book’s publication) with the desolation of the creature she created.
Much of the potential success of Wang’s concept fell to the responsibility of Tanaka Roki who performed with a scintillating presence as Kreatur. Roki learned to dance at home in Zimbabwe, teaching himself hip-hop by watching and copying clips on YouTube and his skills in locking, popping and power moves (one immense butterfly jump seemed to pop out of nowhere) now punctuate the fluid contemporary dance movement that has been professionally grafted onto his self-taught base. It wasn’t so much Roki’s dancing that connected with me (excellent though it was) but the poignancy of his expressiveness, encapsulating the alienation and loneliness of the lovelorn, pathetic creature, finishing the ballet isolated from the world at the top of Mont Blanc. It was a powerful performance that reminded me of the characterisation that the late Liam Scarlett intended with his own production of Frankenstein.
The cast included three émigrés from the UK, two of whom danced in Wales’s finest ensembles. Mathew Prichard (ex-National Dance Company Wales) and Hanna Hughes (ex-Ballet Cymru) were prominent members of the ensemble, while Phoebe Jewitt, a graduate of the school attached to Ballett Zürich who also fronts up her own Lucerne-based dance company, PITT, gave a charismatic account of Elisabeth Lavenza, Victor Frankenstein’s fiancée who is also loved by Kreatur.
Flavio Quisisana doubled up effectively as both Percy Shelley and Frankenstein; the perky bravado of Grazia Scarpato (still a company intern) was always impressive in the group dances; and Valeria Marangelli provided an excellent leitmotif throughout the work as Mary Shelley, a silent narrator carrying her manuscript and hurriedly jotting down ideas as the action in her imagination played out behind her. A particularly nice touch at the end was for “the author” to call upon her characters to take their bows. And another quirk of the curtain call was for the cast to appear in a pick-and-mix of Sascha Thomsen’s spectacular and inventive costumes used throughout the performance rather than the last outfit that they had worn. In contrast to the vivid colours of the corps, the gun-metal grey mask and wrappings of the creature were especially effective.
Wang is a well-established choreographer in Asia, who now has a handful of successes in Europe: First there was Genesis, a fascinating collaboration with Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, in 2015; then her Medea-inspired ballet, M-Dao, for English National Ballet’s She Said programme, a year later; I caught an extraordinary production of Ibsen’s Lady and the Sea, performed late at night in the monumental open air theatre (created from a marble quarry) at Fjaereheia, in Southern Norway, in July 2019; and then The Moon Opera, performed in the same year at the Norwegian National Opera. Sadly, Yabin was locked down in China during the pandemic years and Swan – a Different Story replaced a proposal to contribute to a triple bill in Lucerne in 2021.
It takes a while to get used to the rearrangement of Tchaikovsky’s music - it’s the first time that I have heard the White Act adagio after the national dances of Act 3, for example. And I also had to train myself not to imagine characters from Swan Lake in place of their Frankenstein alternates (at one point in the first act and for a spilt second, I found myself thinking: and that must be the Queen)! Nonetheless, I was mightily impressed both by Wang’s inventiveness and rich mix of choreographic influences and TanzLuzern’s small but highly talented, international dance ensemble.
Incidentally, TanzLuzern only ever performs new work, and nothing returns for a revival. This relentless focus on premieres in Lucerne seems refreshing but also a pity when the work is as good as this. The premiere had an eight-minute standing ovation (a phenomenon that I was advised by locals does not happen often in Lucerne) and so maybe Swan - A Different Story will become the exception to the non-revival rule.
Swan – a Different Story stays in the repertoire until 8 June.
Graham's trip was partially funded by TanzLuzern
