Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker, the three great Russian classical ballet masterpieces which were created in the late 1800s, grace the repertoires of all reputable ballet companies worldwide. With surging scores by Pyotr Tchaikovsky, they take their audiences to the make-believe worlds of beautiful maidens transformed into swans by an evil magician; a lovely princess who pricks her finger and falls asleep for a hundred years; and a Christmas party where a little girl dreams of adventures with her nutcracker soldier doll. All fantasy, but absorbing, with each work complete in itself, woven together by a dramatic scenario and colourful, brilliant dancing. These three gargantuan terpsichorean works not only guarantee to pull in the punters but are also responsible for re-filling constantly hungry company coffers. While the staging of Swan Lake has often been modified over the years – the most famous of these productions have been by Matthew Bourne and Mats Eks – the soul or essence of the work has remained.
Danish director and choreographer Peter Schaufuss created his trilogy in 1995, and it is showing in London now for the first time. He has linked the three famed ballets together as a series of dream sequences – a nightmare, a sensual dream and a happy dream – while also hinting that the scenarios and music reflect Tchaikovsky’s personal struggle to come to terms with his homosexuality. But alas, here in the first of the trilogy programmes, his Swan Lake was seen as a complicated, colourless and choreographically weak production, adding nothing to the story, nor creating a new view of it.
The ballet begins with a Dream Maker lying on a bed, ready to weave his reveries. The prince is revealed under the bed and spends most of his initial moments standing motionless, clutching himself and thinking, even when the local lads and lassies – all in dull grey – dance behind him. His mother the Queen arrives – a cold, callous and calculating female with scraped-back hair and a long trailing black Lycra dress – and she holds him in a vice-like grasp, showing her power over him. His timid and sensitive nature is not even changed when his two companions – a couple of very tall, court jesters in one-piece grey outfits and looking very much like the faceless Wenlock and Mandeville Olympic mascots, with floppy bunny ears – prance childishly around him.
With a set that never changes – a mirrored backdrop and a lighted blue square downstage – the action ‘moves’ to the lakeside. Here on a raised platform and silhouetted in purple light, a few swans, in head-hugging caps and white all-in-ones with frilly 1980s flares, cavort like the title characters in a James Bond film. Changed into humans, with hair loosened, they come on stage, men as well as women, to dance. There are no traditional pointe shoes here – they are seen only in the final act – and the steps are basic, with no correlation to Petipa’s choreography. A quartet of men dance to the Big Swans music and the famous Little Swans is danced by four floppy-haired girls with a bit of welcome sparkle. Somehow amongst the activity, the Prince spots the Swan Girl and the two perform their famous musical duet on the floor, rolling over each other, visible in the mirrored reflection overhead. There is no poetic beauty and romance about their coupling and the recorded mix-and-match music does not create the rarefied mood associated with the original.