Sara Mearns makes Swan Lake watchable again

Seeing as how there are no more hot takes on Peter Martins’ Swan Lake – having debuted in the last century, its soulless earth-toned hellscapes in Acts 1 and 3 still bafflingly intact – I dragged along a ballet aficionado who hadn’t seen this production. On the subway home she texted, “I’m a fan of these costumes and sets. And the jester was fun!”

My own eyes were bleeding from the clashing Dayglo-coloured costumes and muddy backdrops of the palace scenes which I think obscure much of the elegance in Martins’ choreography. And I thought the jester (Daniel Ulbricht on his nth tour of duty in this thankless, overblown role) endlessly cabriole-ing and prancing around on bits of shattered Greek columns suggested an aristocracy in decline, in thrall to a clown.

But we agreed on the forbidding beauty of the lakeside scenes, delineated by a minimalist bramble on a painted backdrop, starkly illuminated. And on Sara Mearns’ singular Odette-Odile.

”I have several proposals on how we can make this Swan Lake a tight 1.5 hr show including intermission,” my sidekick submitted. (She is young, with ballet tastes that range from Balanchine’s Serenade to Ashton’s The Dream and McGregor’s Woolf Works. She does not view lopping off huge chunks of Tchaikovsky’s spellbinding score as a crime.)

“First, let’s start with a real short scene where the queen sends the guy off to go hunting, reminding him he’s gotta get married.

“Then we do the swans, fine. Cut some of the slow bits.” Admittedly the orchestra played the opening scene with the villagers at a mournful tempo, the sound somewhat thin.

“Cut to the palace, but no visiting countries, just the villagers and palace people.”

I argued that the foreign ambassadors are essential to the plot, having been sent to sniff out who the crown prince is likely to marry as that could signal shifting geopolitical alliances. However, I was arguing with a political scientist who remained unconvinced. I enjoyed Martins’ satirical takes on the Spanish, Hungarian, Neapolitan and Russian pageantry, especially as delivered by opening night’s hotshot cast.

“Then we go back to the swans, cut the first 20 mins of that. Straight to the formations and Odette being sad. Wind it up with man in flaming orange cape dying and awkwardly crawling off stage, then the last swan bit. Done!”

The lakeside scenes are the most stunning we’ve ever witnessed in a Swan Lake, Martins’ constantly ebbing and flowing blueprints for the swans a marvel of choreographic engineering – from the entrance of the swan corps in their long swan tutus with slightly ragged hems, who tear across the stage with huge airy emboîtés, to their final shimmering phalanx delicately but inexorably bourrée-ing in place as Mearns drifted backward into their depths.

Her bold, windswept entrance telegraphed both fear and determination. As Odette, her expansive renversés, heart-stopping nosedives into penchée, explosive scissor jumps and dreamlike turns into backbend were things of sorrowful splendor. 

Tyler Angle, a longtime Siegfried to her Odette, snapped out of a depression at the sight of Mearns. In their first lift, he threw her into the air as if expecting her to fly away. Powerful, springy jumps and clean lines marked his solo turns, his expressions of joy and lightness writ large until the impostor Odile and her dastardly father revealed their scam.

My accomplice registered the tension in Mearns’ neck and shoulders (“did my head in,” she texted.) To me, those tense shoulders telegraphed anxiety at the precarity of Odette’s situation, with Von Rothbart hovering like a nasty virus. Tension in the shoulders was consistent with her portrait of Odile: a throughline etched from Odette, reconstituting her mysterious allure into a worldly glamour rather than the all-out evil favored by some ballerinas. She let the dancing do the dramatic heavy-lifting, nailing the tricky elements of her solo variations with steely finesse rather than flash. She produced about a dozen fiery if somewhat wild fouetté turns – right about the number at which my attention starts to wander – then exited in an arc of scorching piqué and chaîné turns. 

Having witnessed Mearns struggle onstage with a calf injury in Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2 back in September then step back from Molissa Fenley’s State of Darkness at Fall for Dance, and her somewhat tentative outings in less strenuous fare this season, I wondered whether she was prepared for Swan Lake. She was. The world took note of her astonishing debut in 2006 while still in the corps; ten years ago I noted the magic she continued to spin in the role. City Ballet being a precinct for sprinters rather than marathoners, not many of their ballerinas possess the stamina for Odette-Odile. As imperfect a vehicle as this production is, Swan Lake remains an iconic proving ground and Mearns a unique and thrilling interpreter.