The Bolshoi’s Swan Lake at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden.
Rosemary Waugh:
The Nutcracker is the usual go-to Tchaikovsky ballet for those yearning to dangle their fingers in the sweetie jar. Yet although missing sugar plums and festive nuts, the Bolshoi’s Swan Lake at the Royal Opera House had a certain patisserie-edged theme to its styling. (Either that or substituting dinner for two gin and tonics led to hallucinations on my part).
Firstly there was tulle the exact shade of egg custard in the centre of a pasteis de nata, and soft hazel-brown skirts dotted with the nutcracker doll’s daily work output. Then, of course, there were the endless rows of starched tutus arranged like the perfectly dense globes of white royal icing on top of Mr Kipling’s individual Bakewell tarts (no other brand layers it on quite so thick). And finally there was Siegfried (Denis Rodkin) himself, encased in his own layer of snow-white icing and looking for all the world like those retro iced caramels my mum used to buy for the car. It’s amazing what a white body stocking can do for a man”¦.
Anna Winter:
Especially when his princely getup includes a strip of hypnotic spangles along the décolletage. This being the Bolshoi, there’s no shortage of sparkle – like a courtly Slick Rick, Siegfried even dons a big tinselly necklace for a while. Thankfully, he doesn’t attempt any split jetes in it. Slender of thigh, but with the concealed strength of the most potent of White Russians, Rodkin’s jump is light and airy as the meringue in a Pavlova, his turns tight and neat. So far, so fairytale.
But instead of stumbling across a bevy of enchanted swan maidens by a misty lakeside, this prince encounters Odette and her avian posse in his own head. Or so the programme notes tell us. This explains why Rothbart, here called Evil Genius, dances in tandem with the prince – he’s supposed to be an embodiment of Siegfried’s dark side rather than an actual antagonist with a beak. This attempt to inject proceedings with psychological veracity means that there are some unfortunate cuts to proceedings, reducing the ballet to two acts with the final lakeside scene following straight on from Odette’s triumph. That said, the initial white act is pretty much all intact, giving the audience ample time to appreciate the otherworldly splendour of Olga Smirnova’s performance as Odette.
Rosemary Waugh:
The other day my friend Joy said, “Swans are so beautiful that if you lived in a country where they didn’t have them, you would happily travel to go see one.” The same can easily be said for Smirnova and, in that respect, we’re lucky she saved us the airfare by making the trip to London herself. One of the few things I took from a brief reading of Mr Potter’s youthful adventures was the image of the Veelas. Smirnova is undoubtedly part-Veela, like Fleur Delacour, as her body slips and slides in half-liquid formations about the stage. As much as she has the entrancing elegance of a swan, she also has the characteristics of the water it glides across. Instead of being simultaneously impressed with the combination grace and muscularity, as is the often the case when watching ballet, all I see with Smirnova is balls of mercury morphing into metallic silhouettes as it drips down a white porcelain plate.
The essential problem with the new narrative of Siegfried battling his inner demons is that it culminates in the Evil Genius/Rothbart being the one to forcibly drag Odette away and – plop – deposit her in the lake. Aside from the slightly anti-climatic collapse onto the floor, this disrupts the idea of Odette’s deathly dive being suicide, instead making it more like murder (albeit it murder by Siegfried’s altar-ego, if I’m following this version right).
Anna Winter:
It’s a shame that this denouement is something of a damp squib – if any company can do proper bravura brilliance, it’s the Bolshoi. All the dancing prior to Odette’s lacklustre demise proves it – Anna Tikhomirova dashes and dazzles with supreme musical élan in the Spanish solo, while Vyacheslav Lopatin as the impish court jester knocks everyone’s socks off by whipping off perfect turns at awesome speed. It’s as if this production is trying too hard to counter the Soviet-sanctioned happy ending of years gone by. Instead of serving Tchaikovsky’s glorious score and giving us grand tragedy and heartbreak (leaving the audience to find metaphorical meanings within the fantasy) we get an oddly emotionless ending. An Odette such as Smironova’s doesn’t deserve to expire so unceremoniously and quietly, leaving Siegfried to wander around and look a bit dazed as the curtain drops.
The Bolshoi are performing Swan Lake at the ROH until 10th August 2016. Click here for more details.
