 |
Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 23 - 29 November 2000 Issue No.509 
| ||
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
| ||
|
Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 23 - 29 November 2000 Issue No.509
| ||
| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
| ||
Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Focus Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Birds of a feather
By David Blake
The Russian Ballet Season: Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake; V Begichev and V Gelzer, libretto; M Petipa and L Ivanov, choreography; Igor Grinveich, sets and costumes; Alexander Bolchakov, conductor; Main Hall: Cairo Opera House, 16 November
Look up into the sky heavy with big city poison pollution. If you are lucky these next few days you will see radiantly white presences swooping through the killer fog on their way to the promised land, the Lac des Cygnes.
If you have a space, a garden, watch even the one available tree you may have. Magically it is turned into a silver birch, tall and bravely waving its beautiful Russian arms in the acrid city dust clouds. Never fear for its life because it too is making for the Lac des Cygnes.
When Ivanov and Petipa -- first of a host of choreographers nipping and tacking at the simple romantic story of the ballet -- created their scenario they probably had no idea what the passing years would do to the little tale of man meets bird. By now it has become a metamorphic salad bowl where anything goes, be it bird, tree or humanoid bisexual machos draped in flowing white feathers. The title is loose: the Lac des Cygnes is almost anything that can come out of it or disappear beneath.
This production sets a lot right. No kids stuff, it is really a road show built to travel and so needs to keep to essentials. It does this surprisingly well with a lot of the old, legendary effects retained, and plenty of new ideas to keep it moving into 2001, though we are spared outer space gadgetry of any kind.
In this production the four act Swan Lake has been divided into four independent but closely related parts, like a musical fugue. Two acts -- one and three -- are about human creatures and their absurdities, mad actions and love passions headed for the fire of the vanities. Acts two and four are the real Lac des Cygnes, bird-land, ice-land, purity, geometric perfection of line and the place where the grandeur of the soul can still be encountered. This simple surgical operation pays great dividends dramatically and balletically, but puts a hard task upon the orchestra -- in this production, thanks to the cryptic programme, nameless -- which failed to rise to the level of the rest of the production in spite of the highly professional and imaginative conductor, Alexander Bolchakov.
Bolchakov is an excellent dance man. He knows and feels all the so very famous routines, the pas de deux, quatre, cinq -- all the full corps de ballet. He keeps both sections, human and avian, going in their own way at their own tempo, which brings the creaky old tale to an end of noble magnificence, rounding out the usually flat feel of the end of the story to an understandable peroration of the total validity of theatrical magic. Lac turns out to have a heart after all.
photo: Sherif Sonbol
The opening act had a bronze glow, stately if not warm. The court crowd looked beautiful in autumnal coloured clothes: all is muted, but the feeling is alarming. Though it lacks the frosty glitter of the great production this Lac is a lovable show and its human, earthly feel of ordinary but socially exalted people forever on show well suggests what is to come. The unhappy prince, the nervous queen mother and the obsequious crowds of well-placed nobodies spending a lot of time doing nothing prepare us for something.
Siegfried the prince, who forces himself into actions he cannot control, is (probably) danced -- the programme is unclear -- by Vladimir Grigoriev. He is a neat, compact Russian dancer, no great lanky giant, but he fits the production and does not mince around. He walks human. His mama, the queen, a deep chilled beauty in gorgeous clothes, is a very good actress. These two hold the human thread tightly in their hands. The great moment of Act I, the flight of the swans to the lake, is miffed: no birds flew to the lake in this show.
The second act shows us why there were no birds. They are really too long and too big for flight. And so begin the surprises which lift this production to great heights. Something is happening within the classical ballet. The females, whether stars or corps, are getting taller, positively supermodel-sized, six-footers with no shoulders, scraped torsos, and the new miracle of power: legs so long they are now a new art form in the ballet, and bone thin arms forever flaying the air in the traditional Russian manner. These people take up a huge space on stage. They are goddesses, made not of muscle but of spindle. The entire routine of classical steps is changed. Their entrechats are like fluttering leaves, their beats aloft form big geometric pattern quite out of the usual classical mold. As for their grandes jettées, each dancer covers the entire stage in two jet propelled leaps. When they slow down a bit the effect is quite grandiose and unlike anything seen before in ballet.
The entrance of the Ice Queen herself is the high spot of the ballet. They did not get it right in this performance. She, (probably) Tatiana Kladnichkina, was Odette. Although the production brought her on stage as an ordinary being, dancing quite against Tchaikovsky and the choreographer's needs, she is very beautiful, impossibly long, thin and devoid of any humanity. She is bird-like: fastidious, aloof, watchful.
This act grew in splendour as it proceeded. The queen was deliberately melded into the corps de ballet. She became one more of the wing-flapping, swooping, fluttering swans. The swans have come. They took over the ballet, the story and the theatre.
Drilled to perfection, their too famous routines became new. The white birds took up the entire stage. The Cairo Opera House stage, extremely large, barely held their tall bulk. No muscles showed, no effort, no flesh -- just long fluttering legs like silver stilettos upon whose points the birds balanced. In the big, bouncy waltz the three "Big Swans" (so-called in the programme) became huge flying objects whose movements suggested they had wings.
The long duo between queen and prince lost its romantic impact but produced a new one -- the swans virtually turned the duet into a sort of banquet as the human prince vanished under the pressure of piles of white wings. The very popular dance of the four cygnets became a rapid moving forest of silver birch trees. These yards upon yards of silver white legs had taken over the stage and the story and the act ended.
The last human act, the bronze Act III in which the prince is totally compromised, his mother distracted and the entire court of fools held to ridicule under a bed of dead white roses as the bad Black Queen flashes off with her magician, produced the thrills of the old-fashioned ballet style. The Black Queen, though somewhat fragile, was brilliant. She had the proper, insolent ballerina walk, and her turns and pirouettes were performed like electric razor slashes. She seemed to do more than the routine 32 fouettés, almost sur place, head flashing, body spinning. So we had a new style for old thrills. The brilliant human Black Queen brought down the house. She left the stage like a Chinese fireworks display, and the house burst into flames after her.
Act IV was longer, whiter, and more silent than ever. The icy geometry of Petipa's choreography, and the windmill-like waving of the swans' arms spun out a new ending.
The last climax to this strange vision of the ancient Lac des Cygnes was something like the slow motion ballet in Le Bayadère. The swans drew themselves up into long lines of white, supported by invisible legs, and the old-fashioned drill lines of dancers were turned into a lake, a sea of white heaving feathers. Even the orchestra found the right mood for Tchaikovsky's strange, spiked whispering tune, thanks to the sensitivity of the conductor. The duet with the Ice Queen melted away as the prince collapses and the creatures, the beings of white, weave a stately slow motion funeral cortege around him. The ballet rose to a great height -- release. All were birds at last.
© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved
