Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake
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Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake is a ballet that was first staged at Sadler's Wells theatre in London in 1995. The longest running ballet in London's West End and on Broadway, it has enjoyed two successful tours in the U.K. and thrilled audiences in Los Angeles, Europe and Japan.[1] The ballet is based loosely on the Russian romantic ballet Swan Lake, from which it takes the music by Tchaikovsky and the broad outline of the plot. Stylistic inspiration also came from the Alfred Hitchcock film The Birds. The ballet is particularly known for having the parts of the swans danced by men rather than women.
The ballet has proved enormously successful, with touring companies playing to sold-out houses around the world, and it has won a string of prestigious awards. The ballet was called "a miracle" in a Time Out New York review. However, Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake has also been rebuked by some who resent changes to the standard Russian classic or who find certain sequences facetious and gratuitous.
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[edit] Synopsis
The plot of the ballet revolves around a young crown prince, his distant mother, and his desire for freedom, represented by a beautiful swan.
[edit] Act One
In Scene One, the Prince is awakened by a nightmare of a swan. The symbolism is comparable to that found in the Batman tale, where a young man is terrified by an animal that will later become an obsession for him. The Prince's mother comes in to comfort him, but becomes nervous with the intimacy of the situation and leaves, looking over her shoulder indecisively.
Scene Two opens with the Prince being prepared for a day of official duties by a small army of chambermaids and valets. Arrayed in his full dress uniform, the Prince sets out to be bored by a boat christening, a ribbon cutting and other symbolic tasks. His mother prods him to keep up appearances while giving most of her attention to handsome young soldiers. The Prince is introduced to a gawkish girl called "the Girlfriend". Although the girl seems foisted on him by the Queen's Private Secretary, the Prince enjoys her freshness as an alternative to his duty-bound life. The Queen finds the Girlfriend completely inappropriate.
In Scene Three, the Queen, one of her admiring soldiers, the Private Secretary, the Prince, and the Girlfriend all appear in a theatre box, where they watch a ballet that is staged for the actual audience as well for as the characters. It is a mawkish, campy send-up of a romantic ballet, in which a fairy princess fights off tree goblins and wins the love of a Tyrolean lumberjack. The ballet's spectacular backdrop (from a design for Castle Falkenstein by Christian Jank), vacuously ornate costumes, and melodramatic acting poke fun at the romantic ballets of which the original Swan Lake was a core example. The Girlfriend's outré responses to the dance, and her eventual dropping of her purse from the royal box, annoy the Queen and the Private Secretary.
Scene Four finds the disgruntled Prince drinking in his private chambers in front of a mirror, to the shock of his mother. A nearly violent pas de deux ensues in which he pleads for her attention and love and she determinedly rebukes him.
This rebuke sends the Prince into the streets and to the Swank Bar, a Seventies Style disco, in Scenes Five and Six. Here is where the choreography most obviously veers from classical ballet, with jazz forms and modern dance dominating. The Prince seeks love from anonymous strangers who reject him. In Scene Seven, he sees the Girlfriend being paid off by the Private Secretary to disappear.
While sitting in the street at the end of Scene Seven the Prince imagines a group of swans flying towards him but the vision quickly disappears. It is the first flash of the Prince's descent into madness.
[edit] Act Two
Disappointed that he will never find affection, the Prince contemplates suicide in Act Two, but is saved by the sight of beautiful swans on the lake of a public park. This Act is the most direct rendering from the original plot of Swan Lake, but it contains the most talked-about dancing of the ballet due to stylistic changes. Male dancers portray the swans as aggressive and arrogant animals rather than the delicate, sentimentalized swans traditionally portrayed by ballerinas. The traditional white tutus and tiaras are also discarded, to be replaced with bare chests, feathered knee-length trousers, and bold, black facial markings. The animal-like authenticity of the swans can be compared to the celebrated catlike movement by the corps of the pop opera Cats. Initially rejected by the lead Swan, the Prince is eventually taken into his loving embrace. This is what the Prince has always desired, and the Act ends in triumphant happiness. The swans then fly away. It is not entirely clear whether the Prince has in fact interacted with the swans, or if they are figments of his imagination.
[edit] Act Three
Scene One begins with princesses from various European nations and their escorts arriving at the palace gates for a grand ball. The Girlfriend sneaks in amongst them.
Scene Two takes place in a proto-fascist ballroom where gigantic torchieres gripped by fists recall those of Jean Cocteau's Belle et le Bête. It commences with the arrival of the Queen and the Prince, but quickly degrades into a debauched party of drinking and lascivious come-ons. Into this arrives a charismatic and sexually-aggressive Stranger in black leather pants, who degrades the scene even further by flirting with every woman present, including the Queen.
Just as one ballerina performs the white Odette and the black Odile in the original Swan Lake, the same danseur performs the white Swan and the black Stranger in this version. The Prince sees something of his beloved Swan in the Stranger and he is as attracted to the Stranger's bravado and animal magnetism as he is repulsed by the Stranger's lewdness. During bump and grind group numbers, fight scenes, and an incronguously festive Spanish dance climax in a pas de deux, the Prince tries to approach the Stranger, only to be rebuffed. The Prince retreats into his mind and imagines he is dancing with the Stranger, however the Prince's confusion impact the fantasy, as the Stranger's movements turn quickly from loving to violent. The Prince also imagines the guests at the ball laughing and ridiculing him. Gradually driven mad by his mixed feelings for the Stranger, the Prince produces a pistol to shoot his mother while she kisses with the Stranger. In an ensuing scuffle the Girlfriend tries to dissuade the Prince, while the Private Secretary draws a pistol and points it at the Prince. A shot rings out, the Girlfriend and the Prince fall to the ground, but it turns out that it is only the Girlfriend who has been wounded. She lies unconscious on the ground and the Prince is dragged away, while the Queen throws herself into the Stranger's arms. The Stranger gives the pistol he had taken from the Prince to the Private Secretary, the both of them laughing.
[edit] Act Four
In the final act of Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake the Prince, regarded as having lost his mind, is confined to an asylum in a room with a high barred window, and is treated by a doctor and a team of nurses wearing masks that resemble the Queen's face, in a scene reminiscent of his dressing at the beginning of the ballet. Again, the Queen is unable to fully express love for her son.
The Prince crawls into bed and appears to sleep. However, he begins writhing as he dreams of the troupe of swans emerging from under and behind, dancing menacingly around him. He wakes from his nightmare, checking under his bed and around his room for swans. His tortured expression and jerky movements convey the Prince struggling to deal with reality and fantasy. His lead Swan then slowly emerges from within the Prince's bed. It is unclear whether this is happening in reality or is merely another of the Prince's visions. The Swan lovingly dances with the Prince, before the rest of the swans enter and turn on the lead Swan when he makes it clear that he values his relationship with the Prince more than he values membership amongst them. They separate the two and begin attacking the Prince before the Swan leaps in to save him. The swans descend again and begin attacking the Swan. The Prince, despite his efforts, is too weak to save his love. Heartbroken, the Prince cries and collapses onto the bed. The Queen finds her dead son's body and breaks down in sobs. However, it is in death that the Prince and the Swan can be together; a tableau above showing the Prince holding onto the Swan, as the Swan slowly wraps his 'wings' around the Prince.
[edit] Imagery and innovation
The original Swan Lake was based on the story of Ondine, a German myth with a theme common in Romanticism that was adapted by Hans Christian Andersen for his story The Little Mermaid. Ondine was a beautiful and immortal water nymph. The only threat to her eternal happiness was if she fell in love with a mortal and bore his child, as she would then lose her immortality. Ondine duly fell in love with a dashing knight, Sir Lawrence, and they were married, the knight pledging unfailing love and faithfulness to her with his every waking breath. A year after their wedding Ondine bore Lawrence a son. From that moment she began to age. As Ondine’s beauty faded, Lawrence lost interest in her.
One afternoon Ondine was walking near some stables when she heard the familiar snoring of her husband. When she entered the stable, she saw Sir Lawrence lying in the arms of another woman. Kicking her husband awake, she cursed him such that he would have breath so long as he remained awake, but if he ever fell asleep his breath would be taken from him and he would die.
According to Alastair Macaulay, chief dance critic of The Times Literary Supplement and chief theatre critic of The Financial Times, the Ondine myth is said to be an image of psychosexual distress: the nymph is a forlorn image of repressed virginity, anxious that she will never achieve womanly fulfillment, while her feminine nemesis that leads her husband astray represents the confident seductive power that threatens her hopes. The story is double-edged – the human protagonist, in loving the nymph, transgresses against his own kind and may be punished. If, having betrayed her once, he returns to her, her kiss will bring him death; in fact, it may be this love-in-death that the man desires most.[2]
Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake radically reinterprets the myth. The focus of the ballet is turned away from the Ondine character to the man – the Prince. It is the Prince who struggles against repression and hopes for liberty, and who needs love to make him safe.[3] In addition, it is not the mortal who is unfaithful to the nymph. Rather, it is the the Swan who (in Act Two) expresses love for the Prince, betrays him in the form of the Stranger (Act Three), and finally returns to him (Act Four). However, as in the Ondine myth, the sin of betrayal cannot be expiated except in death.
[edit] Politics
Much has been made of Matthew Bourne's decision to cast men as the swans. The original ballet is a standard in the European tradition of romanticized female–male love. The heroine, the swan princess Odette, is portrayed as powerless but lovely in accordance with conventional gender roles, and her hero is portrayed as a hunter who alone has the power to save her. Having a man in the role of lead Swan puts love between men at center stage, and the naturalistic choreography given to the swan corps discredits the archetype of the swan as a pretty, feminine bird of gentle grace. According to Bourne, "The idea of a male swan makes complete sense to me. The strength, the beauty, the enormous wingspan of these creatures suggests to the musculature of a male dancer more readily than a ballerina in her white tutu."[4]
However, central themes carry through both works. Both are about doomed, forbidden love, and both feature a Prince who wishes to transcend the boundaries of everyday convention through that love. Both themes have strong ties to the actual life of Tchaikovsky, the ballet's composer.
Because it was produced in the United Kingdom, where the royal family has suffered media scandals in recent decades, this ballet is also sometimes viewed as a commentary on them. The thwarted Prince is generically royal in tone, but he has been likened by some to Charles, Prince of Wales, who suffered an arranged marriage before being allowed to marry his true love, and Prince Edward, Earl of Wessex, who is widely believed to be primarily attracted to men, despite repeated denials. The Prince and Queen characters in the ballet are certainly royalty in the pampered and remote mould sometimes portrayed by republicans, rather than the mould of dedicated civil servants portrayed by royalists.
Despite this, performers from the ballet were invited to dance excerpts at a Royal Variety Performance, and the director, Matthew Bourne, has been invited to lunch at Buckingham Palace.
[edit] Awards
Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake has collected over 30 international awards, including the following:
- Astaire Awards for Excellence in Dance on Broadway in 1999.
- Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Awards.
- Olivier Award for Best New Dance Production in 1996.
- Time Out Dance Award in 1996 and 1997.
- Tony Award for Best Choreography in 1999.
- Tony Award for Best Costume Design in 1999.
- Tony Award for Best Director of a Musical in 1999.
[edit] Trivia
- The final scene of the film Billy Elliot (2000) shows the lead character Billy (played by Adam Cooper) about to perform in this production as the lead Swan.
[edit] Notes
- ^ "The History of Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake", from the programme from Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake at Sadler's Wells, London, 13 December 2006 – 21 January 2007.
- ^ Alastair Macaulay, "Swan Lake: The Matthew Bourne Version", from the programme from Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake, id.
- ^ Ibid.
- ^ "The History of Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake", op. cit.
[edit] References
- Lavender Magazine (3–16 February 2006).
- Playbill from Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake at the State Theatre, Minneapolis, Minnesota.
- Programme from Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake at Sadler's Wells, London, 13 December 2006 – 21 January 2007.
[edit] See also
- The Happy Prince by Oscar Wilde.
- Ludwig II of Bavaria, sometimes known as the 'Swan King'.
- Undine, an 1811 novella by Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué featuring the Ondine myth.
