Writing in the Dark, Dancing in the New Yorker by Arlene Croce

Author:Arlene Croce
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 2011-06-21T00:00:00+00:00

The Kirov Abroad, Stravinsky at Home

Palais des Congrès, Paris; May 28, 29, and 30: To anyone who has seen American Ballet Theatre’s Swan Lake recently, the Kirov production is not eccentric. Except in the overture, which begins in a long-drawn-out moan of anguish, the tempos are not slower; they’re only as slow, and often they’re faster. The action is tautly paced; the peak is reached in the last act. Oleg Vinogradov has supervised a freshened version of the Konstantin Sergeyev production that has served the company since the fifties. Igor Ivanov has dressed it well: the swans as they cross the lake are reflected in deep-blue water; the throne room has stone Gothic arches and tapestries; everywhere, there is light and space. I would like to see the Sleeping Beauty that this designer could do. The costumes, by G. Solovieva, are unaffectedly beautiful, with faint references to early German Renaissance painting. (ABT’s late-German Holbein-and-Bruegel look is too plummy.) The show opens badly, with a dozen courtiers doing sautés to the pantomime march, but this is not to be a series of scenes dansantes, like the Bolshoi production. Indeed, one of the most attractive aspects of this Swan Lake is its traditionalism; it even eliminates the Prince’s variation with the crossbow, which years ago the Kirov introduced. The intrusive jester is still there, performing his misshapen grande pirouette after the hazing of the tutor. Of course, there is no Benno, no speech by the Princess Mother about choosing a wife, and no organized hunt. The two ensembles in the first act are both performed by nobles (no peasants) in a sprightly, small-stepping style that suggests sixteenth-century court dance. In the pas de trois, the man’s solo opens with three sissonnes battues facing the downstage corner; Evgeny Neff, who danced in all three performances, had to adjust his tombé landing each time. The steps done at ABT, no less awkward, are in fact the opening steps of the Third Shade’s variation at the Kirov. Wires are constantly crossing in Petipa revivals. The attitude balance that the Kirov’s Odette takes standing on the Prince’s thigh at the end of the coda is a vestige of the Benno version of the pas de deux; the customary high lift has been transferred by the Kirov to the end of the Black Swan pas de deux.

Swan Lake has come down to us a patchwork, and a patchwork it will probably always be. The Kirov version is the smoothest that one can see; the power of it keeps rising all evening long. The national dances are not a boring interlude before the pas de deux; taken at a tearing pace, they are performed with devotion and even pleasure. These dances have long been a point of pride with the Kirov, as has the work of the corps in the swan scenes. Kirov swans are more elegant than Bolshoi swans; no other swan corps I know is comparable. The Russian companies possess a collective style for Swan Lake which has existed as long as the ballet has.

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