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Fully fledged modern classic
Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake Birmingham Hippodrome ***** THE controversy over Matthew Bourne’s
Swan Lake is long gone with l’enfant terrible now well established as a
modern classic. It might still make the traditional ballet
purists shudder and there is still a popular misconception that this is
an all male Swan Lake, which, unless Bourne’s New Adventures company
employs some particularly gifted make up artists, is patently untrue.
but the fact it is still talked about 19 years after its debut is
testament to its stature in the world of dance. The piece is a rewriting of the Tchaikovsky
ballet, using his score, although some sections are missed, others
repeated and others reordered to fit in with Bourne’s retelling. His version involves paparazzi, night clubs,
dances dripping with sex and promise and, the reason for all that
original fuss, all male swans turning the idea of a pure white clad,
dainty, elegant and rather beautiful corps de ballet on its head. Bourne saw swans as distinctly uncuddly,
aggressive and rather unfriendly creatures so enter an all male corps of
bare torsoed sinister lamentation of swans who throw down the gauntlet
as soon as they appear. The traditional Swan Lake Odette is transformed
into a beautiful, fluttering swan with the eternal love of Prince
Siegfried her chance of freedom. In Bourne’s version it is the Prince,
danced majestically
And rather than the beautiful Odette transformed
to a swan he becomes infatuated with Bourne’s bad boy of a bird danced
with magnificent macho aggression by Chris Trenfield. Trenfield incidentally is no stranger to the
Hippodrome and was in recent panto Dick Whittington and also the touring
production of Les Misérables The prince and the swan on their way to a fateful finale The ballet has evolved over the years keeping it
fresh and contemporary although the basic story remains the same with
our Prince craving love and attention from his mother the Queen, a bit
of a cougar in the modern parlance, danced beautifully by Carrie
Johnson, who seems somewhat more interested in the guards, servants and
assorted young men she comes across than her son. Then there is his flighty girlfriend danced with
a sort of calculated innocence by Carrie Johnson who does not quite
measure up to a potential princess in the eyes of either the Queen or
her private secretary, danced by Paul Smethhurst, a fact made most clear
when the Royal party head off to the ballet. This is a clever scene with an unflattering
parody of the sort of romantic ballets popular in the 18th
and 19th centuries of which the traditional Swan Lake was at
the pinnacle. This is performed for both the audience and the
Royal box where the girlfriend is out of her depth if only she knew it
culminating in a Nokia moment as her mobile phone goes off mid-dance and
ends by dropping her purse on to the stage. Interesting to see how many people I the audience
instinctively grabbed for their pockets as the distinctive ringtone
sounded forth. The mood changes completely when the Prince heads
to seedy disco bar Swanks where the dances become more Cabaret than
ballet, jazz influenced modern dance with ladies whose dress, and
dancing, might suggest they are of the night, as one might say. Having
been thrown out for fighting he sees the secretary buying the girlfriend
off.
He tries it on with every woman in the place,
including the Queen, as the royal ball descends into night of drunken
debauchery culminating in violence as the Prince attempts to shoot his
mother and in the struggle his girlfriend is shot. The ballet opens with the prince in bed and
closes the same way. After treatment in an asylum he is led to bed and a
nightmare of swans attacking both him and his version of Odette in what
becomes a fight to the death. As always the dancing from leads to ensemble is
superb with a blend of ballet and contemporary all set off by Lez
Brotherston’s breathtaking, larger than life sets taking full advantage
of the Hippodrome's huge stage. Praise too for Rick Fisher who lit the
production exquisitely. You only notice lighting in a production when it
is either exceptionally bad or exceptionally good and this was the
latter, including some very clever creation of shadows on the back wall. The whole thing is visually stunning,
contemporary, vibrant and alive with a strong narrative, superb dancing
and swans that are, frankly, a little disturbing. It also has touches of
humour to lighten even the darkest moments; all in all a tribute to
Bourne’s remarkable imagination. Since 1995, give or take a couple of months,
there has been a production playing somewhere in the world. Just now it
is here so if you have never seen it now is your chance. Roger Clarke Audiences attending on 13 February will be treated to an extra special performance prior to curtain up of Swan Lake. Over the past few months, students from Stratford-upon-Avon College, Walsall College and Birmingham Ormiston Academy have been working closely with Dominic North, one of Matthew Bourne’s principal dancers, and Clare Palethorpe, a freelance dance practitioner, on creating a curtain-raiser. The five minute performance piece inspired by Swan Lake will see 19 young men perform on the Birmingham Hippodrome main stage to nearly 1,800 people.
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by
Coventry born and former Birmingham Royal Ballet dancer Andrew Monaghan,
who is seeking his freedom from an oppressive and somewhat dysfunctional
family.
carpets
had that stickiness of down market nightclubs, contrasts with the later
palace dance in a ballroom that would not have looked out of place in
the Third Reich and there is a certain decadence about the dancing
culmination in the arrival of a black clad lothario – Bourne’s Odile,
the black swan clad in leather trousered human form.