BRAND-NEW productions of “Swan Lake” do not grow on trees. Until this past weekend, the American Ballet Theater, in its 60-year existence, had only had two full-evening productions.
So the trumpets were in attendance at the Metropolitan Opera House when Kevin McKenzie’s new and lavish third look at the ballet made its premiere bow with three different casts.
Looking as costly as it doubtless was – costumes and scenery alone costed out at $1.5 million – this sumptuous new “Swan Lake” proves an attractive blend of the borrowed and the rethought, the traditional and the original.
This most popular of Tchaikovsky ballets, telling of love and illusion, not to mention the hard-learned moral lesson of not judging every swan by the color of its plumage, exists in many versions, but most, like McKenzie’s, derives from the definitive St. Petersburg staging by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov in 1895.
ABT’s first full-evening production in 1967 was staged by David Blair from Britain’s Royal Ballet and was closely based on that 1895 original.
McKenzie, who was often its Prince Siegfried, has retained much of this, including the celebrated Lakeside Act, where Siegfried first encounters the Swan Queen Odette, a princess transmogrified into a swan by a wicked magician, Von Rothbart.
The innovations give the Prince more of a role, while trying to make the story of this mysterious swanlike Odette and her wicked lookalike temptress Odile a little more comprehensible.
Thus he gives a brief scene during the overture showing Odette as a young girl being abducted by the magician, and changed into a swan!
And that magician, Von Rothbart, is now played by two dancers – the first a wily and half-naked spirit of the lake, the other a nattily dressed courtier.
The new, yet over-busy choreography is serviceable rather than inspired, but the deliberately old-fashioned designs by Zack Brown are a marked improvement on their predecessors.
Best of all, the dancing is superb. As artistic director, McKenzie clearly wanted to pull out all stops to show off his company – and he has.
The first three Odette/Odiles, Susan Jaffe, Ashley Tuttle and Nina Ananiashvili (the only Odile incidentally to successfully negotiate the traditional 32 fouettes) all had their various virtues.
However the flashing Ananiashvili on Saturday night proved the best of the three, just as her partner, Julio Bocca, had the edge over the two alternative Prince Siegfrieds, Jose Manuel Carreno and Angel Corella.
The company, including the smoothly rippling corps de ballet, was at peak form, with Vladimir Malakhov’s compelling Von Rothbart and young Herman Cornejo extraordinarily stylish virtuoso dancing both standing out at Friday’s first night.
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SWAN LAKE
American Ballet Theater, Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center. (212) 362-6000. Season runs through July 1.
