Swan Lake (Bourne)

The company of swans from Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake during the company's 2005 UK tour, featuring danseur Alan Vincent as the lead Swan.

Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake is a piece of ballet-influenced contemporary dance choreographed by Matthew Bourne 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 UK and thrilled audiences in Los Angeles, Europe, Australia 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^{[dubious – discuss]}. 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.

Synopsis

This synopsis is derived from programme notes and the synopsis provided on the DVD.^[2] The plot of the ballet revolves around a young crown prince, his distant mother, and his desire for freedom, represented by a beautiful swan. This scenario is an unofficial interpretation as Matthew Bourne does not believe in scenarios for his productions and prefers the audience to interpret the story for themselves.

Act One

In the prologue, the Prince, as a child, is awakened by a nightmare of a swan. The Prince's mother comes in to comfort him, but becoming nervous by the situation's intimacy, leaves, looking over her shoulder indecisively.

Scene One opens with the Prince being prepared for a day of official duties by a small army of chambermaids and valets.

In Scene Two, arrayed in his full dress uniform, the Prince becomes bored by a boat christening, a ribbon cutting, and other symbolic tasks. His mother prods him to keep up appearances, even as she devotes more attention to the handsome young soldiers than she does to him. During this scene, there is a transition from the child actor playing the young Prince to the identically-dressed adult dancer who portrays the grown Prince. This now-adult Prince is introduced to a gawky girl called "the Girlfriend". Although the girl seems foisted on him by von Rothbart, the Private Secretary,^[3] the Prince enjoys her freshness as an alternative to his duty-bound life. The Queen finds the Girlfriend 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 as for the characters. It is a mawkish, campy send-up of a romantic ballet, in which a fairy princess fights off three 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 her purse from the royal box, annoy the Queen and von Rothbart.

Scene Four finds the disgruntled Prince drinking in his private chambers in front of a mirror, to his mother's shock. A nearly violent pas de deux ensues in which he pleads for her attention and love, while she determinedly rebukes him.

This rebuke sends the Prince into the streets and to the Swank Bar, a 1970s-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 von Rothbart, 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.

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 element of the ballet, due to stylistic and casting 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. 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.

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 La Belle et la Bête. It commences with the arrival of the Queen and the Prince, but quickly degenerates into a debauched party of drinking and lascivious come-ons. Into this arrives the charismatic and sexually aggressive son of von Rothbart,^[4] the Private Secretary, in black leather pants, who intensifies the sexual tension even further by flirting with every woman present, including the Queen.

Just as in the original Swan Lake, where customarily (although not always) one ballerina performs the roles of both the white swan (Odette) and the black (Odile), the same danseur performs the white Swan and the black-clad young von Rothbart in this version. The Prince sees something of his beloved Swan in the son, and he is as much attracted to his bravado and animal magnetism as he is repulsed by his lewdness. During bump and grind group numbers and a sequence of national dances, it becomes clear that the Queen is powerfully attracted to von Rothbart's son. His father, the Private Secretary, looks on with an increasingly triumphant approval. But the Prince, in a pas de deux, also tries to approach young von Rothbart, only to be rebuffed. The Prince retreats into his mind and imagines dancing intimately with him, but the Prince's confusion interrupts the fantasy, and the son's movements turn quickly from loving to violent. The Prince imagines the other guests at the ball laughing and ridiculing him. The Queen and young von Rothbart embrace and begin kissing, signalling her acceptance of him as her lover. Overwhelmed by his conflicted feelings, the Prince produces a pistol and threatens to shoot his mother. In an ensuing scuffle the Girlfriend tries to dissuade the Prince, while the Private Secretary draws a pistol and points it at the Prince. As shots ring out, the Girlfriend and the Prince fall to the ground, but only the Girlfriend has been hit. She lies unconscious on the ground and the Prince is dragged away, while the Queen throws herself into young von Rothbart's arms. He gives the pistol he had taken from the Prince to his father, the two of them laughing.

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 then 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 lead Swan holding the young Prince from Act One in his arms.

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 (formerly chief dance critic of The Times Literary Supplement and chief theatre critic of the Financial Times, now chief dance critic for The New York Times), the Ondine myth is said to be an image of psycho-sexual 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.^[5]

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.^[5] In addition, it is not the mortal who is unfaithful to the nymph. Rather, it is 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.

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."^[1]

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, this ballet is also sometimes viewed as a commentary on the British royal family, which has suffered media scandals in recent decades. 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 Camilla Parker Bowles, now Duchess of Cornwall. 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.

In an interview printed in the DVD booklet, Matthew Bourne concedes this resemblance, but adds that he and his team researched Ludwig II, Edward VII, the Duke of Windsor, and George VI, among others, and supposedly found traits which made them unsuitable as monarchs.^[6]

Despite the possible reference to the current royal family, performers from the ballet were invited to dance excerpts at a Royal Variety Performance, and Bourne has been invited to lunch at Buckingham Palace.

The score

In order to accommodate his revised scenario, Matthew Bourne somewhat altered Tchaikovsky's score, reordering several numbers and omitting others. For example, No. 5 has been moved in its entirety from Act One to Act Three, where it follows the (reordered) national dances. Act Three has been trimmed by leaving out most of No. 19 and all of the following pas de deux.^[7]

Awards

Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake has collected over 30 international awards, including the following:

• 1996 – Best New Dance Production, Laurence Olivier Awards.
• 1996, 1997 – Time Out Dance Award.
• 1997 – Best Choreography, Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Awards.^[8]
• 1999 – Astaire Awards for Excellence in Dance on Broadway.
• 1999 – Tony Award for Best Choreography.
• 1999 – Best Director of a Musical, Best Choreography and Best Costume Design, Tony Awards.

In popular culture

The final scene of the film Billy Elliot (2000) shows the lead character, Billy, played by Adam Cooper, as an adult about to perform in this production as the lead Swan.

See also

• Matthew Bourne's The Car Man
• Undine, an 1811 novella by Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué featuring the Ondine myth.

Notes

1. ^ ^{a b} "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.
2. ^ Bourne, Matthew (dir.) (1996), Swan Lake [DVD], New York, N.Y.: NVC Arts: Warner Music Vision .
3. ^ Named as such in the DVD synopsis, thus identifying him with the sorcerer in the original scenario.
4. ^ Also named in the DVD synopsis.
5. ^ ^{a b} Alastair Macaulay, "Swan Lake: The Matthew Bourne version", from the programme from Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake, above.
6. ^ Swan Lake [DVD] programme notes, above, p. 7.
7. ^ Swan Lake [DVD] programme notes, above.
8. ^ "Awards, 1990–1999". Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle. 2004–2006. http://www.ladramacriticscircle.com/awards_1990_1999.htm. Retrieved 2008-02-17. 

References

• Bourne, Matthew (dir.) (1996), Swan Lake [DVD], New York, N.Y.: NVC Arts: Warner Music Vision .
• 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.

External links

• Official website for Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake.
• Official website of New Adventures, Matthew Bourne's company.
• Official website of the Friends of New Adventures.