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NYCB's Perfunctory "Swan Lake"

“Swan Lake”
New York City Ballet
New York State Theater
January 7, 2006 (matinee)
 
By Susan Reiter
copyright ©2006 by
Susan Reiter 

A renewed acquaintance with Peter Martins’ 1996  “Swan Lake” after a five-year hiatus does not provide any reason to adjust the initial impression this dry, perfunctory, often downright ugly production made when NYCB first performed it in 1999. The garish colors (emerald green, bright orange, royal blue, red) still shock and annoy the eye; even now that I’m prepared for them, the costumes in Act One still leave me wondering, “what was this designer thinking?” The lakeside scenes are acceptable, if unimaginatively staged, and one definitely misses the Big Swans, for their expansive poignancy and as counterparts to the cygnets, who remain as in other standard versions of the ballet. The non-lakeside scenes seem to be more about the emotional ups and downs of the court’s jester than about the emotional journey of Prince Siegfried; Martins’ hyperactive jester is center stage when the curtain first rises and inserts himself into the action at every opportunity. When he’s on the sidelines, he sighs and stretches, flirts with a villager and steals a nap. Most intrusive and senseless is his final appearance, entering the now-empty Act Three ballroom after all have fled, as the mournful strains of Act Four’s introductory music are heard, to sneak onto the throne, just in time for the scenery to be whisked away and reveal the lake.

The Prince is given little opportunity to make any impression in the first act; he enters along with Benno, and from their costumes either (or neither) could be the royal son. He rises from his seat midway through the waltz, gestures a bit towards the ladies, but then lets the jester do the dancing. A danseur with more dramatic presence and sense of character could make some kind of impression here, but Sebastien Marcovici, in his debut, knew where he was supposed to be and what he was supposed to do, but did not come across as particularly noble or royal. He tends to have a wild, unpredictable quality onstage; finesses and elegance are not his strong points. Andrew Veyette, as Benno, has a more princely bearing.

The festivities, such as they are, take place in a land setting that provides no context. Everyone celebrating Siegfried’s birthday is a villager (we know this only from the program; since they are dressed like generic bouncy-happy ballet people), so the contrast between the upper and lower classes is eliminated, as is any sense that we are at court. The Queen seems to come out of nowhere, as do the goblets that everyone suddenly has in hand for the final ensemble dance. The dances Martins has created for eight girls and eight boys are the highlights of this first act; they are charming and the kids’ costumes are the most attractive and harmonious ones on stage. The pas de trois, aside from Veyette’s smooth, classy dancing, pointed up the often-unsatisfactory level of dancing among the NYCB female ensemble. Megan LeCrone displayed choppy phrasing and generally underpowered dancing in the first variation, while Kristin Sloan started out with a more persuasive attack, but could not quite carry that through to the end. The eight “villager” women often looked heavy-footed and out of touch with the music; the men had a crisper attack seemed to know they were dancing to Tchaikovsky.

Jenifer Ringer was making her debut as Odette/Odile, and while she does not have the ideal line for the role, she gave a beautifully modulated performance that featured many fine moments and had a persuasive emotional throughline. It’s a bit late in her career to be making a first stab at this role, but she brought the full power of her lustrous stage presence and  a heartfelt musical sensitivity to the role. When she first appeared, her wrist-flapping during her initial encounter with Siegfried was excessive (this was enhanced by the hectic tempos taken), but when the music slowed down to a reasonable pace for the White Swan pas de deux, she found her way inside the music and wove her own spell of mysterious rapture. There was not much of a dramatic connection between her and Marcovici, but the partnering went smoothly and he handled her quite capably. Ringer’s solo was wonderfully clear and pure; she made it work through her fervent connection with the music, which allowed for effortless, eloquent phrasing.

Martins packs an awful lots of divertissements into his third act; his Russian dance, an exotic/kitschy “something for the tired businessman” duet, is hard to pull off and feels out of place. Amar Ramasar gave it the right sensual plushness without overdoing it, but the elongated Rebecca Krohn was wan and almost seemed to be apologetic about being in it. Alina Dronova and Antonio Carmena were appealing in the Neapolitan (although designer Per Kirkeby’s predilection for garish coloring emerged again in the costumes for them and the dispensable female quartet backing them up), into which Martins inserts a touch of Bournonville’s “Napoli.” The freshest, most invigorating performance of the afternoon came from Tyler Peck, one of the three women who joined Joaquin de Luz in the substantial, at times overly busy, Pas de Quatre that Martins includes. What a pleasure to see such unforced, clear, fully engaged dancing. Her expansive way of cleaving through space and the brilliance of her attack made me regret having missed her recent debut as Dewdrop.

The Black Swan Pas de Deux was certainly not one for the ages, but it did build excitement, and Ringer’s exuberance, and exceptionally musical manege in her solo, conveyed the exhilaration Odile feels at the triumph of her deception. She did not indulge in any excessive “I’m so evil” mannerisms, but knowingly played up the contrast between her two incarnations when she suddenly needed to shift into an Odette imitation to persuade Siegfried fully that she was the same one he had pledged to at the lake. Marcovici’s wildness got the better of him in his solo, which featured an uneven series of tours en l’air.

Martins’ final act begins with some attractive elegiac patterns for the swan ensemble, but turns overly melodramatic with the entrance of Von Rotbart, who is accompanied by four black (“bad”?) swans. A bit later, there are suddenly an even number of black and white swans—is this a battle between good and evil being played out within the swan community? Albert Evans, as Von Rotbart, indulged in over-the-top gestures that brought to mind a bad silent movie. In this version, the power of the Odette-Siegfried love triumphs over Rotbart’s malevolence, but they are not granted the opportunity to be together, not even in some hazy afterlife. Siegfried remains onstage alone, with Odette, destined to remain swan, exiting wither sisterhood, much like the suffering an amazed Albrecht at the end of Giselle.

Photo on front page by Paul Kolnik.

Volume 4, No. 1
January 9, 2006
copyright ©2006 Susan Reiterl
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last updated on January 9, 2006