State Ballet of Georgia Swan Lake returns to the Coliseum in a spruced up but sadly emotion-free version
This article was first published on London Unattached
Here’s the good news: true love comprehensively defeated evil, the sorcerer Von Rothbart is dead, and Prince Siegfried and his beloved Princess Odette, freed from her cursed life as a swan, are poised to live happily ever after. And there’s more good news in the current iteration of State Ballet of Georgia’s Swan Lake: the corps de ballet is in fine fettle making Acts II and IV, the famed white acts responsible for so much of the ballet’s universal appeal the magic of soft synchronised dancing they should be.
State Ballet of Georgia (that’s the former Soviet republic, not the eponymous North American state) first brought its Swan Lake to London two years ago. Now it returns to the Coliseum with a spruced up version, based on the 19th century Russian original by Petipa and Ivanov, but modified and adapted by the company’s artistic director, Nina Ananiashvili, herself a former superstar ballerina with the Bolshoi, and her then stage partner Alexey Fadeechev.
They kept, of course, Tchaikovsky’s perhaps best loved score, played live with brio by the Royal Ballet Sinfonia under the baton of Georgian conductor Levin Jagaev, but they used the normally purely orchestral prologue to show the transformation scene, where a group of innocent maidens in white shifts dancing in the forest are lured to Baron Von Rothbart’s domain and transformed into swans.
Sets and costumes have been refashioned, too, respectively by David Monavardisashvili and Cyril Gassiline, the forest scenes framed by dense foliage under a baleful moon, and the palace ballroom a detailed throwback to the Middle Ages, with elaborate ogival arches and windows, and paintings displayed in niches. The costumes use rich fabrics in subdued colours, the court women wearing big conical headgear, and the swans’ white tutus adorned with silver glitter. The men, though, come off badly, with their Act I headgear inexplicably reminiscent of shower caps, and some truly awful wigs in the divertissements of the Ball Scene.
Split into two halves with one interval, this Swan Lake moves at a crisp pace. The celebrations of Prince Siegfried’s birthday, orchestrated by his friend Benno, a lively Masaaki Goto, head swiftly into the lakeside scene once the Queen gifts Siegfried a crossbow. This, combined with the excision of most of the mime scenes, creates problems with characterisation. Principal Oleg Ligai is a tall, elegant dancer, but his Siegfried remains a cypher from beginning to end; as indeed does fellow principal Nino Samadashvili Odette/Odile, whose facial expression appears fixed and unchanging, whether she is the sad Swan Princess at the lakeside or her evil double, Odile, the seductress who fools the prince into betraying Odette.
Add to that a complete lack of chemistry between the two leads, and a couple of technical hiccups on opening night, and the emotional focus of the love story, which should pull at your heartstrings, is completely lost.
It was up to Marcelo Soares to bring a measure of fizz and intention to the proceedings with his Von Rothbart, in this version very much a dancing role, which the company’s Brazilian principal clearly enjoyed presenting as a traditional baddie, with his scary face paint, flying jumps and outsized feathered wings.
And so we’re back with the swans, a corps of 24 that unusually included three black swans, drilled to perfection, with the four cygnets impressively performing their demanding dance as one.
They were better served by the choreography in Act II (here presented as Act I Scene 2) than in Act IV (here Act II Scene IV), where the corps of swans should be overcome by palpable grief at the Odette’s betrayal, which, of course, dooms them, too, to a life as Swans, but no grief or any kind of emotion comes across.
In short, State Ballet of Georgia’s Swan Lake is a workmanlike, touring production, by not means a wasted evening at the theatre, but not a memorable one either.
© Teresa Guerreiro
(Banner image: Artists of State Ballet of Georgia in Swan Lake. Photo: Katja Ogrin)
State Ballet of Georgia Swan Lake is at the London Coliseum 17 – 26 July at 7.30 pm. Thur, Sat & Sun mats at 2.30 pm. No performance on Mon. Dur.: 2 hours 10 mins inc one interval. Casts vary, check with website