View from the Green Room: Sell out Swan Lake a triumph
Swan Lake was performed at Theatre Royal by Sofia City Ballet.
I had run out of superlatives long before Act 1 finished to describe this stunning performance. Breathtaking…athletic…colourful…dramatic…professional…classy…superb.
"It’s just wonderful," an audience member said at the interval, "costumes, make-up, sets, story and the dancing…oh the dancing…wow…just wow!"
I’m not surprised. Sofia City Ballet has been doing this since forever and they certainly know their way around this production.
This is as good as it gets in dance and the huge Eastern European section of the audience is well informed about ballet and their enthusiasm and applause for this production says it all. Only three people stood in the audience for the, by now, de rigueur standing ovation and they quickly sat down out of respect for the rows of people behind them. I wish audiences would remember this.
It’s rare to see ballet of such quality in the Royal and it’s great to see the ballet schools in the huge house. The set is vintage stuff that brings me back to the old world of competing operetta societies in the old Waterford Festival of Light Opera with painted backdrops and side tabs to set palace and lakeside scenes. It’s minimalist, scene-setting stuff that travels well and, by and large, facilitates a large corps de ballet.
For Swan Lake to work you need superb dancing and real emotion and this company does it in spades. It’s a simple folk story, really. Bored Prince Siegfried, on the eve of his forced selection of a bride, longs for love and finds it beside a lake from mysterious princess Odette who has been changed into a swan by day and a human by night by the evil owl-like sorcerer Rothbart. The spell can only be broken if one who has never loved before swears to love Odette forever. However, Rothbart’s daughter, Odile, who is transformed to look like Odette, shows up in the most famous black tutu in history and Siegfried falls instantly in love with her believing her to be Odette.
Odette is distraught. The swan-maidens try to comfort her. Siegfried returns to the lake and makes a passionate apology. In romantic theatre, love always suffers through a misunderstanding; well-meaning plans are derailed, but romance and warm hearts always find a way. But not in Swan Lake. Odette forgives him, but his betrayal cannot be undone. Rather than remain a swan forever, our fragile heroine chooses to die. Siegfried chooses to die with her and they leap into the lake. Rothbart's spell over the swan maidens is broken, loses his power over them and dies. Love, art, dance and music triumph over evil and death.
Sofia City Ballet brings great characterisation to the story. Evil sorcerer Rothbart, with those long magician’s fingers and Rasputin features, has a sexual fascination for Odette and his puppet-like control of the swans is creepy. Siegfried and Odette’s dancing is charged with emotion and the death scene is incredibly poignant.
The exquisite oboe solo that heralds the arrival of the fluttering swans and that sudden fanfare of the theme from the French horns is a wonderful moment in the drama of this ballet. Siegfried and Odette’s climactic pas de deux is filled with poignant romance and regret for what might have been when the Princess, who Siegfried rescues from the lake, is tragically dead. An emotional end to a wonderful performance.
Well done to the Theatre Royal for bringing the Sofia City Ballet to Waterford where there is clearly a huge audience for top-class ballet.
