San Francisco Ballet
Program III
“Swan Lake”
War Memorial House
San Francisco, CA
February 21, 2009
by Rita Felciano
copyright © Rita Felciano 2009
In Helgi Tomasson’s new “Swan Lake” von Rothbart (an irresistible Damian Smith) seems inspired by contemporary Goths as well as Dracula. The Queen Mother (a pinched Anita Paciotti) exhales ancien régime and looks like a mix of Marie Antoinette and the stepmother in Disney’s Snow White. Given those force lines, the fact that this “Swan Lake” did not become a comic book version testifies to Tomasson’s taste and willingness—and perhaps timidity-- to push at the edges of tradition without leaping beyond them. What he and first-time ballet designer Jonathan Fensom have come with is a stark anti-romantic take that blurs the line between black and white, good and evil. This new “Swan Lake” is too fragmented and conceptually compromised to convince completely, but it is grounded in the basic conundrum that underlies all “Swan Lakes”. Odette/Odile—why can’t Siegfried tell the difference?
This is an oppressive world beyond the control of any of its inhabitants. It even affects an innocent birthday party. Fensom’s three monumental sets, each of them embodied as a single piece of architecture, suggest confinement and restriction. The opening act takes place outside a huge wall with a gigantic locked portal beyond which you glance a neo-classical palace. The other two acts have a slightly sci-fi, even less inviting quality about them. A shiny terraced mountain of perhaps of lava, perhaps a meteorite dominates act two. It could even be on another planet but it does feel like death, evil, atrophy. In the ballroom scene a gigantic hourglass shaped staircase descends into a barren, cold hall. The stairs appear to come from something huge above. A spaceship? The weight of history? Are we in a courtroom? A basement? Also omni-present hangs an enormous full moon that, in more modest form appears in the Prologue when we see the swan princess fly off. In the finale the lovers almost touch this moon before leaping off the cliff. Throughout, this suspended globe feels like an ominously controlling eye.
Tomasson has said that he wanted to refocus the ballet more on the Odette/Odile character. That’s why he used the overture to show how von Rothbart lured the young princess into his power and turned her into a swan. This has been done before. Here it becomes a classic mother’s warning of not talking to strangers. Von Rothbart’s candy is a sexy, sinewy seductiveness. Sven Ortel’s video wizardry turns Odette into a swan the flies away —an image that returns at the end. It really looked pretty hokey. Some story telling is best left to the imagination.
But this high tech transformation did not shift the emphasis from Siegfried to the Swan Queen. It remains Siegfried’s ballet perhaps in part because Tiit Helimets gave such a commanding interpretation. This Siegfried no longer fits into the castle, but is equally out of place beyond it. He is not really a seeker or a rebel but a loner whose skin fits him about as badly as those bunching-up tights in the first act. He drifts through the party and has to be reminded to thank the dancers who perform for him. He bumbles into the lakeside scene and doesn’t really know where to put that crossbow. But to see his transformation, his maturing through love and suffering, is to watch growing nobility. Helimets is handsome and has good technique but he is not a spectacular performer. But that reserve and reticence stood him in wonderful stead in this “Swan Lake.” He partnered Yuan Yuan Tan in both roles with trembling intensity, almost afraid of touching her, with searching glances into which reality dripped drop by drop.
The prince’s birthday party takes place outside the castle grounds, with the Portal firmly locked until the Queen swishes out to make her commands known and Wolfgang, pushed by Siegfried, sneaks back in. Were it not for those spiked ramparts, the mix of aristocrats, townspeople, peasants, old couples and rambunctious kids who all easily intermingle would suggest Bournonvillian bonhomie and egalitarianism. The pas de trois with sprightly hops for Frances Chung, soaring leaps and tight turns for Taras Domitro and languid développés and ronds de jambes for Rachel Visselli, was a pristine little jewel of intricate, classical dancing. Full of soaring lifts and elegant turns was the dance for five refined couples with the women in empire-style dresses. (The Queen Mother’s heavy brocades and feathers clearly harked back to a an earlier time) Tomasson’s robust peasant dance gave the opening Polonaise a slightly satiric edge as if the ordinary folks were gently mocking their “betters’” pretense and refinement.
In the second act, a costuming detail reconfigured our concepts about the swans. Though tiny, to these eyes it looked revolutionary. Instead of the traditional feather headdress that frames their faces, these swans sported pixie haircuts—think Zizzi Jeanmaire or Liza Minelli. They were white on top, black at the edges and appeared disconcertingly helmet-like. In fact, they didn’t look all that different from the black tongues that licked at Von Rothbart’s face. At the very least, the headdresses made it possible to speculate that these innocent swan maidens, their Queen included, were touched, and in some way transformed by the evil to which they have been subjected.
One of the intricacies of watching “Swan Lake” has always been in recognizing Odette inside Odile. In Tomasson’s version the process now seems to allow for that other dimension, finding Odile in Odette. It enriches our understanding of Odette’s reluctance, her fearfulness and her tender surrender to the hope that love may redeem. Perhaps Siegfried is not the only one who is humanly flawed. There have been other swans who were not lily white, of course, but Tomasson’s version is more subtle and also more insidious.
Lola Avila is credited in the program as Assistant to Tomasson in this production. Her contribution in turning Ivanov’s architecture into a breathing corpus of dancers cannot be overstated. There was such life in the way these young women responded both individually and collectively to the lovers: eyes averted, demure but watchful with arms that protected and set limits. At the end,“wings” spread out, their backs to us, they had turned into a wall of mourning, a wistful memory. With Martin West at the baton, the musicians in the pit—another “corps”—supported them magnificently. Well trained, the cygnets (Clara Blanco, Bryn Gilbert, Margaret Karl, Patricia Perez), pesky as they are, did what they are supposed to. Swan maidens Elana Altman and Lily Rogers, however, were ill matched.
With Helimets Tan finally seems to have found a partner equal—though more subdued—to Yuri Possokhov. She was magnificent with those tendril-like, yet ever so controlled arms, and the ability to abandon herself into cambré and rise up again to great height. At one point, she almost curled up into Helimet’s arms as if making a safe place for herself. As she has matured, Tan’s dancing has developed a new sense of lightness, a freedom to give herself to the music and the part. As Odile she played with Helimets like a cat—her fingers like claws—does with a mouse. And she was having fun doing it.
With few courtiers in sight, the third act at the bottom of this enormous staircase felt cold and barren. Nothing in that atmosphere suggested a potential wedding. In the divertissements, Elizabeth Miner (in a dark wig) and James Sofranko excelled in the spiffy Neapolitan dance. Miner, with a sparkling personality and feet to match, has become a charming soubrette. It would be good to see her and Chung—who danced one of the princesses in the Russian variation—once in a while cast against type. That’s how dancers grow. Choreographically, the Russian version, which also included Dana Genshaft, Garen Scribner and Hansuke Yamamoto, looked good. Well danced, it showcased some fresh energetic partnering moves that went well with the score.
Whether this conceptually intriguing but not all that consistently realized “Swan Lake” will have a long life remains to be seen. It certainly was excellently performed. Tomasson has high hopes that it will draw in younger audiences. Just why he thinks this will do the trick is just another of the many questions the production raised.
Top: Yuan Yuan Tand and Tiit Helimets in Helgi Tomasson’s “Swan Lake”
Bottom: San Francisco Ballet in Tomasson’s “Swan Lake”
Photos by Erik Tomasson
