Swan Lake Studies 103-114
103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114. What you call tradition is slovenliness (Tradizion ist Schlamperei)”, the great conductor (and composer) Gustav Mahler told the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra as he set to work reforming that great band’s work in the late nineteenth century. The same should be said to every ballet company at regular intervals - and to its devotees. Coming to “Swan Lake” with the Royal Ballet at Covent Garden in the mid-1970s, I assumed that in most central matters, where later choreographers were not cited, I was seeing the dance drama much as Nicholas Sergueyev had staged it for the then Vic-Wells Ballet in 1934. It’s been startling to begin to realise in recent years what changes the Royal had already made to its own “Swan Lake” before the 1970s.
Let’s take the great entrance of the swan-maiden corps, one of the most brilliant images of this ballet classic. As long as I’ve been watching this, this has been supervised by Baron von Rothbart in his owl guise: he stands vigilant on his rock at the back as the swan-maidens trot in, in their single file. As a result, the female corps seems shaded by doom, dancing in thrall to this sorcerer: he controls their lives even now that they are in human form for the night. The unison temps levé (arabesque sauté - photos 103, 104, 105) seems heroic in its strain upward into the air. The crowning gesture occurs when the swans all stand in six vertical rows of four, bringing their arms up! above their heads (photo 91), then parting them as if powerfully beating mighty wings downward (photo 92), cleaving the air. (This gesture used to have a greater power up to 1978. With the 1979 production - my photographs are stills from its 1980 broadcast - the women began dancing with softer elbows, weakening the arm-gesture in a way that at once made me recognise what had been lost.)
The choreographic imagery is brilliant. The women enter in single file in a zigzag formation that resembles that of swans in the sky; later, they realign into a triangular wedge shape. Finally, at Covent Garden, Rothbart (Derek Rencher in photos 106) joins them centre stage: they then run around him (photo 107), as if he were conducting them - reviewing his troops.
Yet Rothbart never used to be present when the swan corps entered; I believe he was added here in 1963 or later. The swan maidens aren’t subjects to his doom at this point in the drama; their dances - though still swan-like in several features - are ones of relief, happily freeing themselves from swan fork for the night.
That heroic opening of both arms like wingbeats was never part of Ivanov’s choreography; Ninette de Valois introduced it in the mid-1950s after she had made a visit to Soviet Russia. (In the old gesture, as shown on Victor Jessen’s composite live 1939-1954 film of the Sadler’s Wells production and in Alexei Ratmansky’s 2016 Zürich reconstruction, the women tilted to the side while bringing a single arm all the way down to the calf: see photos 108, 109.)
And when the swans ran in a circle around one male figure, they used to do so around not Rothbart but Benno, Siegfried’s friend, who, arriving in their midst as hunter armed with crossbow, found himself amazed by their bewildering beauty, in much the same way that James does among the sylphs in “La Sylphide”. The whole drama of the lakeside scene has been successively altered - distorted - by the Royal Ballet during the decades it has been resident at Covent Garden.
Sunday 16 August
103. The entrance of the Royal Ballet swan-maidens (not swans) in 1980. Baron von Rothbart is on his rock behind, wings spread, although that was not the plan of choreographer Lev Ivanov.
104. The line of the corps’s entry becomes a zigzag, both like the line sometimes taken by swans in flight and like the line of Shades entering in Marius Petipa’s “La Bayadère”. The dancers are executing temps levé en arabesque, or arabesque sauté
105. Rothbart continues to spread his wings as he supervises the entrance of the swan-maidens in the Royal Ballet’s “Swan Lake”, in 1980, in designs by Leslie Hurry. It’s dramatic, but Rothbart was not part of this entrance in the 1895 Maryinsky production. The swan-maidens are newly free, for the night, from their swan form as they enter.
106. When I first saw “Swan Lake”, with the Royal Ballet many times in 1975-1978, the swan maidens’ heroic port de bras - beginning here and ending in the next with symmetrical arms powerfully cleaving the air as they beat downwards - became a crucial image for me. Only decades later did I discover that this was no part of Lev Ivanov’s original. The Bolshoi Ballet added it (perhaps the Maryinsky too) during the Soviet era. After Ninette de Valois saw it on a visit to Moscow in the mid-1950s - as the late Valerie Taylor, a corps dancer from 1948 onward. told me in 2009 - she made her Royal dancers do it this way.
107. And here is the completion of the “swan” port de bras. Especially up to 1978, the Royal Ballet executed these wingbeats with tremendous rigour. (I would try to do them when I got home.) When the company returned to “Swan Lake” in 1979 for a new edition of the Leslie Hurray production, the wingbeats were executed with relatively relaxed elbows, as here, in this still of the 1980 live film.
108. Here Rothbart runs onto the stage and around the swan-maidens in their wedge shape. Dramatic as this looks, it was more or less opposite to Lev Ivanov’s intention. The swan-maidens here, even if with some residual swan behaviour, should be finding their freedom from Rothbart rather than their enslavement by him.
109. Here the Royal Ballet swan-maidens dance in two intersecting rings around Baron von Rothbart (Derek Rencher, 1980, Royal Ballet). But until c.1962 , as 1949-1956 films of the Royal Ballet productions show, it was Prince Siegfried’s friend Benno they surrounded, changing the drama considerably: that was Lev Ivanov’s original.
110.Here the corps de ballet of swan-maidens enter in Alexei Ratmansky’s Zürich Ballet production in 2016. The nocturnal quality is evident.
111. The corps of swan maidens in Alexei Ratmansky’s Zürich 2016 production, arriving across the stage, now performs the old sideways port de bras, beginning upright with one arm crossing the touch the opposite wrists (see next).
112. The swan-maidens end their sideways port de bras by bringing one arm down and leaning over in tendu side. Here this is the Zürich Ballet in Alexei Ratmansky’s 2016 production; but this is what the Royal Baller used to do until the mid-1950s. When Ninette de Valois, after one visit to Russia, saw what the Bolshoi were doing here, she came back and made her dancers do the same.
113. Here Benno enters and sees the swan-maidens in their wedge formation. Zürich Ballet, 2016. What an impression his green cloak makes!
114. And here, as Lev Ivanov planned and as the Royal Ballet used to do, the swan-maidens ring Benno (not Rothbart, a very different character).