Swan Lake Studies 9

9. And this last photograph shows Act Four, the final lakeside scene, of the 1971-1976 Royal Ballet production of “Swan Lake”. David Wall (Prince Siegfried) and Alfreda Thorogood (Odette) are seen on the right: this is Lev Ivanov’s beautiful pas de deux with corps and swan-maiden soloists to Tchaikovsky’s “Un poco di Chopin”, never equalled by any other choreographer’s alternative version of this act in my experience, not even Frederick Ashton.

Everything in this scene caught the dramatic poetry of this choreography. There was no rosy-tipped dawn (someone should have reminded the Soviet Russians that at dawn Odette would have become a swan again); there was no cliff for Odette and then Siegfried to hurl themselves to their deaths. The climactic moment came in mime of searing musicality: Odette, for the final time, announced “I - here - will take my life” to the music’s great fate theme, and then run in despair across the stage, departing with a grand jeté, implicitly into the lake; Siegfried, following her with his eyes in anguish, then echoed her gestures (“I - here - take my life”) to the same music before running off the same way with the same final jump. I testify that this mime was more moving than any suicide leap staged in subsequent productions.

Thursday 9 July.