Swan Lake Studies 45-47
45, 46, 47. There’s never been enough discussion of the child subsection of the corps de ballet of swan maidens in “Swan Lake”. Many people think there are no children amid the swan-maidens, and that ther have never been any. For many London ballet-goers, they came as a strange revelation with Anthony Dowell’s 1987 production of “Swan Lake” - Laura Morera last week recalled that, at age twelve, she was one of them, in her first appearance onstage at the Royal Opera House, Covent - but they had also been part of Lev Ivanov’s 1895 choreography, a part that has been changed and revised.
The first question is: what happened with those children in the 1895 production? Dowell’s production (as successive videos show) varied its use of them over the thirty years (1987-2017) it held the Covent Garden stage - and omitted them on foreign tours. Alexei Ratmansky’s 2016 production included them - but, though perhaps based more closely on 1895 sources, it made different and largely less remarkable use of them.
The second question is: what are swan-maiden children doing in a ballet that already contains cygnets danced by adults? The third question is: what special relation do these children have to Odette?
Photographs 1 and 2, by Johan Persson, show the first appearance of these eight children as seen in Dowell’s production: when the huntsmen threaten to shoot the swan-maiden corps, these are the last members of the flock to enter; and instead of standing as the front row with the others, they folded themselves, like suppliants, in a ring at Odette’s feet. (Odette in these photographs is Zenaida Yanowsky.) The implication is that they’re begging Odette to intercede for them and for the whole flock: which she does, stepping forward to Siegfried and miming her request that his men don’t shoot. Only then does he give the command for his men to stay their hands; and that’s why (see 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26) the huntsmen begin to partner those swan-maidens. The ring around Odette was a striking image, consonant with the five asymmetrical corps rings seen in the ballet’s final lakeside scene. Asking Odette to step outside it, however, was logistically complex, so that the image was variously modified over the years.
In Ratmansky’s production, however, there’s no such ring. See photograph 3. Eight swan-maidens run in with Odette, but they take their places standing at the front of the corps, as in most productions. Perhaps nobody has researched Ivanov’s choreography more thoroughly than Ratmansky. I confess, though, that I miss that ring of supremely vulnerable child suppliants at Odette’s feet. It added further layers to the swan corps, and further layers of meaning to the drama. (Further swan-children posts to follow.)
Thursday 30 July.
