Astonishingly, it'll soon be twenty years since Matthew Bourne's version of Tchaikovsky's great ballet Swan Lake was first seen in London. It's since become a modern classic, its impact undiminished, if anything enhanced by the passing of the decades.
The production's main talking point has always been Bourne's controversial decision to use male dancers instead of ballerinas for the swans. This lends the Prince's tortured romantic yearnings a strongly homoerotic content, without limiting their ability to be more broadly symbolic of loneliness, isolation and the struggle for personal identity.
Bourne's conception is brilliantly supported by clean, uncluttered stage designs, cleverly morphing from royal bedchamber to a palace balcony, a seedy nightclub, and the lake where the Prince's swan fantasies burgeon and are enacted.
There's little classical ballet in the choreography, which draws heavily on contemporary dance, mime and silent film to create a visual language of stunning narrative clarity, liberally peppered with humour.
The Strictly Come Dancing generation will feed greedily on the shapes and sequences in Bourne's magical creation. Those who enjoyed Hazanavicius's silent film The Artist will savour the clever, economical command of speechless gesture.
At the heart of the evening is the magnetic performance of Jonathan Ollivier, in the duel role of the Swan King who beguiles the Prince, and the leather-clad Stranger.
Bristlingly physical, with an edgy, dangerous sexual attraction, Ollivier galvanises the action on his every appearance. Simon Williams also excels as the conflicted Prince, acting and dancing at high levels of expressive subtlety.
Bourne makes major alterations to the ballet's original scenario in the interests of his own interpretation, but is deeply responsive to the tragic heart of the story, and to Tchaikovsky's magnificent, searing music. An unmissable achievement: if you see only one dance show this year, make it this one.
Terry Blain
Swan Lake, Grand Opera House, 1-5 April
Swan Lake, Grand Opera House
Date: 02/04/2014
Theatre Review
