DANCE TO THE LETTER
Recently landed: Dance to the Letter
Gracia’s written response to The Australian Ballet’s Swan Lake, especially for Fjord Review.
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Looking to the alphabet, many letters have been used to describe a swan, from the S of their long necks to the letters V and J to describe the overhead appearance of the flock echelons of them in flight. But on the opening night of The Australian Ballet’s Swan Lake, originally produced by Anne Woolliams after Petipa, and reimagined in 2023 by David Hallberg, with additional choreography by Lucas Jervies, the letter S could stand for shimmering, sublime, sincere; the V for the dancers’ virtuosity; and the J for a jewel that befits the company’s 60th anniversary.
In 1962, it was Swan Lake that Dame Peggy van Praagh chose to launch The Australian Ballet’s first season. In 2002, The Australian Ballet premiered Graeme Murphy’s Swan Lake, and in 2012, for their 50th anniversary, Stephen Baynes’s Swan Lake brought things full circle, or so it seemed. For a ring is round, it keeps revolving, and so does a timeless tale of eternal love; beauty ever draws us back to the lake.
This Swan Lake, with sets by Daniel Ostling, heightens the longed-for contrast between states of place and being, with the forest always visible, magnetic, be it from inside the palace ballroom or the surrounding garden. The deciduous trees are reminiscent of a John Nash landscape and the subsequent mood they evoke (think: The Lake, Little Horkesley Hall and Interior of a Wood, Whiteleaf). Had Joseph Caley’s Siegfried brought with him a pair of binoculars instead of a crossbow, who knows how things might have unfolded for him. But then, as the mournful oboe of the overture foreshadowed, tragedy lies ahead, and I am transfixed.
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28th of September, 2023
The Australian Ballet’s Benedicte Bemet and Joseph Caley with artists of The Australian Ballet in Swan Lake (image credit: Kate Longley)
