DANGEROUS LIAISON

(The Tablet 18 December 2004)

If asked to name one ballet, most people, even if they know little of the art, would probably answer Swan Lake. With its symmetric lines of ballerinas in tutus and its theme of impossible love and tragic resolution, it is the quintessence of nineteenth century romantic dance. For traditionalists it is an inviolate text, not to be tampered with. But ten years ago, Matthew Bourne gave the ballet a gender twist and his corps of male swans took the West End by storm. Now back in a revival (Sadler’s Wells to 16 January and then on tour in Japan), Bourne’s Swan Lake is as fresh now as it was at its premiere.

In his version, sometimes called 'the gay Swan Lake', Bourne faces head-on perceptions of the sexual ambiguity of the male dancer, offering a glamorous male swan as hero. He places the action in today’s Britain. Several of his characters recall members of the Royal Family (there is even a snapping corgi), and his story, which is told with verve, has both satiric edge and political message.

In the original ballet, a prince, under pressure from his mother to marry before he becomes king, happens on a flock of swans, while hunting. Their leader reveals herself as a princess cast under a spell by a wicked sorcerer. The spell is ultimately broken by the redemptive power of love. But Bourne’s passionate reworking lacks any romanticism. His prince is not a saviour, but a victim, starved of affection by a distant and manipulative queen, and overwhelmed by the heartless rigidities of the court (here the sorcerer is, perhaps appropriately, the press secretary). There is a clearly unsuitable girl friend, conjured up by the press secretary, who also engineers the prince’s subsequent public humiliation when he is thrown out of a nightclub.

In the prince’s lostness, he retreats into fantasy and encounters a flock of male swans, becoming infatuated with their leader. These swans are not the ethereal and quiescent creatures of the nineteenth century ballet. Although lyrical, they are also feral and - ultimately - a destructive force. The prince finds no resolution in the saving power of love, and no external evil is vanquished.

On one level the denouement takes place in the prince’s mind, in which he cascades into ever deepening psychosis (Bourne was influenced by Peter Shaffer’s Equus and its account of a stable-boy’s psychotic relationship with horses.) On another level, he is destroyed by his relationship with an outsider, represented by the Swan, who stands for the freedom and power the prince so clearly lacks. Their relationship can be understood in a homosexual sense, but not inevitably so.

For early audiences for Bourne’s Swan Lake, there was a frisson in watching a passionate male duet (it seems less transgressive now), and in seeing men dance parts so associated with the feminine in ballet. The swans’ costumes by Lez Brotherston do not evoke the tutus of the classical original: instead the men are bare-chested and barefoot, wearing white feather breeches. They dance with hissing menace, ultimately turning with fury on their leader for daring to love a human. Bourne has a sharp instinct for the power of movement. His duet for Swan and Prince establishes both their bond of sympathy and a subtle synchronicity between man and bird, while a witty dance of the cygnets, recalls not the deftly drawn steps of the feminine original, but rather the laddishness of young teenagers. For a male dancer, the role of the Swan is irresistible and Jason Piper’s performance was a compelling sketch of ferocity, tenderness and sexual allure, with Christopher Marney a convincingly demented prince, and Nicola Tranah, a glacial queen.

Over at the Royal Opera House, Anthony Dowell’s stylishly traditional production of Swan Lake returns to the Royal Ballet’s repertory (22 December – 25 January). Meanwhile that other Tchaikovsky Christmas favourite, The Nutcracker, is at the London Coliseum in English National Ballet’s production (21 December – 8 January) and in Scottish Ballet’s production at the Theatre Royal Glasgow until 30 December.