Boston Ballet's 'Swan Lake' glistens
Other late 19th-century ballets are sweet, silly, or sad: Only "Swan Lake" is emotionally wrenching. The emotion can slip into histrionics, canceling itself out. Not in Boston Ballet's "Swan," though, newly, and for the most part brilliantly, restaged by company artistic director Mikko Nissinen.
Harmony is the hallmark of this production. Tchaikovsky's great score; the choreography, based on the 1895 version by Petipa and Ivanov; and the dancing, with Larissa Ponomarenko and Yury Yanowsky in the leads last night; all were in accord.
This was the finest ensemble work the company has ever offered. No one -- not the stars nor the corps -- broke rank, and that meant that characters under a spell themselves cast one on us, too. The corps choreography is about geometry, and in the second act if one of those 24 swans is out of line, the effect is ruined. Last night, it wasn't.
Nissinen's "Swan" is traditional compared to the drastic revisions that burden the ballet with political or other dimensions. But he's also made smart structural changes. The melancholy grandeur of the second act, with the swans under the sway of the villain Von Rothbart, is condensed, and then intensified in the fourth, which usually has a weird "Cheer up, girls!" waltz, as if things weren't that bad. Of course they are, and Nissinen omits the reprieve and lets the momentum build quickly to the inevitable deaths.
He's eliminated caricature. The tutor, played by Samuel Kurkjian, is addled, but elegantly so. Most importantly, Von Rothbart, gorgeously danced by Pavel Gurevich, is a handsome, confident, and aggressive contrast to Yanowsky's hesitant, confused Siegfried. It's Ponomarenko's Odette who resolves the situation between the two men, the power of her love propelling her to sacrifice her life. Ponomarenko's incandescent, fragile look made her force seem entirely spiritual.
Just as he's made Von Rothbart and Siegfried into moral opposites who are nonetheless both imperfect, so Nissinen makes the dual Odette/Odile role not so much virtue vs. pure evil as two souls with different fates. Even the acrobatics -- including Odile's famous 32 fouette turns -- build a sense of overheated frenzy rather than coming off as applause-making tricks.
It's not a perfect production. The sets Nissinen inherited from Boston's previous staging are gloomy architectural fragments that have little to do with the ballet. The first act solo that establishes Siegfried's moodiness is awkward, especially in a thudding series of tours jetes. In the third act, where everyone else is either an eligible princess or a member of a foreign delegation to the Queen Mother's court, a new pas de cinq by unidentified characters has no purpose beyond virtuosity. The production is already full of that, starting with the first act's pas de trios dazzlingly danced by Sarah Lamb, Barbara Kohoutkova, and Nelson Madrigal.
This is a streamlined "Swan." Clocking in at under 3 hours, it glides as smoothly as the creature for which it is named. The concluding production of Boston Ballet's 40th season, it's a must-see.
Swan Lake
Performed by Boston Ballet
At: the Wang Theatre last night (repeats, with changing casts, through May 23) 