DANCE REVIEW: SWAN LAKE
13 Mar'10

Kudelka's dark 'Swan Lake' soars

JOHN COULBOURN - QMI Agency
Rating: 5 out of 5

TORONTO - Collectively, they may not have been able to summon up enough weather, stormy or otherwise, to bring proper life to The Four Seasons in their evening of mixed programming earlier this month, but Thursday night, the artists of the National Ballet of Canada proved that they still have what it takes to make a swan soar.

And, of course, to dance up a storm on Swan Lake.

A full decade and more after then artistic director James Kudelka created this dark new version of the classic tale, his SWAN LAKE finally made its debut on the stage of the Four Seasons Centre Thursday, following hard on the heels of an evening of mixed programming, which saw an opening night cast turn his FOUR SEASONS into little more than inclement weather.

And, frankly, this SWAN LAKE has never looked better -- a credit perhaps to Kudelka's casting prowess or to the joy with which the entire company attacks the work, or even to Kudelka's enduring genius, bolstered here by the design genius of Santo Loquasto, to the degree that the two of them back in 1999, somehow seem to have built a bespoke ballet, tailor-made for a hall they had never seen.

Whatever, there is more than enough credit to go around in this oddly familiar tale, glimpsed through Kudelka's glass, darkly.
SWAN LAKE has always been a love story between a Prince and a Swan Queen, of course, but in Kudelka's world, Prince Siegfried (Guillaume Cote) is heir to a troubled kingdom indeed, a rotting fetid place, all but awash in decadence.

He is a young man seemingly bored with his roistering hunting companions, but so wrapped up in his own ennui that he must be commanded by his queenly mother (Victoria Bertram) to choose a wife. He goes hunting instead, and while he is thus engaged, a stranger -- the evil wizard Rothbart, (Noah Long) who introduces the young prince to the beautiful Swan Queen Odette (Heather Ogden), with whom he is immediately smitten.

So, when the mysterious Rothbart shows up at a parade of potential brides arranged by the queen, in company with Odette's evil twin Odile, Siegfried mistakenly succumbs to her considerable charms, inadvertently breaking his vows to the innocent Odette and bringing catastrophe and cataclysm to his putative kingdom.

A couple in real life, Cote's and Ogden's romance has finally spilled over onto the stage, their joy in each other's skill as palpable as it is beautiful -- a romantic pairing that one suspects could carry the entire ballet on its own.

Happily, in this company, it doesn't have to, for in virtually every role, Kain has cast someone memorable. As Rothbart, Long claims the stage with a skill doubly impressive in one so young, while as Keiichi Hirano attacks the role of the jester with crowd pleasing bravado, teamed with a sultry Rebekah Rimsay as the wench and a swaggering Brett van Sickle as Benno.

There's impressive work to from Stephanie Hutchison, Elena Lobsanova, Tanya Howard and Jillian Vanstone cast as the international coterie of potential brides summoned for the Prince's choosing, each of whom, it seems, must overcome the stigma of wearing her own tent in a bizarre piece of costuming excess. Then, of course, there are the lovely, leggy swans with which Kudelka fills both his stage and our imaginations, moving them in ways certain to thrill even while they set the heart to soaring.

And through it all is woven the timeless music of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, served up with skill and passion by the NBOC Orchestra, under the assured baton of David Briskin.

It is a SWAN LAKE to remember.