| |
|
SWAN LAKE AS SEEN BY RUDOLF NUREYEV...
"For me, Swan Lake is one long daydream on the part of prince Siegfried. Reared on romantic reading, his desire for infinity has been fired and he refuses the reality of the power and the marriage forced on him by his tutor and his mother.
To escape from the dreary destiny that is being prepared for him, he brings the vision of the lake, this "elsewhere" for which he yearns, into his life. An idealized love is born in his mind, along with the prohibition that it represents. (The white swan is the untouchable woman, the black swan the reverse mirror image, just as the evil Rothbart is a corrupt substitute for Wolfgang, the tutor).
And so when the dream fades away, the sanity of the prince does not know how to survive."
NUREYEV’S SWAN LAKE
Already omnipresent in the world of ballet as an element for transformation, for purification and for regeneration, the theme of water could but attract Nureyev, the choreographer, whose heroes and heroines try to get away from their situation, their entourage, their closed and stifling worlds, and escape to the often imaginary “elsewhere”.
Swan Lake, based on an imaginary theme with this love of the prince for a young girl/bird who is a poetic and unreal creature, is servant to numerous symbolic and psychological interpretations.
In the Petipa/Ivanov version handed down by Russian tradition, the choreographic and dramatic interest is centred on the ballerina who plays and dances a dual role; Odette, white swan-lyrical showcase, and Odile, black swan-dangerous seductress, the prince being reduced to become the instrument of fate. Nureyev completely reversed the situation.
Nureyev was invited during his first season at the London Royal Ballet to dance the role of Siegfried in the June 1962 production rearranged by Ninette de Valois and Frederick Ashton. Here it was that, at the end of Act I, he took the liberty of introducing a new variation, choreographed around the andante sostenuto which precedes the pas de trois in the score and which used to be habitually cut. This melancholic, dreamy solo expressing Siegfried’s yearning for an ideal world was considered so good that the Royal Ballet has kept it in the various versions of Swan Lake which have since followed.
In October 1964, when Nureyev undertook his own version of the complete work at the Vienna Opera House, he choreographically fleshed out the role of the Prince, and above all, developed his psychology, using fantasies which lead him to ruin as he runs frantically after the illusion of a woman/swan.
“The charismatic dancer, Rudolf Nureyev, created a Swan Lake, insofar as choreography, which, contrary to previous productions, made the Prince the principal character in the dramatic action: first of all sad, prey to “melancholy”, then in love, finally deceived and ending up destroyed. In fact, the outcome could only be tragic with Rothbart setting a dreadful storm in motion which swallowed Siegfried up in the waves.
In the performance of his Swan Lake at the Paris Opera in December 1984, Rudolf Nureyev went even further...
|
|
|
