Modern Ballet Chinese Acrobatic ballet "Swan Lake" Moscow Kremlin Theatre of Classical Russian Ballet
Schedule for Chinese Acrobatic ballet "Swan Lake" 2022
The Guangdong Acrobatic Troupe's Swan Lake is phenomenal and cheesy, sometimes both in the same breath. On the one hand, you get blurry storytelling, tacky effects and a corps de ballet on roller skates. On the other, you get performers doing the impossible – most spectacularly, that scene where the heroine dances, on pointe, on top of Wei Baohua's head. Once balanced, Wu Zhengdan kicks her other foot into a high extension. And then she does a backbend, her head level with her supporting ankle. The audience reacts with awed disbelief.
Based in Shanghai, the troupe has won awards around the globe. Unsurprisingly, Swan Lake is the company's most celebrated production. The whole show was built around that duet, created in 2004 as Oriental Swan-Ballet on Top of Head.
Yet this production is at its weakest when it tries to be balletic. Contortionist bodies have no trouble getting into ballet poses, but as dancing it lacks authority and expression. Tchaikovsky's music has saved countless versions of the ballet, but this taped version rarely fits the acrobatic action.
"Swan Lake"
It is difficult to
understand these days how it could have happened that the first show of the
“Lake” in 1877, in Moscow’s Bolshoi, was a flop, and that it took many years for
the ballet to achieve its worldwide cult status. The c omposer, Pyotr Ilych
Tchaikovsky, never lived to see the ultimate success of his creation.
The story begins in 1875, when Bolshoi commissions a
ballet score from the young but already famous composer. It was not yet
customary practice –despite Tchaikovsky fame and previous successes, which
included four symphonies, the now famous Piano Concerto and “Eugene Onegin”
opera, the Imperial Theatres of the time would normally employ the composers on
Imperial payroll, such as Cesare Pugni, Ludwig Minkus, and Riccardo Drigo.
Keeping that in mind, Tchaikovsky did not embark on the course of a revolution
in the Russian ballet, and studied the classic ballet scores assiduously,
planning to produce a score that would be in tune with the established tradition
but at the same time would sound new and interesting. The task of composition
occupied him from May 1875 to April 1876. The story was a knightly fairy tale,
and historians still debate the literary origins –some opt for Heine, some for
Musaeus, a German fairy-tale writer, some for Russian folklore fairy tales, some
even for Pushkin.
The first show took place on February 20, 1877, and was
a flop. The critics reviled the chief choreographer, Wentsel Reisinger, and were
short on praise for Polina (Pelageya) Karpakova, the first interpreter of the
main female part. The failure of the first show was detrimental for the
immediate reputation of the ballet itself, and for quite some time nobody dared
to stage it again.
The situation changed after Tchaikovsky’s death. In
1893, Mariinka decided to revive the “Swan Lake”. A new version of the libretto
and the music was to be produced by Modest Tchaikovsky, the composer’s brother,
Ivan Vsevolzhsky, the director of the Imperial Theatres himself, and by Riccardo
Drigo. The latter used the original music as a source material for a completely
new score. The choreography was supervised by Marius Petipa and his pupil Lev
Ivanov. The tradition claims that while Petipa was the father of the unique
choreography of the new ballet, its truly Russian singing character is there
thanks to Ivanov. The lake and swan scenes, famous for their perfection, are
undoubtedly his alone. It was Ivanov who came up with the idea of enchanted
ladies with their criss-crossed arms and heads tilted to one side, which every
spectator immediately recognized for birds that sit with their wings folded. The
very magical world of the swan lake was created by Ivanov. Petipa’s are the
scenes of courtly dances and festivities and their intricate lace of waltzes and
various dances – Spanish, Hungarian, Polish. Petipa also created an antipode for
Ivanov’s White Queen of Swans –its black twin Odile, and its beautiful black
pas-de-deux of the second act.
It was this particular stage version that came to be
admired as the pinnacle of Russian ballet. This production, as none other, was
the perfect setting for many famous dancers to showcase their art. The Swan Lake
is a unique and perfect creation, and despite the changing musical and dancing
fashions, the performance of Odette and Odile parts is still considered a
touchstone for the mettle of any serious dancer. The White Swan is truly a
symbol of Russian Ballet, of its beauty and magnificence.
© Text 2010 Art and Culture Magazine "St Peterburg"
Schedule for Chinese Acrobatic ballet "Swan Lake" 2022
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