The Bolshoi’s Swan Lake boggles the eyes
Swan Lake Bolshoi, Covent Garden
There was so much stunning dancing in the Bolshoi’s Swan Lake on Friday night that it is tricky to know where to start. Back together after Monday’s Don
Quixote, Denis Rodkin (here, Prince Siegfried) and Olga Smirnova (Odette/ Odile) were as technically supreme as you could hope to see, but there was remarkable strength-in-depth across the entire company. Siegfried’s two friends (especially the lighter-than-air Nina Kaptsova) were charm itself, Vyacheslav Lopatin was an aerial wonder as the Fool, Artemy Belyakov like a flying dagger as the quaintly named Evil Genius (Von Rothbart to you and me).
The solo work in the international dances at the ball, too, was stunning: Angelina Karpova’s attitude-filled Hungarian Bride, Anna Tikhomirova’s gazelle-like Spaniard, Daria Khokhlova’s firefly of a Neapolitan – the astonishing performances just kept coming. In the two lakeside scenes, meanwhile, the large corps of swans sustained the 19th-century magic to absolute perfection: it might have been the same, serenely grave dancer, multiplied 24 times.
Although the dancing boggled the eyes, the evening didn’t, however, quite broadside the emotions. I can’t fault Rodkin’s impeccably virile Siegfried: his soliloquies were superb articulations of discontentment, his jumps dazzling, his partnering attentive and muscular, and he really seemed to be living and breathing the troubled prince. But the slightly-toothin Smirnova’s Odette – although a masterclass in legato poise – was too detached and un-giving, her Odile not quite malevolent enough.
My other complaints are with the production. Although the programme notes explain that the lakeside scenes are playing out in Siegfried’s head, fail to read them and, for the most part, you’d probably take this 2001 staging as a fairly “straight” telling of the story (which is fine). But Simon Virsaladze’s cross-hatched sets are drab, his costumes classy but dull. Also, in what is perhaps an overreaction to the happy ending that was deployed in Soviet times, this production plumps for a morosely downbeat one – which means that the final, soaring minutes of Tchaikovsky’s wonder of a score are completely binned, an unforgivable musical coitus interruptus.
Still, I’d happily have watched the entire thing again for the sheer quality of the dancing, on which subject, a final nod is due for another of those visiting would-be brides at the prince’s ball. As the Russian, Viktoria Yakusheva unveiled a solo as silkily perfect as it was emotionally generous. It may, in fact, have been the performance of the evening – praise indeed. Season runs until August 13. Tickets: 020 7304 4000; roh.org.uk