This summer, the American Ballet Theatre culminates their season with the ever-popular Swan Lake.
While Swan Lake has been recently re-interpreted by Black Swan, Kevin McKenzie’s interpretation stays true to classical form.
While most of Swan Lake’s admirers focus on the duality between Odette and Odile and their romances with Prince Siegfried, I was taken by McKenzie’s rendition of the character dances in Act III. In Act III, the Queen Mother throws a costume party and invites four princesses, one of whom Prince Siegfried must choose as a bride, or so the Queen requests. While the Master of Ceremonies introduces each princess and her entourage, Siegfried sits quietly next to his mother, thinking only of Odette. The lovesick prince and his mother are then entertained by series of national dances from northern Spain, Italy, Poland, and Hungary. Evidently, through these dances within a dance, the choreography draws our attention to a self-reflexive moment on the nationalistic undertones of dance. This reflexivity is highlighted by the fact that these national dances are performed not through balletic form, but through character form—the dancers shed their pointe shoes and tutus for heels and national dress.
These countries are paying their respects to Siegfried as tributary nations, showcasing their women in subtle subjugation under the young prince’s dominion, as he sifts through the various princesses of these neighboring nations as if they were interchangeable. The women are exotified in regional costume. The Spaniards perform the jota in golden yellow silk, their hair coiled up on either side of their heads in golden nets. The Hungarians, with their tasseled turbans, and utterly break from balletic movement, baring the occasional turned-in leg.
In McKenzie’s choreography, the princesses of these nations themselves remain ballerinas, keeping their pointe shoes on and sitting amongst the court to watch their people dance in heeled character shoes. This break from standard choreography, where the princesses usually performed the folkloric dances themselves, stays truer to history. Here, ballet form is reserved for the civilized—the dominant class, while character dance is for folksy peasants and/or exotic peoples. And it is quite clear that in Swan Lake, ballet is Russian.
