By Cheryl Wallace
Antenna Arts Magazine
November, 1997

Let me announce right at the start that the CBC's is the first Swan Lake that ever seen. I will not be comparmig interpretations or subtle nuances of different productions. Truthfully, I usually avoid the ballet by choice. Very thin women with their hair in buns, wearing tutus, and dancing en pointe do not make for my idea of an artistically uplifting experience. Having said that, let me inform you that I tried to put aside my concerns about sexism and.classism inherent in the form of Classical and Romantic ballet. I attempted to approach Swan Lake with a "tabula rasa", a blank slate, an open mind. I took my seat, eager to encounter my response to the dance.

Of course the set was beautiful (especially the dark, misty, barely opaque forest, scrim.that denoted the Lakeside area), and the costumes were fantastic. Not as common for me was my reaction to the dancing of two new Cincinnati Ballet Company members. Anna Reznik danced Odette and Odile, and Alexei Kremnev danced the role of Prince Siegfried. Both Reznik and Krernnev come to Cincinnati Moscow. Both have extensive performing and competing credits. Both are incredible dancers. Reznik and Kremnev are so strong technically that they are free to delve into real character (I don't mean that fakey stuff we often see in dance). Rezntk's character development, particularly in her first duet with the prince, was so subtle and so profound, that at first I thought her aloof and, distant. Later, I realized that she was contained, emotionally suppressed, as any prisoner might be. I came to realize how powerful her passion must have grown to be in order to break through their protective armor. The Russian ballerina had me in the palm of her hand.

Not only were Reznik and Kremnev able to produce complex characters within the circumscribed ballet vocabulary, they were also capable of inbuing the movement with qualitative as well as spatial definition. Rather than simply making shapes in space, the movement made palpable both three dimensional negative space and distant points in space which the body appeared to connect by reaching in those directions. To illustrate qualitatively defined movement, let me cite the moment in Siegfried's and Odette's duet when she first realizes her feelings for him and succumbs to them. She descends with more weight than she has previously employed, physicalizing her acquiescence to love. I offer a special bravo to Kremnev for the ease, ballon (airiness), and spatial clarity in his jumps and leaps.

Unfortunately, the other performers paled in comparison to Reznik; and Kremnev. Not only were their performances inferior, suffering from a lack of feeling and an overabundance of mannerism along with some technical problems, but there seemed to be scant care in their presentation and direction. Imagine, if you will, three men in tights leaping around and walking in a mannered toe-first way, while simultaneously carrying fake crossbows and rubber chickens. On television this scene would be recognized as satire. Happily, our heroic prince was exempted from carrying the fake birds. He managed to hold on to his dignity and our image of him as hero remained untarnished by kitsch.

Swan Lake was originally choreographed by Marius Petipa (a classicist at heart) with Lev Ivanov (less traditional, more expressive). This version adds CBC's Ballet Master Dennis Poole's new choreography to Act II. Swan Lake suffers from identity crisis. Is it musical visualization, narrative, sentiment, technical virtuosity or some combination of all the above? The various perspectives at times, quite at odds with each other, rendering the ballet a patchwork of Classical dictates, Romantic imagery and narrative I become very bored watching classroom technical exercises in choreographic settings. It troubles me to see the athletic act become paramount as the craft of transitional set-up, the imagery and the narrative are discarded in service to the "trick". I get lost in a murky place, wishing that the art form, and this production in particular, would clearly prioritize - story, technique, image or music visualization.

Finally, I have, to admit that, in spite of all my effort to banish contemporary socio-political thoughts, I kept having to repress the urge to free the Swan maidens held under the sorcerer's enchantment. After all, how does one respond to so many young women moving in unison, hearts and eyes downcast, wrists crossed and moving sluggishly indicating their embodiment as swans. They seemed to go about displaying the movement without feeling or experiencing it spatially or qualitatively.

Then the question arose ... What is the choreographer/artists attitude toward the swan maidens? Do they simply reflect the status of women the late 19th century? Or are they meant to engender a response similar to mine, a call to free them, a call to change? I wonder where the Ballet Masters stood on this issue. Where do they stand today? And I wonder if the patchwork problems might disappear with just one question, "What are we really trying to say here?" But then would it still be Swan Lake?