{"id":776,"date":"2014-02-19T17:28:56","date_gmt":"2014-02-19T17:28:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/?p=776"},"modified":"2014-04-03T23:56:51","modified_gmt":"2014-04-03T22:56:51","slug":"shouldnt-the-swan-be-breathing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/2014\/02\/shouldnt-the-swan-be-breathing.html","title":{"rendered":"Shouldn’t the swan be breathing?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"swanlake_1810149b\"<\/a><\/p>\n

There\u2019s nothing like holding a gun to a swan to ruffle a balletgoer\u2019s feathers. It\u2019s hardly on the scale of Black Swan<\/em>, but at Dance Gazette<\/em><\/a>, the Royal Academy of Dance magazine, we caused a kerfuffle with \u2018Keep, Rescue, Retire\u2019 \u2013 a feature that invited leading international artistic directors to consider the state of the ballet repertoire. They all agreed it was too narrow \u2013 the victim of patchy historical notation, financial pressures and an audience that, as Christopher Hampson <\/a>of Scottish Ballet nicely put it, still demands the family silver.<\/p>\n

The headline suggestions for adding oxygen to the museum-grade air that preserves classical ballet came from Hampson (Swan Lake<\/em> should be semi-retired \u2018so that companies have more room to produce new works\u2019), and from Assis Carreiro <\/a>of the Royal Ballet of Flanders, who proposed a radical five-year moratorium on the big Tchaikovsky ballets (Swan Lake<\/em>, Nutcracker<\/em>, Sleeping Beauty<\/em>), in favour of original creations and neglected wonders.<\/p>\n

Feathers were ruffled, tulle was torn, chiffon shuddered in distress. When the RAD posted a piece titled \u2018Swan Lake must die\u2019<\/a>, many comments on their website and Facebook were basically a cry of anguish. Our Twitter hashtag #KeepRescueRetire provoked a similar flurry. Balletomanes undoubtedly love their swans and sweeties, and resent their removal.<\/p>\n

For me, the most telling suggestion came from Tamara Rojo<\/a>, English National Ballet’s sparky artistic director. She argued:<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think we should lose any of our repertoire. In fact, I would like the approach to be more like opera or theatre, where the repertoire is consistently revived with a new vision and artistic direction that, sometimes, makes works wonderfully relevant and new.<\/p>\n

This is the most radical suggestion of all. It\u2019s not ballet\u2019s constrained menu of classics that is the problem, but the tameness with which it approaches them. The ideal seems to be a seaworthy show that will sail for decades, needing only the odd titivation of wig and tweak of lights to stay afloat. Take our own Royal Ballet and its venerable productions of core rep (Peter Wright\u2019s beautiful Giselle<\/em> from 1985 and Nutcracker<\/em> from 1984; Anthony Dowell\u2019s 1987 Swan Lake<\/em>; The Sleeping Beauty<\/em>, a dowdy\u00a02006 reboot of a 1946 production).<\/p>\n

What is creative about clinging to a production created by a previous generation? Especially creative new dancers might revivify it \u2013 Natalia Osipova\u2019s white-heat sense of risk is currently doing this at Covent Garden \u2013 but most dancers are settling into their parents\u2019 houses rather than helping build one of their own.<\/p>\n

During the past 30 years, the Royal Shakespeare Company<\/a> has produced\u00a0nine versions of Hamlet<\/em> and of As You Like It<\/em>. There have even been multiple versions of relative rarities like Love\u2019s Labour\u2019s Lost<\/em>, the Henry VI<\/em> plays and King John<\/em>. Inevitably, not all have worked \u2013 but all have attempted to make the plays live in the present, rather than in a museum vitrine. They can take risks with setting, casting, text and interpretation, because they\u2019re not having the final world, or aiming for something tamely acceptable that will be just as resonant \u2013 or equally non-resonant \u2013 in three decades\u2019 time.<\/p>\n

Two examples, and then I\u2019m out of here. Gregory Doran began his tenure as RSC artistic director with Richard II<\/em><\/a> last September. Much attention focused on the charismatic star, David Tennant, playing the title role with an abundant wig and carefully withheld sympathy. In an uneven production, Doran\u2019s most daring intervention was to extend the strings of loyalty and obligation around a minor character, Aumerle (Oliver Rix).<\/p>\n

\"Oliver<\/a>

Oliver Rix (left) and David Tennant in Richard II Photo: Kwame Lestrade<\/p><\/div>\n

The king\u2019s politically-torn cousin, he successively supports his deposition, attempts a coup, signs up to the new regime. Doran pushed that dynamic when he had Aumerle and his forlorn cousin exchange an unexpected kiss (Tennant throughout suggested the king\u2019s isolation had made him inept with intimacy; he could only do lofty distance or intrusive immediacy). And, once Aumerle had buckled to the usurper Bolingbroke, Doran made him play assassin in the final scene, instead of the text\u2019s Exton. The act became a vicious test of political loyalty, an anguished personal betrayal, and those themes crackled to dangerous life.<\/p>\n

Some spectators hated it \u2013 but so what? This wasn\u2019t the last word on Shakespeare\u2019s play, so what\u2019s the harm in finding ways to point up the ideas, make them live for this cast, this creative team, this audience in 2013?<\/p>\n

\"Kenneth<\/a>

Kenneth Branagh in Macbeth Photo: Johan Persson<\/p><\/div>\n

The last example is also Shakespearean: Macbeth<\/em>. I saw three productions last year, two of them within 24 hours <\/a>of each other. They were all very different: one post-apocalyptic, one mired in thick darkness and antique mud, another exposed to the bright evening sun at Shakespeare\u2019s Globe. Each Macbeth came differently unhinged, had a different relationship (protective, protected, poisoned) with his wife. Each trudged in his own way through atrocity to oblivion. I wouldn\u2019t want to see any one of them repeatedly for the next 20 years, but I don\u2019t have to. None was definitive, but each was alive.<\/p>\n

So why can\u2019t ballet do that? Create a Giselle<\/em> for today rather than tomorrow, or yesterday? Make it worth staying awake through The Sleeping Beauty<\/em>? If the answer is money, that\u2019s depressing. If it\u2019s audience resistance, that\u2019s truly dismaying. Refreshing the core repertoire has nothing to do with modern dress stunts or half-assed relevance, but everything to do with thinking anew, at long last.<\/p>\n

Opening\u00a0picture is Federico Bonelli and Sarah Lamb in Swan Lake at the Royal Ballet Photo: Alastair Muir for the Daily Telegraph<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Follow David at @mrdavidjays<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s nothing like holding a gun to a swan to ruffle a balletgoer\u2019s feathers. It\u2019s hardly on the scale of Black Swan, but at Dance Gazette, the Royal Academy of Dance magazine, we caused a kerfuffle with \u2018Keep, Rescue, Retire\u2019 \u2013 a feature that invited leading international artistic directors to consider the state of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":850,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[30,29,33,32,31,34],"class_list":{"0":"post-776","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-ballet","9":"tag-dance","10":"tag-rsc","11":"tag-shakespeare","12":"tag-swan-lake","13":"tag-theatre","14":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}