Chicago is all the richer for Joffrey Ballet’s continuing dedication to mounting full-length story ballets. This season, Joffrey’s 20th in its adopted hometown, The Joffrey premiere of Christopher Wheeldon’s “Swan Lake” (2004), its first ever, takes the iconic classic on a detour backstage. Playing at the Auditorium Theatre through October 26th, this stunning new production, together with last month’s spectacular “Stories In Motion,” make a significant contribution to Chicago dance, and to the larger world of the arts, with programming that epitomizes ballet’s relevance to the art of storytelling and gives fresh perspective on ballet as total theater.
Wheeldon’s story-within-a-story structure throws seeming versus reality into question. A giant, see-through mirror provides the central metaphor in his re-imagining of the story, set in a 19th-century Paris Opera Ballet rehearsal studio, where the company is rehearsing “Swan Lake.”
Inspired by the back-stage ballet paintings of Edgar Degas, Wheeldon gives us mis-en- scènes straight off the canvas, including those mysterious Degas men in tails and top hats watching the dancers rehearse. These are the arts patrons who expected, in return for their monetary support, access to the female dancers’ off-stage lives. This historic fact played into Wheeldon’s idea to merge the real-life story of the ballet company and make-believe story of the ballet, using one dancer (Rory Hohenstein) in the dual role of Patron/Von Rothbart. Tipping his hat to the economic realities of arts funding, Wheeldon speculates on the degree to which the dancers of that era were held hostage to their funding sources, just as the swans were held under the spell of the evil Von Rothbart.
Wheeldon’s construct imagines what might happen if a dancer crossed the line between playing his role and actually entering the reality of the make-believe world in the story. Unlike the original ballet, it is Siegfried’s story here, not Odette’s, which some may argue diminishes the epic scale of the original tale. It also differs from Darren Aronofsky’s 2010 film, “Black Swan,” which used Swan Lake in a parallel on-stage/offstage story revolving around a principal dancer’s blurring of the two worlds. While the movie “Black Swan” told the story of the female dancer’s psychological unraveling in the dual role of Odette/Odile, the choreographic substance and the original story of Swan Lake were largely secondary to the psychological thriller aspect of the film. To his credit, Wheeldon’s version relies on the choreographic strength of the original source material for all its thrills and chills, but as the story unfolds through Siegfried’s point of view, we miss the full Shakespearean proportions of Odette’s tragedy.
Act I combines the essence of the original palace garden scene with the studio rehearsal, showcasing Joffrey’s top-notch ensemble dancing while giving both on-stage spectators and the real audience a glimpse of the rehearsal process. The traditional Pas de Trois was superbly danced by a saucy Amanda Assucena, lighter than air April Daly, whose technical virtuosity truly sparkled, and Yoshihisa Arai with lightning-fast clarity in his entrechat-six and double cabrioles.
Framing the traditional tale in straight-forward scenes that alternate between the grounded world of the rehearsal studio and the mystical lake on the other side of the mirror, we follow principal dancer Siegfried (Dylan Gutierrez) as he lingers after rehearsal and ventures through the looking glass where he first encounters the elusive bird.
Act II introduces us to Odette, the swan queen. Victoria Jaiani’s Odette/Odile is one of the most sublime Swan Queens you’ll ever have the great privilege to see. We can thank Wheeldon and Joffrey artistic director Ashley Wheeter for giving this world-class ballerina the most coveted role in all ballet repertory, the dance equivalent of Hamlet. It is a role that asks the ballerina to synthesize everything she knows and feels and has ever learned about dance, about life, into a heightened state of being in the performance of a lifetime. Jaiani brings the entirety of her exquisite artistic instrument to that level--a spine that seemingly has no bones and speaks with a subtlety and range of expression that makes you feel what you never felt before; leg extensions and arabesques that reach to the heavens with the longing of the soul; bird-like arms and quivering battements serrés that tremble like a quickening heartbeat. How could Siegfried help but fall hopelessly in love with this swan/woman? Gutierrez’s Siegfried delivers partnering that both adores and gently supports, honors and, as in the best of true loves, ennobles his partner, freeing Odette to love him in return. His ardor expresses itself with buoyancy and brilliance, in variations that inspire him to vow true love and break Von Rothbart’s spell. The vow seals their fate and our undying loyalty to them. This is why we love Swan Lake!
In Act III, instead of a birthday party for Prince Siegfried at the royal court, the studio becomes the venue for a gala ballet company fundraiser with Von Rothbart as the master of ceremonies, a la Drosselmeyer, complete with the requisite character dances as entertainment, albeit with a slightly earthier spin. Here the world of the imagination and the world of commerce intersect, with Von Rothbart pulling out all the stops to thwart the love-bond of Siegfried’s make-believe world--or is it? Jaiani’s strident Odile distracts him with her spot-on thirty-two fouetté turns and whips him into a second vow, which negates his first. Siegfried, realizing the deception, heads back to the lake to patch things up, but by then the denouement is inevitable.
Act IV opens with Siegfried looking for Odette. The Joffrey corps de ballet of swans overwhelms him, protecting their grief-stricken queen with breathtaking ensemble patterns, creating a magical aura of uniform bird anxiety and compelling female solidarity. After a heart-breaking final tug of war between Von Rothbart, Siegfried, and Odette, Von Rothbart wins, and Odette fades off between a double swan column, never to be seen again. The studio walls slide back into place, and the ballet ends with Siegfried alone in the studio, left contemplating whether or not it was all a dream.
Rest assured, Wheeldon gives die-hard traditionalists enough of the Petipa/Ivanov original in Acts II and IV to gratify our yearning for a truly marvelous classical ballet fairy tale in the grand style, and the Joffrey crew dazzles.
As in the best of remakes on master classics, the re-imagining provides fresh access to a tale to which we may have become overly accustomed, gives us new eyes through which to appreciate and understand the beauty and meaning of the original. But, as with many re-imagined works, something is lost as well. Here, we never experience the ultimate tragedy of Odette and Siegfried’s doomed love. Siegfried survives, Odette merely fades off-stage, and instead of the monumentally cathartic ending of the original Swan Lake, steeped in 19th-century romanticism, we get a 21st-century sigh. Instead of bringing the story to a peak climax with the lovers making the ultimate sacrifice, choosing death over the curse of living without each other, an ending in which love does finally triumph even if it’s in the afterlife, we get a kind of existential loss that leaves us wondering if all life isn’t really that insubstantial.
Wheeldon’s “Swan Lake” succeeds in telling a story with all the trappings of great theater: fantastic live music, visual spectacle, dramatic clarity, engaging movement that sustains visual interest while satisfying narrative build. And wonderful dancing! You wouldn’t want to miss it. The Joffrey’s storytelling can’t be beat. But as a barometer of our times, it is telling us something more.