The staging of the classic Russian ballet by Cork City Ballet this week is the realisation of a dream for artistic director Alan Foley, along with a lot of sweat and hard work
IT'S A sweaty business, ballet. In an auditorium all you see on stage are the lines, the foam of tutus, the fluidity of movement and formation. But up here in Cork's Firkin Crane with the seating rolled away and one wall a length of mirror, it's a matter of tank tops, leg-warmers, shrugs and a high sweat-count during rehearsals for Swan Lake, which opens at the Cork Opera House on Wednesday.
“Imagine you’re doing this on a marshmallow!” shouts Cork City Ballet director Alan Foley at a small group of dancers. Trying for a second to imagine a marshmallow under my behind, not to mention my feet, I find myself clenching what pass for the muscles in my pelvis against an unforgiving chair. That’s the kind of tension there is up here, you just can’t help responding. It all looks lovely and sounds even lovelier with some of Tchaikovsky’s most languorous music (recorded by the Russian State Orchestra) filling the air, but just as you think that the quartet tripping – or rather not tripping at all – across the floor is performing to perfection, there’s a call from the directorial jury: “Just engage the fingers, ladies! Hold your centre – don’t lock your fingers too soon – in fact don’t lock them at all!” Without missing a step they don’t lock them, adjusting the symmetrical digits as if there was no individual hand among them.
This €200,000 production is something of a dream come true, or perhaps of an ambition realised, for Foley. "I said I would never do it until I had all the resources," he says. And although the principals are not here yet, everyone else is assembled: the corps de ballethas been drawn from auditions in six countries, with the addition of Cork, Nenagh and Skibbereen, while the dozen children come from local dance schools. The painted back-cloths come from Russia, the costumes were bought from the Kirov ("I have good friends there," says Foley) and the swan headdresses were made in Brazil by Madelena Machado, a designer who works with the Rio carnival. Even the Opera House has reduced its rental rate from €8,500 to €6,500 per show.
A ballet that was ridiculed for years after its Moscow premiere in 1877 until the "received" edition was created by Petipa and Ivanov in 1895, Swan Lake is recognised as a supreme test of classical technique, virtuousity and romance. Through the years there have been variations to the story of the prince who falls in love with an enchanted swan and fights to rescue her, and in this edition, adapted to fit two acts instead of four, the character dances from Act 3 are gone. But as Bolshoi- and Kirov-trained choreographer Yury Demakov explains, the finale accords with the Russian insistence on a happy ending. That seems a little contradictory, as the popularity of the score was such that it was used by the Soviet broadcasting system as a kind of death notice: "You'd switch on the radio in the morning, and think 'Oh, Swan Lake, who's dead?'," Demakov says.
Although holding to the Petipa-Ivanov rendition, Foley’s decision to include six male swans as servants of the evil magician Rothbart is something of a departure. “Who says the Dying Swan was a pen [female] rather than a cob [male]? Yury was a bit sceptical at the beginning, but we could see how the music could be choreographed for powerful masculinity. So we gave the men one of the big dances in the swan hierarchy, and that big powerful coda in Act 2 is so strong that we gave that to the guys as well.”
Muscular masculinity isn’t the characteristic most frequently associated with ballet, yet male dancers have to be strong as well as agile. In his native Russia, Demakov – whose son is a student at St Petersburg’s Vaganova school – says the tradition of the danseur is so old that it’s simply taken for granted: “You’re a doctor, you’re a dancer – it doesn’t matter, there’s no difference.” And Nikita Shcheglov, who dances the prince in this production and who teaches at the Vaganova, sees the assertive male role not just as an athletic enabler of elevations and attitudes but as a central feature of the dance tradition.
Dancing Prince Siegfried sometimes as often as once or twice a month as principal dancer with the Kirov Ballet in St Petersburg hasn’t lessened Shcheglov’s affection for the role. “But it’s the most famous ballet in the world,” he protests. “There’s so much feeling, a lot of soul, it’s the basic theme of the world ballet heritage – I’m so happy to interpret it, I’ve never got tired of it, I always feel so good on the stage.”
This time his Odette/Odile will be the Kirov’s prima ballerina Sofia Gumerov, while Irish ballerina Monica Loughman also joins the company.
“Ballet is for young people,” sighs Demakov, who retired officially from dancing five years ago and is now artistic director of the Swansea Ballet Russe (where his wife, Chika Temma, also performs). He doesn’t see any great challenge in keeping classical ballet acceptable to modern audiences – “It’s like Shakespeare, why do people keep on doing it?” – but both he and Foley agree they enjoy working with modern dance. Both men see strength and purpose in contemporary choreography, up to a point: “It’s not a case of women walking around with buckets on their head and calling it Giselle,” says Foley while Demakov adds: “When you go to a ballet you don’t need to think, you just look and you just listen. It’s not supposed to send you home with a headache.”
Swan Lakeis at the Cork Opera House from November 24 to 27
