Matthew Bourne’s, Swan Lake

coiitinued from page twenty-four

order to come to better terms with
the classical masterpiece itself.

The ballet tells the story of a
young prince caught in the midst
of his own sexual self-discovery.
(In a rather audacious gesture, the
play opens with the prince mastur-
bating in his oversized bed ——
itself a stage of sorts.) Subsequent
scenes demonstrate the connec-
tion between power and sexuality
and highlight society’s insistence
on the heterosexual norm. While
those around the prince encourage
and pressure him to take up tradi-
tional roles and rituals, he feels
drawnto a wilder ideal, one repre-'
sented by his encounter with the
swans on a late night walk
through the park.

Bare-chested and muscular, the
swans seize the stage with both
menace and grace. They frighten
the prince, yet intrigue him with
their-beauty and physicality, their
undeniable sensuality. In choreo-
graphing their dances, Boume
incorporated an awkward and
potentially violent character to
their movements, something in
keeping with the actual nature of
swans — and, in many ways, of
men. Gone are the lithe, pretty
ballerinas prancing across the set
en pointe. In their place Boume
gives us crew cuts and war paint

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— and a sexual force to be reck-
oned with.

One swan in particular catches
the prince’s eye and, subsequent-
ly, his heart as well. Obviously
unsettled by this development, the
other swans become aggressive
and territorial, inflating their own
sense of masculinity in response.
Likewise, the prince’s mother and
the royal attendants step up their
efforts to reinforce both gender
roles and the heterosexual dynam-
ic. The result is painfully tragic to
watch, and yet leaves one with the
uncanny sensation that this was
and always has been the true
meaning of the story.

Swan Lake is firll of visual and
musical spectacle. Boume makes
the most of each on the stage, jux-
taposing scenes of wild frenzy and
comedy with quiet moments of
heartfelt tenderness. Its joyous
depiction of a developing gay love
affair between the prince and his
swan likewise finds counterpoint
in the overt homophobia of the
other swans. Hate crime as a result
of (mostly male) territorial behav-
ior has rarely been so vividly
examined on the stage. The result
is an incredibly affecting work of
art that offers indelible images to
those who experience it. Both
mind and heart continue to reel

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long after the final curtain has
dropped.

Many critics have hailed
Boume as a creative genius for
unlocking aspects of Swan Lake
which had previously puzzled and
perplexed some scholars of the
work. Tchaikovsky’s own latent
homosexuality provides both rele-
vance and validity to Boume’s

rather deconstructive line of rea-

soning. Perhaps, as Boume him-
self has suggested, Tchaikovsky
had intended all along for the
swans to be men. In its own time,
however, such a production would
have been virtually impossible.
Today, however, its time has
come. Vi -

 

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