Swan Lake is without doubt the pinnacle of classical ballet, a work of such staggering beauty and power, it functions as the art form’s creation myth.
It was literally Australian Ballet’s genesis story, the first production they mounted back in 1962. Notable past productions for the company include Graeme Murphy’s 2002 Charles, Di and Camilla love triangle reimagining, and Anne Woolliams’ highly classicist production during her brief tenure as artistic director back in 1977. It’s Woolliams’ interpretation of Marius Petipa’s choreography that the current artistic director, David Hallberg, remounts here, albeit with new sets and costumes. The production is deeply rooted in the past, but in other ways it represents a way forward.
Like all myth, the story of Swan Lake feels familiar in a primal, generative sense – like a fairytale faintly remembered. It may have its roots in Russian or Germanic folktale, but the central transformation also recalls Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Prince Siegfried (Joseph Caley) is under pressure to marry one of three foreign princesses, but on a hunting expedition he comes across an ethereal swan who, to his astonishment, transforms into a young maiden, Odette (Benedicte Bemet).
