Swan Lake

Published Thursday 21 February 2008 at 16:00 by Richard Edmonds

Among Peter Wright’s many masterpieces, there are those which are especially admired and loved, and Swan Lake ranks high amongst them.

It is much easier to name a ballet than to define those special qualities which immediately cast a spell. Perhaps we could say that audiences are moved especially by ballets which contain a clearly definable story, and certainly, in this context, Swan Lake has to be one of the greatest romantic ballets of all time.

Danced in the presence of Sir Peter Wright, Birmingham Royal Ballet’s production was truly wonderful, possessing both dramatic intensity and some high-flying dancing, which allows it to hold its place amongst the world’s great productions.

Wright has always been a wizard and here he casts a beguiling spell from curtain-up but - and here is his genius - always allowing a darker play of sentiment and emotion. The opening funeral cortege and distraught queen (Marion Tait sublimely powerful) - a master stroke in the original production - suggests a court in disorder. Prince Siegfried (Chi Cao) is cursed with setting things to rights through a forced marriage.

At every turn the company danced with an inspired brilliance, but Chi Cao’s dramatic mastery of the role was magnificent.

He took a heightened, dramatic approach which was allowed to expand perfectly within Wright and Samsova’s clear-cut but unrestrictive choreography. Here was dancing which shaped with exquisite grace the desperate tragedy of this doomed court, caught somewhere in a dream of lavish 19th-century romanticism.

Nao Sakuma’s Odette/Odile made the first role her own, with a tragic lyricism that tore at your heart strings. As Odile, Sakuma comfortably found the fireworks that the role demands.

At the final suicide, Wright conveyed the full depths of the tragedy. The lovers died in the lake, but only a genius would have thought of having Benno (Kosuke Yamamoto) carry on the prince’s ruined corpse, in a final showing of something that had outstripped horror itself in its awfulness.