One of Sweden's national treasures is in town this week, bringing with it a flock of somewhat ungainly swans. The Cullberg Ballet Riksteatern began its three-night run at the National Theater last night with Mat Ek's retelling of Swan Lake -- a stripped down, sexed up and gender-bending version of a prince besotted by an enchanted swan maiden, set to Tchaikovsky's classic score.
Taipei has seen male swans, comedic swans and dying swans -- but bald and barefoot swans are something new.
PHOTO COURTESY OF THE CULLBERG BALLET
Mat Ek's swans are not the silent, ephemeral, gliding beauties of romantic lore. They're earthy -- clunky even, with their flexed feet -- waddling ungainly on the ground, like swans out of water.
PHOTO COURTESY OF THE CULLBERG BALLET
But what else should be expected from one of the premier modern dance troupes in the world, if not a very different take on a ballet that even non-balletomanes know about?
The Cullberg was founded in 1967 by modern dance icon Birgit Cullberg, whose Miss Julie, had become a staple of ballet and modern dance companies around the world since its 1950 premier. Begun with just eight dancers, the Cullberg quickly became noted for its dramatic, psychological pieces and the versatility of its members.
In 1973 Cullberg's son Ek joined the company as a dancer, at the very advanced age of 28, after having already established himself as a theater director at the Marionette Theatre and the Royal Dramatic Theater in Stockholm. Dancing was clearly in his blood, as was choreographing, and just three years later he began to create dances for the Cullberg troupe.
In 1985 he succeeded his mother as artistic director of the troupe, a post he held until 1993. Now he is a freelance choreographer but is still closely associated with the Cullberg. He continues to create works for it (the latest was last year's Fluke) and his pieces are, as current artistic director Margareta Lidstrom said, "still the pillar of the company's repertoire."
Lidstrom and Lena Wennergren-Juras were jointly named artistic director in 1995, two years after Ek left the company. Lidstrom had been with the troupe for three years, following a career with the Royal Swedish Ballet. Wennergren-Juras has been with the Cullberg since it was founded.
They decided to bring Swan Lake back into the company's repertoire in 2000 after an eight-year absence and Ek agreed that the time was right to revive it and that there were enough dancers in the company who could dance it.
At a press conference at the National Theater on Monday, Lidstrom said they decided to bring it back to the repertoire because it is a very good ballet.
"It's very important in this kind of repertoire -- with many characters -- to have dancers who have experience, experience with life," she said, adding that the 20 dancers range in age from 22 to 40.
"It has lots of humor in it and lots of seriousness. It deals with human relationships and human feelings," she said. "The dancers are dramatically strong and also very physically strong."
With just 18 dancers to tell the story each night, everyone is very busy, with many doubling up on roles.
Swan Lake is a very demanding work, whether the original Marius Petipa/Lev Ivanov version, or the myriad reworkings of this classic over the years. But Ek was the first choreographer to attempt to bring this fairy tale of idealized love to a more contemporary, earthier level, albeit one with Freudian overtones.
Among the many levels of relationships that Ek explores in his version is that between the prince and his mother.
His prince is not the usual romantic hero. He's the son of a single-parent household and his relationship with his mother is a complex mix of emotions -- love, jealousy, and frustration. He's alienated and searching for meaning in his life.
Mommy dearest is also not the traditional haughty mime role usually found in ballet. She's a vision in red, who gets to have a very sexy pas de deux with her lover.
"She dominates him. Her relationship with her lover also affects the prince," Wennergren-Juras said of the queen.
Seeking to escape his mother, and the girl she has chosen for him, the prince finds refuge in his reveries, which is where he meets the girl, well, swan, of his dreams. But this swan is no pale, trembling maiden cursed by an evil magician. She's strong, energetic and has a very distinctive personality.
She's also wearing a skullcap, which, when coupled with the very muscular body of a modern female dancer, adds an androgynous element to the mix. At first glance, it's hard to tell if the bald dancer in the white tutu is a man or a woman.
In the White Swan Adaggio, it is the Odette who takes the lead, dancing around a recumbent prince -- a far cry from the traditional storyline where the prince lifts up the white swan who has fluttered to the ground in front of him.
In the third act, the prince, as usual, sets off in search of the white swan of his dreams. What he finds, however, after quick visits to Israel, Russia and Spain, and some encounters with men who dominate -- even subjugate -- their women, is one tough black swan.
This Odile is no vixen, out to seduce the hero away from his pure white-swan love. She's sullen and a screamer. But boy, can she dance.
The prince eventually realizes that the black swan is just the flip side of his true love.
"The prince goes out into the world to search for pure love and for himself," Wennergren-Juras said. " The white swan is pure love, the black swan -- that's reality."
Taipei audiences have a chance to see two different casts in the lead role. Tonight Julie Guibert will dance the role of Odette/Odile, with Carl Inger as her prince; tomorrow night it will be Yamit Kalef as the swans, with Chris Akrill in the hero's role. Lisa Drake is the queen, while Boaz Cohen dances the role of the First Cavalier, her lover
In his message for International Dance Day this year (April 29), Ek wrote, "Dance is thinking with your body ? Dance is the opposite of all divine pretensions. Dance is an everlasting attempt, like writing in water. Dance is not life, but it keeps alive all the little things that the big thing is made of."
That's a good way of summing up Ek's Swan Lake -- an attempt to retell an oft-told tale, to strip it of its pretensions, to keep alive one of the best-loved stories of the dance world.
The Cullberg Ballet Riksteatern is at the National Theater, Taipei, tonight and tomorrow, at 7:30pm.
The only tickets remaining are priced at NT$1,600, NT$2,000 and NT$2,500. If you purchase tickets of NT$1,200 and above for both the Cullberg and Pina Bausch's Tanztheater Wuppertal (April 18-20), there is a 15 percent discount.
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