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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