No other ballet is staged so often. No other ballet has had so many interpretations. Every great ballerina wants to dance the dual role of the white swan (Odette, pure and innocent) and the black swan (Odile, evil and erotic). It is a role to die for; or even murder for. So, If you are going to see only one ballet in a lifetime, it has to be Swan Lake; but, hopefully, it won’t be this version by St Petersburgh Ballet Theatre.
Yuri Gumbi’s 1996 staging, amateurishly lit, looks old-fashioned and is utterly lacking in any drama. Act III is particularly disappointing. There is no real fight between Good and Evil and the swans contribute absolutely nothing, not a flutter of panic amongst them.
Irina Kolesnikova is the box-office attraction and behaves as if she were a prima ballerina assoluta rather than as Odette and Odile. The black swan’s fouettes rightly win the biggest applause of the evening; but elsewhere her over-extended curtain-calls after each variation are slightly absurd. Her Prince is the very boyish Denis Rodkin, a dancer with fine technique, who does not act. Odile would almost certainly have eaten him for breakfast.