Swan Lake is every choreographer’s plaything and Tchaikovsky’s score is always a winner. Graeme Murphy’s radical version for Australian Ballet is half-modern and half-traditional, pandering to those who want something new and to those who want something old. It never quite gels. But despite its flaws, and the juggling with the score, the production is entertaining, often dramatic and the horizontal lifts are particularly buoyant.
The action is re-set in the Edwardian era. Odette (Amber Scott) marries Prince Siegfried (Adam Bull) only to find that he intends to continue his relationship with Baroness von Rothbart. A pas de deux becomes a pas de trois. Audiences in 2002 at the ballet’s premiere in Melbourne instantly saw a parallel with Princess Diana, Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles. Odette expresses her frustration and rage in fouettés and throws herself into the arms of the equerries, one by one, ready to have sex with them all. She ends up in a sanatorium run by nuns and thinks she is a swan.