Review: Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake

I recently watched a copy of Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake from Netflix. For those not in the know, the original Swan Lake is a wonderful ballet by Tchaikovsky. I happened to see it about six years ago in NYC, and it is breathtaking. Most people might know some of the music, or basic plotline. Odette, a beautiful princess, has been cursed by the dastardly von Rothbart. She is a swan by day, and a princess at night. There is a Prince. Prince meets Swan. Prince meets Princess. There is love...curses...swans...tragedy...you get it.

I had heard about the Matthew Bourne Swan Lake on Broadway back in 1998. It really peaked my interest.   I didn't know much about the production except that it featured men as the swans (or should I call them cobs?). That's right. It was billed as a gay Swan Lake. I love ballet. I love gay men. How could it go wrong? Alas, I didn't get to see it before it closed, and it remained in the back of my mind ever since.

I found it on Netflix recently, and was intrigued all over again, so I bumped it to the top of my queue.  I was a little disappointed.  I guess I was under the impression that it was actually the classical ballet, but with men as the corps. Maybe I should have researched Matthew Bourne? He's a modern choreographer, not a ballet dancer, in the traditional sense. Not that it should matter. It resembled the classic Swan Lake in basic plotline only. There is a prince, who has serious Mommy issues with the Queen (creepy).He lacked a strong presence though. To be honest, he was as limp as a wet noodle.  Anyway... He meets the Swan in a park at night, and the Swan is hunky and wearing cute feathery shorts and is bare chested (ka-ching!) and is surrounded by other hunky bare-chested feathery swans (swoon).

The original score was used in this production, but it was mixed up and chopped up to pieces. I get that Bourne was taking a 3.5 hour ballet and making it into a 2 hour theater show, however. I didn't enjoy the modern dance take on it either. I guess I'm more of a classical ballet fan than modern, but part of the joy of ballet is how graceful the dancers are. I didn't get any grace out of this production. It was overly aggressive.  Bourne had his swans jerk around and make movements like they were angry, sniping swans. They made their hands into beak shapes, went around poking about like they were real birds (quite frankly, they reminded me of Bert from the old Sesame Street sketch doing "The Pigeon" walk).

And what really disappointed me was the lack of the love story. Swan Lake is ultimately about love! I just didn't get the impression that Swan/Hunky guy and the Prince really loved each other. Or if all of this was happening for real, or was a fantasy thought up by the prince. Bourne leaves all the answers to the viewers. He wants you to interpret it as you will. Maybe he didn't want to go full-on gay love story. Who knows. Maybe he feared the Broadway crowd wouldn't go for it.  Sad.

Just a disclaimer: I'm no dance critic, so take this with a grain of salt. My dad actually chided me when I told him of my complaints, saying that ballet is a story told by dance-it could be any *kind* of dancing. Ok, I get it. So call me old-fashioned, as far as the dancing is concerned. It was appealing having men as the main characters and I thought it unique, I just didn't *love* it like I thought I would.  But I did enjoy those cute cobs swans.