Existential swans

So, I went out with a bunch of other mums from school to see Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake last night. I don't go out very often, honestly, and I'm a bit of a weird combination of introvert/extrovert so these type of things make me a bit uncomfortable (though I don't think anyone realises that; I hide it pretty well). Also maybe because I'm, like, 6 to 8 inches shorter than everyone else. And they're nearly all blond. I feel like the Dark Horse sometimes. And...I generally find that I don't have hardly any interests in common with the other mums. They all play tennis and golf and do yoga and pilates and wear exercise clothes un-ironically and know the difference between clothing designers and went to all girls boarding schools and work regular jobs (if they work at all or, if they don't, do lots of charity work). All of the things I am into (manga, anime, Kdrama, painting, writing, otome, D&D, etc. etc.) --they have no clue what any of it is. Like, at all.

Anyway. But I went. Because I feel like I should. And I do love shows. And ballet. I was obsessed with Mikhail Baryshnikov when I was a teenager. I'm not sure how many times I watched White Nights. Twenty? Thirty? Fifty? Seeing him perform was something I happily was able to check off of my bucket list. I could watch that man dance for hours.

The weird thing about it being Swan Lake is that earlier this year, I took the hubby to The Great Masked Ball and it was also a performance of Swan Lake. A fairly traditional one, though staged in a non-conventional way (they are dancing all around you while you eat a Russian-themed meal and you are treated like you are guests at the Queen's Ball).

So I went into this Swan Lake not realising that it's a completely different take on the classic. I had no idea going in. Which was both good and bad because I was confused as hell. At first, I could kind of reconcile the beginning of the first act. It somewhat made sense with what I knew of the story...mostly. But then it really radically departs. And I'm not talking just the fact that the swans are all male. I gave up trying to make sense of it by the second half of the first act and put aside my WTF is going on to just enjoy the dance. The other ladies apparently didn't really know the story anyway, so it didn't phase them at all. To be honest, I think a few of them were there to ogle the dancers. We were sitting on the front row. We could have practically leaned forward and touched them.

I shouldn't say that. I'm sure they all enjoyed the show for more than just the abdominal muscles.

I did actually look up the storyline today because I couldn't reconcile the girlfriend character with anything I knew of the story -- I'd thought at first she was supposed to be the white swan but she made no sense that way. Heh. If anything, she was the red herring and provided mostly comic relief. Glad that I did look it up, as now the plot makes more sense to me -- I knew about the dichotomy of the white swan/black swan but I wasn't clear while watching the black leather-trousered clad rake whether he was supposed to be the same swan, a lookalike or what. Or that parts of that were supposed to be akin to a daydream/mental anguish sequence of the Prince's.

Official still photos from the show

Anyway, the swan was this guy. Will Bozier played him in the production I saw and was really excellent. All the dancers were, actually (especially the swans--they worked hard), but he really stood out. Such intensity and vibrancy.

The male corp of swans was such a far cry from being the delicate tutu-clad creatures of other Swan Lakes. They were raw and sweaty and beastly. They were tragic and majestic.

And it was an interesting juxtaposition that the Swan was physically larger and more imposing than the Prince. He was stronger in every way (not that the Prince wasn't also an amazing dancer; he was). Though, at the same time, the focus of the story isn't the tragic tale of the girl (guy) transformed. It's more a story about the tragedy of the Prince.

I rather wish I hadn't spent so much of the show being confused. I should have looked it up ahead of time but I hadn't bothered because I "knew" Swan Lake. I literally found about it being all male swans as we arrived at the theatre (sue me, apparently I live under a rock). I even knew that some versions of the show end happy and some don't, but I wasn't expecting the Oedipal nature of the Prince's relationship with his cold-hearted mother or the undercurrent of forbidden desires and repression and fear and loneliness. Perhaps it was the loneliness and despair that surprised me the most.

So. All that rambling. I enjoyed it. I was bewildered. Enraptured. It was beautiful and ugly.