Matthew Bourne’s bold and beautiful Swan Lake replaces the traditional female corps de ballet with a male ensemble which, when it was first performed in 1995, took the dance world by storm.
No longer the dainty, sinuous swans of the original story but instead hissing, stamping birds, unpredictable, sometimes dangerous. Danced to Tchaikovsky’s spellbinding score, Bourne’s contemporary adaptation subverts the conventional tale of Odette, Prince Siegfried and the evil Baron von Rothbart, omitting some of the characters and twists of plot. Instead, his passionate story of male love tells of a lonely and repressed Prince Siegfried who is dominated by his regal mother and her Machiavellian press secretary. The Swan is everything the Prince needs and can’t have.
Twenty-three years on, as vibrant as ever, Bourne’s Swan Lake comes to cinemas, re-imagined for the twenty-first century. Retaining Lez Brotherson’s award-winning designs, this new production was filmed last year at Sadler’s Wells in London.