Love ain’t easy
Posted by Jen on Wednesday, April 9, 2008
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Swan Lake, so second hand, on TV, in Darwin, yet even still, there are tears rolling down my face as the final act resonates. From beginning to end this ballet is a grand romantic gesture reconfigured with Murphy’s grand contemporary choreography.
This interpretation dips its hat to all the traditional swells of movement, shades of costume and setting that inform the tradition of Swan Lake right up until the industrially minimalist end.
The final act is everything the music promises. It shows us the frenetic flailing of a failing love affair that tears itself apart shred by shred until true love stuns us in the shape of Odette’s final grande jete that stops dead in mid air, arms, legs, horizontal in Friedrich’s arms as the lovers are resolutely united in a romantic inevitability that allows for breast heaving aplenty.
The stuff of ballet and opera! The grand gesture! The great welling sorrows and triumphs that aren’t supposed to be there anymore. Loved it – even second hand.
