English National Ballet's Swan Lake, returning once more to the Albert Hall, is one of those events where critics resign themselves to being killjoys. First-time viewers of this huge production are given every reason to hold their breath. Demons and acrobats race across the vast, oval stage. Sixty swans, flocking in mass formation in a blue-white mist, are a magical sight. If ballet were simply a high-class, superbly drilled spectacle, then this Swan Lake would be a winner.
But as an art form it is sold wastefully short. Classical ballet evolved for the proscenium stage and is designed to be viewed from the front. So however artfully director Derek Deane has rewritten Petipa's text to keep it shifting through 360 degrees, we spend a frustrating amount of time seeing steps from a blind angle. However energetically the performers turn this way and that, we frequently miss whole chunks of their characters' body language and facial expressions. And however starry the two guest leads were for the opening night, we had to question the point of seeing so much of their superbly finessed bottoms.
The Bolshoi's Sergei Filin, dancing Siegfried, came off best. His finely muscled physique bore very happy scrutiny from behind, and the fact that his acting was limited to a small repertory of expressions meant we didn't miss too much when he was turned away from us. More importantly, his dancing is on a heroic scale, and while he was occasionally frustrated by the need to keep changing focus, his movements radiated out into the huge space, creating a three-dimensional presence.
The Kirov's Svetlana Zakharova was far less comfortable as Odette/Odile. Her slender, loose-knit body not only looked insubstantial in the space but its extreme lines looked gawky when viewed from unflattering angles. Her lack of dramatic charisma underlined the sense of a performance composed of beautiful oddities, bizarrely disengaged.
The ranks of ENB gave the guest couple enthusiastic support. One virtue of this staging is that while half of the company are distant specks, others are very close to us, and we can often spot the talents of a junior dancer who would have gone unnoticed in a conventional line-up. But Swan Lake should not have to rely on compensating distractions, and the sorry truth is that the returns of this production diminish every time we see it.
· Until June 22. Box office: 020-7589 8212.
