Swan Lake Moscow Ballet - La Classique

This really should have been one of the first things onto my blog as it was the first performance that we say live.  We will be comparing this in our essay with two other versions of Swan Lake.  It was due to time that i never got round to writing it up and got caught up in the excitement of the construction process.

Director: Elik Melikov
Choreography: Marius Petipa (1818 - 1910) and Lev Ivanov (1834 - 1901)
Music: Tchaikovsky (1840 - 1893)

This was a rather disappointing performance, only seeing pieces of Swan Lake previously to compare it.  I still though felt a be underwhelmed by it all.  The first disappointment was the music as it was a recording, this meant that the ballet dancer had to keep up with the music without having the backup of a maestro to slow or speed up the music with the dancer.  This showed and some parts were out of time with the music or rushed to keep up. 

Secondly as we discussed after, Odette and the Prince Seigfried had no chemistry on stage, it was unbelievable that they were in love, this was rather disappointing as some of the most romantic scenes tended to fall flat.

Costumes were mixed.  I really liked the signet costumes the tutus were slightly bigger than they should have been as they are measured against the dancer.  ( one dancer was smaller so hers swamped her slightly)  Because of this the costumes bounced around when dancing, i really liked this as they helped get across the character well of little swans.  The rest of the costumes were pretty but they didn't go, they didn't seem to have a consistent colour palette. 

Overall it was a good production but i was expecting to be blown away and having see now a few more i have seen how it is meant to be done.