Swan Lake will run at Toronto’s Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts until March 22.Karolina Kuras/National Ballet of Canada
- Title: Swan Lake
- Music by: Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
- Director: Karen Kain
- Dancers: Genevieve Penn Nabity, Ben Rudisin, Peng-Fei Jiang, Donald Thom, Miyoko Koyasu, Brenna Flaherty
- Company: The National Ballet of Canada
- Venue: Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts
- City: Toronto
- Year: Until March 22, 2025
At its heart, Swan Lake has always been about birds.
In a way, that’s still true – at the National Ballet of Canada, the piece is defined as much by its feathers as it is by its dancing. But Karen Kain’s incisive 2022 staging of the classic dials up the human factor, reimagining the swans as unruly, humanoid, flock-minded beasts, freed from the cages of balletic tradition in search of a deeper, more cerebral Swan Lake. Bare legs slice through the air, their musculature unburdened by the antiquity of tights; it’s a relatively minor aesthetic change but one that epitomizes the idea that Kain’s is a Swan Lake for the 21st century, a tender ode to the classic ballet but with contemporary plumage.
We first meet Odette (Genevieve Penn Nabity) as a young woman deep in the woods, alive with vitality and youth. Even pretransformation she and her friends move like cygnets, lithe and carefree as they enjoy the sanctuary of the forest.
Soon enough, the evil Rothbart (Peng-Fei Jiang) captures Odette in his enormous wings, black but tinged with an oil slick of purples and blues. At once, Odette is cursed to live in captivity as a swan, permitted to return to her human form only at night.
Meanwhile, Prince Siegfried (Ben Rudisin) has problems of his own, his royal duties looming in the fast-approaching future. When he encounters Odette on a brief reprieve from the palace, he’s transfixed, rapt with infatuation for the mysterious nymph draped in feathers and sadness.
Rothbart soon intervenes, conjuring a royal suitress for Siegfried who looks exactly like Odette. The prince, of course, falls for the ruse of the black swan. Rothbart, all-powerful and seemingly 20 feet tall in his gilded headdress and luxe cape, triumphs, killing the prince and leaving Odette to endure Rothbart’s control for all eternity.
Kain’s bejewelled flourish on Swan Lake only heightens the story’s tragic, timeless appeal. Czech designer Gabriela Tylesova’s sets resemble the cover of a sizzling romance novel, on a stage framed by black roses and pearlescent gems. Tylesova’s costumes, too, add a layer of bestial melodrama, from a magpie-coloured tuxedo to the peacocked fanfare of a decadent royal gown.
But it is, of course, the 24 swans who astound most, flooding the Four Seasons Centre stage in a fury of violent, passionate sisterhood. As the girlish birds assemble into perfect parallel lines, they suggest an army of quilled protectors for Odette, ready to attack in a vortex of downy fluff.
Nabity, tasked with capturing the innocence of the white swan as well as the seductive cunning of her shadow, sparkles with charisma and power. Her white swan moves fluidly, wafting easily on the air and landing gently on her toes; Odette’s vulnerability radiates through to Nabity’s fingertips, easily evoking pity for the young woman trapped in the body of a misunderstood fowl.
As Odile, the black swan, Nabity is a touch less consistent, save for her perfect execution of the iconic 32 fouettés in Swan Lake‘s third act. Nabity lands those turns with utter precision, barely travelling as she spins.
Genevieve Penn Nabity sparkles with charisma and power as Odette.Aleksandar Antonijevic/National Ballet of Canada
The rest of the black swan’s appearances, however, ring less true to the tantalizing heart of Rothbart’s ploy – too often, Odette’s flutter rises back to the surface, creating a black swan who comes across as buoyant and trembling, a symbol of imprisonment rather than strength.
Like Nabity’s Odette, Jiang’s androgynous take on Rothbart is memorable and supple, particularly in fleeting moments of connection between the corvid and his prey. Rudisin’s Siegfried is less confident for Swan Lake‘s first half, but emerges victorious by the time the ballet roars to a close, with several showcases of tight turns and airy leaps before the prince is left to drown in the aftermath of his war with Rothbart.
By stitching together new choreography with motifs of Swan Lakes past (particularly Erik Bruhn’s 1967 version), Kain offers a ballet less interested in uncomplicated beauty and more invested in truth – the truths of her dancers’ bodies, for one, and the pedophilic ugliness baked into a story that over centuries has crystallized into romantic myth. These swans follow impulses; take risks; bite back. Kain’s manages to be a Swan Lake for everyone, with enough traditional glamour and grace to assuage ballet purists but also enough thoughtful innovation to keep the form thrilling.
One such tweak: in previous Swan Lakes, Odette has often been left in a pile on the stage floor, a carcass doomed to be hunted. Sometimes, she’s thrown herself off a cliff. In most interpretations of the work, she exists in exile.
Under Kain’s eye, Odette need not contemplate suicide. Instead, we leave her in the forest, bourréeing in place, her feathered sisters forever just a crow away.
In the interest of consistency across all critics’ reviews, The Globe has eliminated its star-rating system in film and theatre to align with coverage of music, books, visual arts and dance. Instead, works of excellence will be noted with a critic’s pick designation across all coverage. (Television reviews, typically based on an incomplete season, are exempt.)