Nureyev was invited during his first season at the London Royal Ballet to dance the role of Siegfried in the June 1962 production rearranged by Ninette de Valois and Frederick Ashton. Nureyev completely reversed the situation. In the Petipa/Ivanov version handed down by Russian tradition, the choreographic and dramatic interest is centred on the ballerina who plays and dances a dual role Odette, white swan-lyrical showcase, and Odile, black swan-dangerous seductress, the prince being reduced to become the instrument of fate. Swan Lake, based on an imaginary theme with this love of the prince for a young girl/bird who is a poetic and unreal creature, is servant to numerous symbolic and psychological interpretations. (The white swan is the untouchable woman, the black swan the reverse mirror image, just as the evil Rothbart is a corrupt substitute for Wolfgang, the tutor).Īnd so when the dream fades away, the sanity of the prince does not know how to survive.” NUREYEV’S SWAN LAKEĪlready omnipresent in the world of ballet as an element for transformation, for purification and for regeneration, the theme of water could but attract Nureyev, the choreographer, whose heroes and heroines try to get away from their situation, their entourage, their closed and stifling worlds, and escape to the often imaginary “elsewhere”. An idealized love is born in his mind, along with the prohibition that it represents. To escape from the dreary destiny that is being prepared for him, he brings the vision of the lake, this “elsewhere” for which he yearns, into his life. Reared on romantic reading, his desire for infinity has been fired and he refuses the reality of the power and the marriage forced on him by his tutor and his mother. “To me, Swan Lake is one long daydream of prince Siegfried. Piotr Ilytch Tchaïkovski – Rudolf Nureyev after Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov Swan Lake seen by Rudolf Nureyev

Paris opera ballet swan lake