{"id":4228,"date":"2018-03-31T09:30:17","date_gmt":"2018-03-31T08:30:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.larkreviews.co.uk\/?p=4228"},"modified":"2018-03-31T09:30:17","modified_gmt":"2018-03-31T08:30:17","slug":"my-first-swan-lake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/?p=4228","title":{"rendered":"My First Swan Lake"},"content":{"rendered":"

Peacock Theatre, 30 March 2018<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Swan Lake<\/em>, the latest abridged ballet for young children danced by English National Ballet School students, filled the Peacock Theatre to bursting on a wet, cold Good Friday afternoon and that\u2019s splendid to see. I wish more family groups included dads, uncles and grandpas but it\u2019s still terrific to attract such a large, enthusiastic audience and I\u2019m sure that will continue to be the case as the production tours.<\/p>\n

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Choreographed by Antonio Castilla, this show features some fine dancing by some of the thirty five students in the group. Each is profiled in the programme but they are not identified as dancing specific characters because they switch roles and they don\u2019t all appear at every performance.<\/p>\n

The Act 2 set pieces \u2013 the Spanish, Hungarian and Italian dances \u2013 are memorable. The two girls who did the Italian dance at the performance I saw had a real lightness of touch which highlighted the humour. We also had a very promising Siegfried whose leaps were youthfully spectacular and a truly graceful Odette who several times swanned her way right across the stage en pointe with watery arms waving and at one point managed to pirouette for around twenty bars of music.<\/p>\n

As always the real star of the show is Tchaikovsky\u2019s gloriously expressive music. Because My First Swan Lake<\/em> runs for only 90 minutes including interval, the music, which is pre-recorded, has to be cut and arranged. Gavin Sutherland has generally done quite well with it but there are one or two moments of clumsy abruptness as we switch from one thing to another.<\/p>\n

The inclusion of a narrator is a mistake.\u00a0 Credit where it\u2019s due though: Louise Calf, an actor, does a remarkably good job with the saccharine, rather moralistic script she\u2019s been given. She is naturalistic and warm – but completely unnecessary. She has been directed to walk frequently from the downstage left corner across to the opposite spot, often in front of the action, and it\u2019s very distracting. Moreover no one should be shouting over Tchaikovsky when he\u2019s in dramatic fortissimo mode, as she often has to do. And as for delivering the crucial revelation when Odette, Odile and Sigfried all learn the truth in music-free tableau with just Calf\u2019s voice – it\u2019s a travesty.<\/p>\n

Ballet is story telling in music and movement. It doesn\u2019t need words added even for three year-olds. Neither should they be handed the subliminal message that it\u2019s perfectly acceptable to talk over great music.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Peacock Theatre, 30 March 2018 Swan Lake, the latest abridged ballet for young children danced by English National Ballet School students, filled the Peacock Theatre to bursting on a wet, cold Good Friday afternoon and that\u2019s splendid to see. I … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4228"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4228"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4228\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4231,"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4228\/revisions\/4231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}