At The Ballet

Whenever I hear that phrase I think of the song from A Chorus Line with the same title.

Last night The Amazing Boyfriend and I went to see Matthew Bourne’s staging of Swan Lake. What an amazing performance.

The one thing I can definitely say about this show is that “It’s not your Mama’s Swan Lake”

A first when The Boyfriend suggested we go see this, I had thought it was a stage version of that Matt Damon movie The Bourne Identity, but then I quickly realized that in the movie his characters name was Jason….not Matthew, so that cleared things up rather quickly.

Last night was my first experience with the ballet and I can say it was very exciting. The show uses the original music by Tchaikovsky but is set in more modern time, although the exact time period is difficult to pinpoint. At one point in the show a cell phone rings, but then later they’re in a bar and they’re dancing like it’s the 70’s. That should give you an idea, imagine dancing disco to Swan Lake, it was very interesting.

The story is almost the same

***STOP READING IF YOU DON’T WANT SPOILERS****

Prince with overbearing mother, gets drunk at club, paparazzi there to snap pictures, sailors try to pick up Prince he declines, gets more drunk, ends up in Park next to Lake, about to hurl himself to his death when a MAGNIFICENT MALE SWAN stops him, they dance around with 15 other hot male swans, he decides not to kill himself.

Then there’s a Royal Ball and the Swan (who is now The Stranger in black with an awfully big cod piece) swoops in and starts trying to make out with the Queen (basically I could not imagine a Queen acting the way she did in front of everyone at the ball, but hey the Swan was hot). Eventually the Stranger and Prince start dancing together. The Stranger starts dancing with all the girls again, Prince has gun, tries to kill Stranger, Stranger has as well, Prince ends up killing innocent party goer. The Prince is then sent to an Insane Asylum where the Nurses dance around like Nurse Ratchet. Eventually the Prince ends up back in his bedroom where he’s having nightmares (and you think the whole thing was a dream because it’s the same as the very beginning of the show) The Swan (aka The Stranger) appears out of his bed along with the rest of his Swan cohorts. The other swans actually end up killing The Swan because of his goings on with the Prince, shortly after the Prince has a “fit” and ends up dying only to be found by his mother, but in the background you can see the Swan holding the Prince in his arms as they both ascend to heaven.

**END OF SPOILERS**

It was an amazing show, it was not a typical “ballet” at all, no tutu’s and skin tight pants (but all the Swans were topless, woof!), the costumes were beautiful as well as the set which was multifunctional yet didn’t detract from the performance. There were several little giggles in the show (if you could imagine a ballet being comedic), overall the performance was beautiful and inspiring.

I always enjoy looking at the other audience members when at a performance, especially one as controversial as this one. Next to us were two older women (probably in their late 50’s) wearing their furs and dressed to the nines, who halfway through act one whispered “I have no idea what’s going on” and then at the end of the show said “I think they took some liberties with the show.”

There were a lot of women, some lesbians thrown in there as well and more than a few men. You could easily pick out the straight men because they were the ones who looked uncomfortable before the show because they really didn’t want to be there plus they were totally beyond their comfort zone when the Prince and Swan were dancing. The remaining men in the audience were all Gurls (if you know what I mean). Just within our section alone I could have thrown a stone and hit at least 25 homo’s, and you’ve got to consider I’m not a very good throw.

So if you have an opportunity to see Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake I highly recommend it.

If you’d like to learn more about Swan Lake check out the Wikpedia Entry