By Nick Dent
The production of Swan Lake by the French company Ballet Preljocaj has been acclaimed for its beautiful images and choreography, but its creator is having none of that.
“I’m not interested just to do beautiful things,” Angelin Preljocaj said.
“Art is not just to be beautiful – it has to talk about humanity, and what happens in our world.
“Completely throws out the rules of ballet”: Ballet Preljocaj’s production of Swan Lake is on at QPAC this week.Credit: JC Carbonne
“And the idea is to put Swan Lake in the context of the climatic problem.”
Preljocaj was speaking in Brisbane ahead of the opening of his production, which has an exclusive season as part of the QPAC International Series.
The series brings world-famous performing arts companies such as the Bolshoi Ballet and the Teatro alla Scala exclusively to Queensland, bypassing Sydney and Melbourne.
Arts Minister John-Paul Langbroek said the series had injected more than $32 million into the Queensland economy since its inception in 2009.
The Ballet Preljocaj visit represents the restart of the series after COVID.
First performed in 1877 and proclaimed a failure, Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake – about a prince, Siegfried, who falls in love with a woman, Odette, cursed by a magician to turn into a swan by day – would go on to become the most popular and iconic ballet in the canon.
Different productions over the years have reinvented the story and the choreography. Matthew Bourne’s 1995 production made the swans a company of male dancers, while in 2002, Australia’s Graeme Murphy drew upon the marriage of Prince Charles and Princess Diana (with poor Camilla Parker-Bowles inspiring the villainous “Black Swan”, Odile).
The Preljocaj version has Siegfried as the son of property developers and the villain, Rothbart, as an industrialist who wants to drill for oil in the swans’ habitat.
Angelin Preljocaj, founder and director of the Ballet Preljocaj, based in Aix-en-Provence, France, is a provocateur in the world of dance.Credit: Julien Bengel
“It was very interesting to imagine that Odette, the young girl who is transformed by the magician, is maybe a kind of Greta Thunberg,” Preljocaj said.
As is tradition, one lead dancer will play both Odette and Odile, Rothbart’s deceitful daughter.
Dancer Mirea Delogu said performing in Swan Lake had been her dream since childhood, and that Brisbane will be her debut in those roles.
“It’s nice to use dance to speak to people about something important … but also to imagine something like a fairy tale,” she said.
Further bringing the story into the 21st century, Tchaikovsky’s score, to be performed by the Queensland Symphony Orchestra, is augmented with electronic dance music by French duo 79D.
Preljocaj has previously worked with French electronica stars Daft Punk and Air.
The Ballet Preljocaj last visited Brisbane in 2016, performing a sold-out season of Snow White.
Ballet Preljocaj: Swan Lake plays at the Lyric Theatre, QPAC, May 31-June 7.
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