You’ll either hate it … or, like me, love it! (review by Caroline Smart)I wasn’t able to see Dada Masilo’s new work, Swan Lake, in Grahamstown which was a real disappointment to me. Having seen her other productions, Romeo and Juliet and Carmen, I was very eager to see how she was going to plant her stamp (pun intended!) on this classic ballet piece. So I was delighted that it was earmarked as the flagship production of the recent Witness Hilton Arts Festival and I booked my media ticket in gleeful anticipation.
“You can expect surprises,” Dada Masilo said in an interview in Grahamstown with Laea Medley reporter for the festival’s Cue magazine, on July 1. “I took a very different approach to this production, I worked with a really great cast and I tried not to make them look ridiculous in terms of costumes.”
Surprises there certainly were. The dancers wear tutus – both male and female. There’s not a pointe shoe or a pair of tights in sight and the narrator has a Mohican hairstyle and a flashy bolero and carries a riding crop. He takes the audience through the various aspects of the ballet, like “The Surplus Girls in the Moonlight”, “seaweed arms”, the “virility splits”, the classic “Let’s Get Married” dance and the “Nobody Loves Me All Fall down” movement. No wilting violets these, these swans have serious attitude!
In the same interview, Masilo stated: “I try not to have a distinct signature because that will put me in a box and that’s boring. I like to challenge myself. Many choreographers get into the pattern of using the same steps to different music and I think that’s lazy choreography. It should change all the time.
With her Swan Lake, Masilo takes ballet and turns it on its head with gentle send-ups of the traditional swanlike movements like the classic bent wrist and hand depicting a swan’s neck and head. It’s irreverent and deliciously funny but at the same time there is evident respect for the original work and that of the Dying Swan which is also featured. Gasps of amused (or horrified!) recognition came from the cognoscenti and those who know the ballet well.
Instead of being smitten with Odette, this Siegfried’s attentions are firmly focused on Odile who happens to be a man, bringing a new twist to the eternal triangle. Fouettés, jetes and pirouettes are juxtaposed with traditional African movements and contemporary dance, all seamlessly mixed to make a believable whole. You’ll never see Swan Lake in the same light again. – Caroline Smart
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