da:ns Fest 2014: Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake is no lame duck

SINGAPORE — da:ns Fest is back in town and we know what you’re itching to ask: So what’s Swan Lake like when you have a bunch of men playing the swans instead of delicate female ballerinas in tutus?

Well, you get aggression, menace, mystery. They’re arrogant and tough. Beautiful and graceful, of course, but the kind that’s a bit terrifying, too. At times you think of birds of prey.

But the role-change is just one element that turns the classic Tchaikovsky ballet on its head here in Matthew Bourne’s oddball of a dance blockbuster (it’s done its West End/Broadway rounds, had a cameo in the movie Billy Elliot and has been revived).

You see, it’s not even technically a ballet — in fact, the naughty Bourne even decides to directly take a piss at the dance form and the stuffy culture that surrounds it at one point (a scene that parodies the romantic ballet tradition from which came Swan Lake itself, and the audience watching it). Elsewhere, you had disco and flamenco. Like punchlines or asides, a toy dog comes out and you briefly get a glimpse of a Warhol-like painting, too. Instead of a “Swan Lake” you get a “Swank Bar” where people boogie, shimmy and bob their heads dressed up like Elvis or the Village People. You get the idea.

This irreverence, this tongue-in-cheek humour, is employed in support of a Swan Lake that, instead of the tragic love story between Prince Siegfried and Princess-turned-swan Odette, has been sharply reimagined as a fascinating psychological portrait of a young man undergoing an identity crisis.

Swan Lake as fairy tale? Bah. Here, the Prince (Simon Williams) has got some Oedipal thing going on with his mother, the Queen (Stephanie Billers) — who’s a bit of a flirt and also disapproves of his ditzy Girlfriend (Anjali Mehra). Long story short (and a trip to aforementioned Swank Bar later), the despairing Prince finds himself by a lakeside where he encounters the testosterone-fueled swans led by alpha swan The Swan (Chris Trenfield).

The sequences involving the swan troupe are captivating — their otherworldliness not gossamer ethereal but one driven by animal instinct — and we imagine our looking-lost boy being as caught up in the sight as we definitely were.

But it’s the duet between him and the lead swan that signals a turning point in the piece. Trenfield, all sweaty and topless, is a commanding but cold presence and the pampered prince cannot help but be drawn to his magnetism. Is there a hint of homoeroticism? Perhaps, but as physical as the duet gets, the suggestiveness of it is not limiting and in fact expands into this darkly metaphorical moment, an attraction to the primal and the unknown, a seduction by the Id.

The fun factor eventually gives way to grim psycho-sexual tones in the second half as the prince descends into despair and madness, and the swans’ (and Mr Swan’s) initial beauty becomes even more sinister and spectral.

Actually, when you think about it, it’s probably got lots in common with that Black Swan movie. And, when you think about it again, with the recent Peter Pan at SIFA. They both have that surreal thing going on, they both have weird-looking bed props and they’ve both have two confused man-boys who want to be free and fly.

And with that, we flap our wings and The RAT’s da:ns Fest marathon begins. Next up: Poledancing.

Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake runs until Oct 12 at The Esplanade Theatre. Tickets from S$20 at SISTIC. For more details, visit http://www.dansfestival.com/2014/