Dance Review by Clive Barnes

ABT’S GLORIOUS "SWAN SONG"

What can one say? Goodbye, old friend? Thanks for the memories? We’ll miss you? What?

The unexpected news that American Ballet Theatre’s performance of Swan Lake at the Metropolitan Opera House on Tuesday night was to be the last before the next millennium (Don’t get too excited - it actually adds up to only two seasons swan-free) has left me almost at a loss for words.

I was there at the beginning - at its premiere 30 years ago in Chicago, when ABT first danced it, with Nadia Nerina partnered by Royes Fernandez. And the Queen Mum was played - of course - by Ballet Theatre’s founding empress, Lucia Chase.

Staged by David Blair from Britain’s Royal Ballet, it was basically the authentic 1895 Ivanov/ Petipa St. Petersburg version, as notated by Nicholas Sergueeff.

And with a few odds and bobs of changes, it has basically remained the same for three decades-apart from a few seasons when the company gave some kind of disastrous contraband version.

Presumably, when it returns in that newly glamorous year 2000, it will have new scenery and costumes - How about considering designer Desmond Heeley? - but I do hope that its integrity remains integrated.

This is now, together with the Royal Ballet’s production, the most accurate version of the 1895 choreography in captivity, and it would be a dance tragedy to lose it.

Yes, over three decades of hard wear-and-tear, the old Swan Lake had gotten a little shabby and long in the decorative tooth, but at least this last hurrah was handsomely cheered by a splendid cast led by Nina Ananiashvili and Julio Bocca.

Ananiashvili, full of Bolshoi nuance, makes certain that Odette/Odile is portrayed as two aspects of the same eternal feminine ballerina, while still maintaining sharp-etched dance differences, so her tragic Odette is lambent, while her Odile glitters.

Bocca’s strongly acted, love-driven Prince Siegfried is today, with its perfect partnering, a model of powerhouse classical style, impeccably danced yet with no sacrifice of the breath-grabbing, risktaking bravura that was always his hallmark.