Le Lac des cygnes

On the shore of a lake, Rothbart wants to exploit a fossil energy deposit. A young woman, Odette, blows to his plans; he turns her into a swan. Elsewhere, to a party, Siegfried opposes his father who intends to affiliate to Rothbart to build a factory on the shore of the swan lake.

As a contemporary choreographer, what does Swan Lake represent for you?

For me it is an Everest, a monument of dance. Facing it is a challenge in itself, experiencing it in a totally unexpected way, in full COVID, adds further stress to this creation.

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What do you retain of Marius Petipa's original ballet, Lev Ivanov to music by Pyotr Il'ič Tchaikovsky?

I retain the love story, the bewitching fairy tale, related to the transformation of a woman into a swan, while completely changing the role of the parents. In most versions of Swan Lake they are more like front characters, they dance little or not at all, they play a formal role. In my version, on the contrary, they are very important, they have several dancing parts, because they affect the relationships between the main characters. Siegfried's father is a rather tyrannical man, prone to abuse of power. His mother is protective, somewhat recalling Proust's universe. to By the way, it is rather amusing to see that in to la Recherche du temps perdu we find Swan and his lover Odette again! I have the impression that it was quite close to Swan Lake... Rothbart is always there, he is a magician when he wants to be, a very ambiguous character. Besides being a magician, he also has other social functions. He can represent exploitative businessmen or industrialists, who can be detrimental to our societies. Siegfried's father plays somewhat the same role without being a magician. It could be said that there is some kind of plan, a plot between them.

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And do you see a form of commodification of bodies? Because in a sense, already in the original libretto, Rothbart uses his daughter for deleterious purposes...

It is exactly that! In fact, the father and Rothbart agree to the marriage between the son and daughter in order to increase their own wealth.

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"The best tribute from make to Marius Petipa is to enter his creative process, to reinvent things." Did he remain faithful to Tchaikovsky's score?

I kept 90 percent of Tchaikovsky's music, including 90 percent from Swan Lake, and 10 percent from other works by the same composer. I chose not to use all the music from Swan Lake, which lasts for three at, wanting to tell things not found in the original libretto, I looked for other elements among his compositions and rediscovered Tchaikovsky. I thus explored the symphonies, the concertos for orchestra. The basis, the musical foundation, remains Le Lac, completed from excerpts from the violin concerto, overtures, symphonies...

Will we find elements from the Petipa/Ivanov choreography?

I found it interesting to rely on some choreographic features, like a ladder. As if I had arrived to an Oppidum and, on the foundations of old buildings, built a new city. For some parts, especially in the white act, I had a lot of fun. These are absolutely exhilarating moments, which I have treasured and tried to recover. In truth, the choreography does not follow Marius Petipa's at all, because I rewrote it entirely. So it is not a reworking, structurally and fundamentally it is an original choreography. And this is perhaps the best tribute from make to Marius Petipa, going into his creative process, reinventing things.

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Will Odette/Odile, i.e., the white swan and the black swan, be united in one role as in the current classic version?

It is a difficult role that requires opposite qualities, in terms of virtuosity, in terms of interpretation, a particularly intense work must be done to find a balance in the two characters, without giving up the necessary requirements.

Angelin Preljocaj

Interviewed from Agnès Izrine