Ballet Instructor's Newsletter (12-15-02): Swan Lake versus Bourne
Swan Lake versus Bourne
By Shahab Nahvi
For reference, I have summarized the two fairy tales discussed in this paper, the traditional version of Swan Lake and Matthew Bourne’s recent rendition, and have placed them at the end of this article. I recommend that you read them first.
Why does anyone knowingly attempt to break away from the standard? What is the impact of the medium on the fairy tale? Why is it so hard to see the fake from the real? Do we thirst for new things so much so that we are easily blinded by anything that seems to take new shape or new direction? As a culture, do we want to maintain some of our heritage for posterity? Or, are we going to get there and not know who we are because we lost contact with our past, except for a few scholars who embody the knowledge but are having a hard time finding a listener? Ironically, this is the best environment for enterprising entrepreneurs, who may or may not have any scruples, to take advantage of the circumstances. So many entrepreneurs enter this business and leave with bags of money while everyone else is left behind in the dust wondering what happened. Once these entrepreneurs have past into history and taken their position in it, it will be years before they are recognized for who they truly were. As I have come to learn more about the arts, I have found that art typically lies on the extreme ends of the scale, being either too hot or too cold—no medium. Hence, there are those who succeed and those who do not. If you take sides with the so-called winner, your self-worth somehow becomes attached to it and you might not later want to admit your mistake.
As a writer, when one fails to find a single term to describe a subject in a way that will allow it to be immediately recognized, using a combination of terms, for example ‘swan maiden,’ will allow the reader and/or audience member to have a pretty good idea what it is being described, even if he/she has never before heard these two words together. Swan Maiden: it is about a swan, a graceful bird, and a maiden, a female who is usually beautiful. (The swan maiden may or may not have characteristics that would be helpful in her journey.) Once one fails to describe the same character in the male form within a couple of syllables, then there is something wrong. No matter who the viewer is, educated or otherwise, he/she immediately searches in their vocabulary to try to describe and categorize the new character. But, when no known term quite fits, it is a pretty good indication that culture has a difficult time describing the swan maiden in the male form. Perhaps, this was one of the attractive parts of the problem that drew Matthew Bourne to create his 1995-1996 rendition of Swan Lake (6).
Matthew Bourne brought the story of Swan Lake directly into the 20th century, eliminating sorcery and instead most likely basing it on royalty life in England and where politicians are corrupt, morality is bent out of shape and twisted, and where belief in faith has no place. At the beginning of his story, we find the Prince as a youngster, clinching his swan doll, dreaming of an “incarnate swan,” (1) and forgetting about his mother, the Queen, who is the cause of his mental disorder. The story takes place in the Prince’s psyche, where throughout his life he sees the swan character as his hero. Bourne states that many audiences perceive the swan in different ways. Audiences are perhaps attempting to justify what they cannot accept—-homosexual eroticism—-and are, therefore, seeing the swan character as a “father figure, lost love, alter ego, unattainable ideal, sex object, or all of the above” (1). To the Prince’s surprise, he meets his perfect love, or what appears to be him, at a ball (party), finding him entertaining his mother, the Queen. He is, in effect, the representation of the Prince’s dream swan, who now appears to entertain others but not him. He is, in a sense, the black swan (in the original story, it was the sorcerer’s daughter), who eventually turns to the Prince and tries to woo him. Here, the two swans, in the traditional version and Bourne’s version, are almost compatible, but Bourne’s black swan (the 'Stranger') is wild, aggressive and his agenda is of a personal nature. Bourne’s black swan is even perhaps making use of the situation to show his control over the Prince. In this phase of Bourne's story, they are now in the real world and no one is manipulating them; there is no sorcerer involved who in the past was wronged and, therefore, puts a spell on the king’s daughter, making her half swan, half-human. Hence, it does not bring the audience to the verge of asking, or at least saying in their mind, ‘wait, she(he) is not the real swan.’ Since Matthew Bourne’s swan takes place in the Prince's psyche, his return to delusion might not be a healthy alternative. In fact, this is what Bourne is emphasizing and where the threat lies in his story. The fact that the Prince had ultimately met someone whom appeared to be similar to his object of desire, as scary as it might have been, at least he lived in the real world and not in his delusion. However, the Prince cannot accept the real world with its harshness and it becomes the cause of his death. Bourne states: “It’s a mind struggle for him, and basically he loses his mind and kills himself” (1).
There is an interesting point to be made: in Bourne’s Swan Lake, the Prince encounters the swan from the very beginning, which is contrary to most Swan Maiden fairy tales and folktales. Barbara Fass Leavy in her book, In Search of the Swan Maiden, states that “the meeting between the mortal man and the swan maiden frequently takes place well into the narrative” (2). In addition, by having characters of same sex Bourne takes out the potentiality that previously existed. Whether it is high art or not and whether one follows the original pattern closely or breaks away from it, one must continue to create some relation to the original. Just calling a story ‘Swan Maiden’ does not make it so.
Additionally, what is the impact of an all-male, in a previously all-female, Swan Maiden cast? A fairy tale normally demands the idea of opposition found in male and female typecasting in order to produce a desired duality, namely of male-female, right-wrong, this world-otherworldly and strong-fragile. In high arts not requiring spoken words, such as classical ballet, these oppositions play an extremely important role in helping the audience differentiate between characters and makes the fairy tale come alive for them. In essence, the use of opposition helps create a chain that binds the reader/audience member to the fairy tale/ballet emotionally. Even in the case of Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake, where all swans are male, in order to differentiate and add opposition he had to use gradational phenomena.
Although gender difference is a concept that plays a key role in the telling of a story, it is not the only one. “For example, the story of Pururavas and Urvasi [perceived to be the first Swan Maiden story] could not be interpreted as a love story at all were there not more in it than a contest for power between man and woman” (2). When the original Swan Lake ballet (1877) was choreographed on the fairytale of Swan Maiden, its choreographers and composer lived in a Christian world bounded by the morality of the time. Certain expectations were demanded that made the fairy tale meaningful for the audience. Baldesar Castliogne in his book, Book of the Courtier, makes reference to the manner in which one has to conduct him/herself in the court. And, it is this culture that is glorified in the classical ballet. It is the chivalry and love that ultimately saves the day. The heroic tasks and attempt of the hero to overcome all adversity keeps the audience captivated.
In [some] versions of the swan maiden story, the initial winning and subsequent recapturing of the wife (if she is recaptured) appear to chart the husband’s progress toward maturity, at least as a male-dominated society would define maturity, and his domesticating the swan maiden is part of a rite of passage by which he proves his manhood (2).
This rite of passage, succeeding in an heroic act such as capturing the swan, found in the original story, has been taken out of Bourne’s version: Bourne's Prince at the beginning of the story dreams of the swan. Therefore, this pre-existing notion eliminates the heroic act and, ultimately, the concept of surprise.
To understand high culture one requires understanding of symbols and it is here where society feels divided by those who understand and those who do not. It is a class division based on economy as well as education and which creates either a sense of belonging or of insecurity. Overall, in recent years society has attempted to close the gap by any means possible, even at the cost of disparaging or watering down the subject matter, so that no one may feel alienated. All attempts, then, are looked at in a positive manner, whether they have merit or not--gloves are off and anything goes. In the case of fairy tales, they are used to deliver, with full force and deliberate action, a propaganda message, taking in no regard for its storyline structure. Success is measured only by the amount delivered at the box office. It is this propaganda, based on morality, which is used by the “genius of the time”: the entrepreneur. These are the individuals, having good understanding of their time or a deep knowledge of their subject matter, who, intuitively or otherwise, are able to bend, manipulate and twist their instrument at will, and to create a seemingly new product out of what had existed before. But this statement is not always true. Matthew Bourne’s tampering with a fairy tale that is well known, let alone well established, requires from him more than what is stated above. It also requires guts or a lack of care. ‘Let’s just open the curtain and tell a story’ is his motto.
Bourne says:
If you're going to appeal to a bigger audience, you can't have scenarios in the program. You can't have pre-knowledge required. You just have to have the curtain go up and tell a story (1).
This, coming from a man who had never seen a ballet in his life until age eighteen and never performed in any serious dance company, nor followed any classical training, and who proudly states that he took his first ballet class at age twenty-two. Can it then be said that his impact is a fluke, a chance (accidental), an ability to hit the high note one time and reapply it, such as his remake on the Cinderella fairy tale? Furthermore, in order to legitimize himself and give weight to his work, Bourne, in a political move, associated himself with the Royal Ballet Company by hiring its principal dancers. “I thought it was important that we had someone who was, albeit very young, quite respected in the dance world. I needed that seal of approval” (1). Most often, these dancers are tired of performing known pieces year after year, tend to lash out and try to find a new way of expressing themselves.
But in his reapplication of success, Bourne is not alone. Disney has been making use of this concept (reapply what has been successful) for years and I would not be surprised if this is where Bourne got the idea. “In grade school he was directing song-and-dance shows, mostly versions of Disney films” (1). A good example of a ‘reapplication of success’ is Disney’s Cinderella II, which was recently released. Disney's original remained closely and faithfully with the Cinderella fairy tale we all know, whereas, the second was a poor attempt at bridging the gap of years gone by in order to bring Cinderella into the year 2000 with all its morality. Cinderella, in this second film, creates anarchy by closing the gap between the two class societies that meet at the final party she holds. And as such, Disney—trying to reach the mass market, those who pay their bills—tells them that now commoners and principality can co-exist and, thus, creates a false sense of security within the culture.
So, one would then have to ask, was Matthew Bourne moved from a personal knowledge and understanding of fairy tales, or was he playing the card known as taboo, throwing the dice and hoping for the best? The answer to that can be found in his recreation of the Swan Lake story. Reading his storyline, it should be able to stand on its own. In some respects, it should also show some sign of its former self—the essence of the original story. Therefore, there has to be some amount of tension that binds the story together. For example, if the Queen does not have a boundary and she seems to be drawn to any young fellow that passes her by, one does not, as an audience member, feel any attachment to her situation. When she comes face to face with the black swan, a dashing young man whom suddenly appears at the party and starts mingling, the audience feels that this is just another encounter and nothing more. There exists no tension, no opposition, so why should we care what happens to her character? In effect, Dance Magazine writer, Gus Solomons, Jr., misunderstood the relationship altogether, thinking that the Prince had an Oedipal relationship with his mother and, hence, the Prince was jealous when the black swan, appearing as human at the party, began to dance with the Queen seductively (3). The error is great, due to Bourne not creating the necessary tension for the character by using the original story's format, that even an educated and knowledgeable person was unable to differentiate the motives of the characters. Reviewer Mary Cargill for 'Ballet Alert' [newsletter] said that "The Black Swan...takes out a gun and shoots the floozy, to the apparent glee of the tutor" (7). John Ardoin for PBS in his review of Bourne's piece, stated that it was "the Prince [that] draws a gun and aims it at the Queen. Shots are fired, and the Girlfriend is hit" (8).
It is here that we have to question Bourne’s attempt on gradational phenomena, where one man is more masculine than the other. In other words, how feminine must one of the males be to create the opposition? If it is too feminine, it borders comical. If it is too masculine, it will not create enough tension/opposition. In an art form that is based on visual cues, the concept of gender speaks volume. It is like looking at black and white color. Because of cultural inheritance, replacing the female with a male could be an artistic flair to diminish that opposition (gradational phenomena). But, from Bourne’s communication with the LA Times, no such attempt is apparent (1). Then, one is left with the concept that he is merely looking for that which has not been done before, which brings us back to the concept of playing the taboo card. Before Bourne’s, an all-male dance company, Ballet Trocadero de Monte Carlo, performed Swan Lake, giving their impression of the swan by mimicking a female dancer—an example for the other side of the scale. But, Bourne fills the gap exactly in-between Trocadero and the original, not because it had never been thought of before or not done before (historically in 17th century theater, female parts were played by males) but because his work appeared at a time when no other significant ground-breaking work was surfacing and the art world was looking for a new way of looking at old concepts. This occurs whenever society is in-between two oppositions or is in a process of change and there is a sense or a fear that nothing new has occurred. This is the time that entrepreneurs find their knack and continue to use it until there no longer exists a market for it.
Val Bourne in an interview with Donna McDonald (1992): "Matthew, I know, has all kinds of wonderful ideas as to how he will take the company forward but I think that they are very much of their time. They are very much aware of the market. I fear that some of them are market led" (10).
To compensate for the absence of male and female, Bourne had to make the swans much stronger, less feminine. In his conversation with LA Times, Bourne stated that a swan is more masculine than feminine. For that very reason, I had another look at this creature, the swan. Both male and female swans, after one year, lose their gray feathers and gain white ones. They fly in unison (in flock), graciously, and sometimes at the speed of 45 miles per hour and in the water they follow each other in one straight line to their feeding destination. Yet, I still fail to see the masculinity that Bourne referred to. For centuries, poetry has portrayed these animals as not only beautiful but also feminine. It is perhaps that Bourne sees them as masculine because he has to give a reason for his propaganda. Therefore, one has to be cautious when watching such performances because most often techniques known to play on emotions are being used and what appears as artistic now are only later found to be a fraud after having lost their luster. Bourne in this interview went on to state that his fairy tale brings about the “universality” of “unrequited love, adolescent rebellion, family dysfunction, and the risk of chasing a dream” (1). However, this basically describes practically any fairy tale and fails to explain why a fairy tale that has such a commonality with others would create such an uproar.
In the original Swan Lake, the swan was magically transformed to whom she was, with the opportunity at any given time to be either one—a certain duality. But, in Matthew Bourne’s version, the Prince is doomed from the very beginning. It is he who draws sympathy, unlike in the original Swan Lake. Bourne’s story has become the Prince’s story, not the swan’s—it is he who dies to meet the dream swan. In his story, the swan is occasionally an absentee spirit, making it more belonging to the spirit world. In addition, the Prince meets his swan seemingly in the real world at the time when he tries to commit suicide at the lake.
To find a better fit for Bourne’s story, one should look into Russian folktales and fairy tales, being that Russia is the birthplace of the original ballet Swan Lake. Additionally, any attempt at making changes to the original story will cause it to deviate into another established story in the culture. In this case, Bourne’s revision of Swan Lake causes it to better fit Russian folktales of mermaids, called Rusalki. In Russian folktales, Rusalki are said to have been “souls of maidens who died untimely” (4) . Rusalka is not a swan maiden and she is categorized under ‘natural spirit,’ normally residing in a specific location, such as lakeside, and, hence, a folktale and not a fairy tale. They can be captured, live among humans, and yet are time bounded and at certain times of the year can vanish to where they came from. This is the duality that also exists with Bourne’s swan, where he attends the party and dances with the Queen. This concept can also be reversed and the human can attend in her world, as seemingly Bourne’s Prince is able to do. Rusalka can be evil, not unlike the male swan, with his ability to draw the Prince in and to give him what he momentarily needs and no more. She is said to have magical beauty to draw in the unsuspecting male. Occasionally, in some folktales she is able to change form to a swan.
Fishermen said they sometimes saw Marina Rusalka on the sands opposite Simbirsk. It would seem that a swan was swimming along quietly. It would come out onto the sands, flap and strike its wings, and turn into a beautiful woman, and tumble down into the sand as if dead. In the evening she frightened many people (5).
The similarity between Bourne’s Swan Lake and the Russian character, Rusalka, can be found in the idea of the swan doll (stuffed toy), which does not exist in the original swan lake. But, the concept of it exists within Rusalki culture, where each year, traditionally, a stuffed doll, made of hay, is drowned or torn apart at the site of a lake to appease Rusalki. This comparison is made to show that Bourne's Swan Lake story is far from being a Swan Maiden story and the fact that I have given this example does not imply that his story is a folktale. It cannot be a folktale because it lacks the concept of procreation, which is central to folktales (Olga T. Yokoyama, UCLA Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures).
If Chinen's argument is correct, then we need fairy tales (which he terms 'mythic stories') in our later years as we had needed them in our youth. We should then be respectful with the way we tamper with them in order to maintain the deep secrets and messages they bare. This is, in effect, the main point of this article.
The fairy tale genre may be uniquely appropriate for the insights. If spiritual innocence is the ideal of later life, then fairy tales are a fitting mode of communication. The medium matches the message. The magic of childhood returns later in life (9).
Swan Lake (Traditional Version):
The original Swan Lake/Swan Maiden starts at a gathering thrown by the Queen, at which point she demands her son, the Prince, to wed. Feeling not ready to do so, yet knowing that he cannot refuse the Queen, the Prince tries to drown his sorrow in the pursuit of a hunt. During this hunt, he sees a flock of swans flying overhead and heading towards a lake. When he arrives at this lake, he sees one of the swans gracefully attempting to land. It is the time of day when daytime and nighttime become equal. When the Prince is just about to release his arrow at it, the swan transforms into a beautiful maiden. She tells him of her dilemma, that a sorcerer put a spell on her and that she will only be freed from it when a young virgin promises his eternal love to her. Just as she finishes telling him this, the sorcerer appears. The Prince goes into action, attacking the sorcerer, but the maiden tries to protect him, explaining that with his death she and the other swans would also die. The Prince is now back home and his mother, the Queen, continues to try to persuade him to marry one of the beautiful maidens at their ball (party), who had come from all around the world. The sorcerer with his daughter(who resembles the swan maiden the Prince met earlier), is also in attendance. The Prince is put under a spell and renounces his oath to the swan maiden by promising his hand to the sorcerer’s daughter, whom he thinks is the swan maiden. The traitors are discovered, but it is too late for the swan maiden. Realizing his mistake, the Prince rushes to the lake, where he finds her and declares his love. But, it is too late, as she explains that by dawn she will become a swan forever and that she would rather die than live as a swan. The Prince joins her endeavor, breaking the sorcerer’s spell on her—if not in life, then in death.
Swan Lake (Matthew Bourne’s Version):
A young Prince living in the 20th century in a castle, with an absentee father and a mother (the Queen) duty-bound to the State and manipulated by her Secretary. The Prince, as a child, seeks comfort through his stuffed doll. When he gets older, because of a lack of needed support and attention as a child, he becomes a weak and misguided man, readily available to suggestions. He is introduced to a woman who is not from the same social class as he, hence, the Queen dislikes her. Nevertheless, he invites her to accompany him to the theater and this leads to a confrontation with the Queen. He departs from the group to go to a club, where he runs into the same woman who is now entertaining the old Secretary. An argument pursues and the Prince is thrown out of the club. Misunderstood by everyone, he attempts to commit suicide by jumping into the nearby lake. At that very moment, he is transformed and sees the dream swan that had been tormenting him throughout his life. His dream swan is protective of him--when other swans in the flock attempt to attack the Prince, the dream swan stops them. His dream swan takes a different form and the Prince feels as though he has found his soul mate. Since the Prince cannot get his mind off the dream swan, as is expected, the dream swan enters the party and starts to flirt with the Queen. The Prince, becoming frustrated and angered, pulls out a gun and threatens to kill his mother. To defend the Queen, her Secretary pulls out his gun and tries to shoot the Prince, misses his target and hits the Prince's girlfriend. The Prince is then taken to his room, drugged and left to calm down. Obviously, the mother is angry of the recent occurrence and seems cold. Once the Prince is left alone, the dream swan and his flock returns, but this time the flock turn on their leader once the dream swan starts attempting to comfort the Prince. The Prince, not being able to even find peace within his own psyche, dies broken. The Queen returns to her son's room, finds him dead and while she begins to show, for the first time, loving emotion towards him, there is a vision of the two (the Prince and the dream swan), embracing, hovering overhead.
Bibliography:
1) Hohenadel, K. (1997, April 20). Guys and swans. Los Angeles Times [Online]. Available: http://www.dance90210.com/swaninter.html [November 29, 2002].
2) Leavy, B.F. (n.d.). In search of the swan maiden. New York: New York University Press.
In Search of the Swan Maiden
3) Solomons Jr., G. (n.d.). Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake. Dance Magazine [Online].
Available: http://www.dancemagazine.com/reviews_archive/swan.html [November 29, 2002].
4) Moyle, N. (1986). Mermaids (Rusalki) and Russian beliefs about women. (n.p.): Slavica Pubs., Inc.
5) Ivanits, L.J. (1992). Russian folk belief. New York: M.E. Sharpe.
Russian Folk Belief
7) Cargill, M. (1998). Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake. Ballet Alert! [Online].
Available: http://www.balletalert.com/reviews/r98/bourne's.htm [November 29, 2002].
8) Ardoin, J. (n.d.). Matthew Bourne's "Swan Lake". PBS [Online].
Available: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/gperf/feature15/html/body_look.html [November 29, 2002].
9) Chinen, A. (1992). Once upon a midlife: Classic stories and mythic tales to illuminate the middle years (2nd ed.). New York: Putnam.
Once upon a Midlife: Classic Stories...
10)McDonald, D. (1992). The tapestry of British contemporary dance: Val Bourne in interview with Donna McDonald. Choreography and Dance, 3 (1), 27-39.
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