SWAN LAKE
The first act carefully lays out all the elements of a Jungian coming-of-age story: the hero, Prince Siegfried, is about to celebrate his 21st birthday, attended by an ineffectual father figure, his former tutor Wolfgang, who is too old to dance. The men and women of the court also attend the prince, entertaining him with a rather stuffy Renaissance dance. The peasants who dance for him are much more entertaining, but even the best peasant dancer cannot be taught courtly manners. Here the borders of the prince’s life are defined: the instinctual, earthy life of the peasants, and the pretty, gentle life of the aristocrats.
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The prince’s cold, distant mother sweeps in to tell him that at the ball the next night he must choose a wife, pushing him into the existential crisis that fairy tales delineate so quietly. Though the prince feels trapped by his mother’s demands, he will not disobey her: forced to marry an aristocrat, the best he can hope for is a gentle wife who will be good to him and his children. But the prince yearns for the earthy life, for a sexy wife who will bring him pleasure. Trying to find a way out of this trap, he watches his best friend Benno dance and flirt with two women, seeming to choose one of them, then the other as she regains Benno’s attentions. Their dance ends with both women onstage, the rejected one kneeling but still near Benno, the favored woman in his arms. But the prince cannot flirt so heartlessly and rejects Benno’s solution: he cannot treat love as an art or a game. He then does what any boy in his shoes would do: he runs away. Seeing a flight of swans, he rouses his friends to go hunting.
The machinery of Swan Lake’s plot prevents any genuine consideration of the idea that earthy beauty might be equal to transcendent beauty. Odile is the evil sorcerer’s trick–a tasty morsel intended to distract the prince. She runs away, and the prince runs after Odette to try to redeem himself. But it seems she can’t forgive him, and she throws herself off a cliff. The prince follows her.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Mira.
