American Ballet Theatre
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There are few pas de deux more romantic than the two ABT plucked from Swan Lake, choreographed by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov in 1895. In the first the White Swan, Princess Odette, who’s been changed into a swan by the evil sorcerer Rothbart and can only become human for a brief period at midnight, dances with Prince Siegfried, who discovers her at this hour. This is a passionate and painful pas de deux, for they fear that they can never be truly together. In the second Swan Lake pas de deux, the sorcerer’s daughter Odile impersonates Odette as a Black Swan and tricks Siegfried into believing that she’s his love. In their dramatic dance Siegfried’s joy at being reunited with his lover is undercut by Odile’s joy at having tricked him. In both dances, however, romantic love reigns supreme, and performances hang on the individual dancers’ abilities to convey that love.
Julie Kent danced a flirtatious, seductive, and ultimately jubilant Black Swan. Her phrasing was almost perfect, adding tremendous depth to her character. The Black Swan may be an evil person, but Kent made her a real person–a quality only the best dancers are able to achieve. Her partner, Charles Askegard, was less compelling. Too intent on technique, he rarely moved beyond it to let his character emerge. Even when the choreography suggested an emotional state, Askegard plowed through as if afraid he wouldn’t make it to the next phrase.
Unfortunately, Kudelka ventures no farther than this. Each of the four movements (in Tchaikovsky’s Souvenir de Florence) is a repetitive variation on a theme: women are trapped in uncaring, abusive relations with men, and men are trapped in their own self-perpetuating roles. Most compelling is the second movement, in which a lone woman (Marianna Tcherkassky) allows herself to be passed passively and painfully from one man to another. Their movement is sexual and possessive. She is their object. When she tries weakly to escape, they instinctively bring her back into the circle, and she succumbs.
