The Australian Ballet, Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff
By Jann Parry for The Observer.
The Australian Ballet, returning to the UK after a 12-year gap, brings an account of Swan Lake glamorous enough to convince sceptics that ballet can tell a contemporary story as well as a mythical one. The 70-strong company, which opened in Cardiff, comes to the London Coliseum this week, head-to-head with the Kirov's iconic Swan Lake, at the start of its summer season. The Australian version, by Graeme Murphy, is more like Matthew Bourne's radical all-male revision of the ballet, although Murphy retains the swan maidens (and their pointe shoes).
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Swan Lake
By Judith Mackrell for The Guardian
Just when it seemed that Royal love triangles were the oldest news, Australian Ballet arrive in Britain with a Swan Lake blatantly inspired by the three-in-a-marriage story of Camilla, Charles and Di. Choreographer Graeme Murphy has re-cast the ballet so that its heroine Odette becomes the innocent bride of playboy Prince Siegfried while her twin nemeses Odile and Von Rothbart are conflated into Baroness von Rothbart the Prince's older mistress who stops at nothing to dispatch her fragile rival.
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Dipping their toes in the lake
For The Daily Telegraph, Ismene Brown reviews Swan Lake by the Australian Ballet at the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff.
One day soon, I hope, the Maryinsky/Kirov Ballet will research, fix and preferably copyright the authentic 1895 version of Swan Lake, and so-called choreographers will just have to stop tinkering about with this icon of poetic dance.
For its welcome visit to Cardiff and London, Australian Ballet has whipped up plenty of publicity froth over the possible Diana-Charles-Camilla congruences in their 2002 version by Graeme Murphy, but it's a relief to find nothing so vulgar, merely that staple situation of classical ballet and Jerry Springer, the man torn between two women.
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