American Ballet Theater Performs The Classic "Swan Lake"

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Monday, 17 July 2023 15:36

Written by Jack Angstreich

Skylar Brandt and Herman Cornejo in Swan Lake. Photo: Rosalie O’Connor.

At the Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center on the evening of Thursday, July 13th, I had the incomparable pleasure of attending a superb—at moments even transcendent—presentation of American Ballet Theater’s beautiful production of the magnificent, immensely popular Swan Lake.

The ballet would be immortal if only for Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s incredible score—here expertly conducted by Ormsby Wilkins—one of the greatest in the repertory. The dazzling choreography is by former Artistic Director Kevin McKenzie after that of the legendary Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov. The attractive sets and wonderful costumes are by Zack Brown, with effective and at times brilliant lighting by Duane Schuler.

The exceptional primary cast was notable above all for the extraordinary Skylar Brandt—who enthralled the previous week in the title role of Giselle—as Odette-Odile; she astonished in probably the finest of her many performances that I have seen. Her partner in the less spectacular role of Prince Siegfried was the outstanding Herman Cornejo—one of the best male dancers in the company and who also excelled in Giselle—and his brilliant solos in Act III were virtually a model of perfection. Roman Zhurbin and Andrii Ishchuk were both admirable in the two incarnations of von Rothbart, the evil sorcerer.

The secondary cast was also uniformly exemplary and I will for reasons of space name only the most prominent. Anabel Katsnelson, Erica Lall and Tyler Maloney (who also played Benno, the prince’s friend) together danced the delightful Pas de Trois in Act I. The episode of the Cygnettes in Act II is one of the most thrilling in the ballet and it was scintillatingly realized here by Zimmi Coker, Nicole Graniero (replacing Breanne Granlund), Betsy McBride, and Luciana Paris while the indelible dance of the Two Swans was enchantingly executed by Sierra Armstrong and Fangqi Li. The main roles in the exquisite divertissements of Act III were memorably performed by: Léa Fleytoux as the Hungarian Princess, Lauren Bonfiglio as the Spanish Princess, Rachel Richardson as the Italian Princess, and Kanon Kimura as the Polish Princess; Paulina Waski and Duncan Lyle in the Czardas; Isadora Loyola, João Mengussi, Paris again, and Patrick Frenette in the Spanish Dance; and Carlos Gonzalez and Melvin Lawovi in the Neapolitan Dance. The non-dancing roles were played by Nancy Raffa as the Queen Mother, and Alexei Agoudine as Wolfgang, tutor to the prince (and as the Master of Ceremonies in Act III). The superior corps de ballet was laudable on the whole and sometimes sublime—as at the conclusion—if occasionally slightly under-rehearsed.

The artists received an unusually enthusiastic ovation.

Ballet Theater’s summer season concludes the following week with a powerful production of Kenneth MacMillan’s terrific Romeo and Juliet with a magisterial score by Sergei Prokofiev.

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