Review: Washington Ballets Swan Lake is finally at the Kennedy Center, more intimate and am
For all its moonlit beauty, “Swan Lake” can have an air of a military campaign. There are those rows and rows of identical swans in precise formation, and the propulsive rush and turbulence of the Tchaikovsky score. Not to mention the technical grandeur demanded of dancers in every role, from top to bottom.
Such a frank display of power leavened with poetry accounts for much of “Swan Lake’s” enduring appeal. Yet the signature feature of the Washington Ballet’s poignant, visually striking “Swan Lake,” which premiered Wednesday at the Kennedy Center Eisenhower Theater, is intimacy.
Intimate, that is, until the two leading dancers take over. The sensational pairing of Eun Won Lee as Odette/Odile and Gian Carlo Perez as Prince Siegfried lifted the ballet to dazzling heights. (Performances continue through Sunday with alternating casts.) Both dancers are powerhouses — Perez with a soaring jump and majestic line of the legs, and Lee with her unwavering balance and strength. Whirling through her whipping fouetté turns as the predatory Odile in the third act, could she have kept spinning till spring? I imagine so, and she’d keep poor besotted Siegfried in her clutches all the while, and us.
Lee is also disarmingly delicate, like something that could slip away into thin air. Her states of mind are light and transparent, too, flickering from fear to fascination and joy at her first encounter with Perez’s Siegfried. She’s an artist of the top rank, able to behave like water, air or fire by smoothly adapting her qualities of softness and steel to the moment.
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The Eisenhower stage seemed too small for these two stars, and at times too small for the whole production. An ensemble dance with several low stools, for instance, felt cramped. Even with his path cleared, Perez can all but leap from wing to wing. And Lee is such a standout, she seems to have arrived from another world. This returns me to the point about intimacy. Part of that is due to the theater itself: The Eisenhower is less grand than the Opera House, where a big ballet such as “Swan Lake” is typically performed. To be sure, the cozier stage dimensions lent the Washington Ballet’s production an appealing human perspective, rather than an epic and imposing one.
In a recent interview, Artistic Director Julie Kent told me about some of the research and preparation she poured into this work, before and during its two-year postponement because of the pandemic. Kent and her husband, Associate Artistic Director Victor Barbee, have included much of the traditional choreography by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov, while adding some of their own. The result is a work of lushness and vivid detail, despite the relatively modest cast size. (The beautiful costumes and sets are on loan from Ballet West.)
The swan corps, for example, is radiant here, especially in the fourth act, when they become a living reflection of the hot emotions and tragic consequences in this love story. Ashley Murphy-Wilson, Ayano Kimura and Ariel Martinez sparkled in the first-act pas de trois.
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Yet this production would be better served with more resources to expand it, and to even out what is now a somewhat unbalanced production. The time lost for training and artist development over the pandemic has been crushing, of course, but this production cries out for a more deeply, evenly developed cast. The Washington Ballet Orchestra, vibrantly conducted by Charles Barker, did a fine job, and live music is heartily appreciated, but more musicians are needed to do right by Tchaikovsky.
These are big, expensive steps, and obviously not immediately attainable. But the company deserves them. This lovely “Swan Lake” has ambition written all over it.
The Washington Ballet performs “Swan Lake,” with cast changes, at the Kennedy Center Eisenhower Theater through Sunday. kennedy-center.org.
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