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SWAN LAKEAmerican Ballet Theatre at Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center; (212) 362-6000. Season runs through July 15.
THE words "romantic" and "efficient" rarely cozy up together in the same sentence. Yet both apply to Kevin McKenzie's fascinating Gothic staging of "Swan Lake," which returned Monday night to the Metropolitan Opera House.
What this American Ballet Theatre version of Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov's 1895 staging of that Tchaikovsky chestnut has, above all, is choreographic and poetic coherence.
The story of Prince Siegfried falling in love with Odette, a princess turned into a Swan Queen by the wicked sorcerer Von Rothbart, and then tricked by Odile, the sorcerer's daughter-turned-facsimile of Odette, is a metaphor for the familiar Madonna/Whore syndrome.
It even ends with a suicide - which lets Siegfried and Odette die happily ever after, while all the other swans go home to roost, presumably to be changed back into young maidens.
The choreography of this version includes bits and pieces from all over, with little more than a third dating from the 1895 original. But it definitely works. It's efficient and, helped along by Zack Brown's stylish sets and costumes, one of the two or three best stagings of the ballet in the world today.
The first of this season's casts was led by ABT's enormously popular team of Maxim Beloserkovsky as Siegfried, an elegant prince of ballet's noblest lineage, and his real-life wife, Irina Dvorovenko, a powerhouse in the dual role of Odette/Odile.
The quality of the production is to be found not only in its two principal dancers, but just as much in ABT's total commitment to the ballet's oddly serious yet magical fantasy.
Marcelo Gomes proved masterly as the seductive Von Rothbart, while Isaac Stappas was nicely slimy as Von Rothbart's monstrous alter-ego. Herman Cornejo as Benno led, with unparalleled virtuosity, the first act pas de trois joined by Xiomara Reyes and Yuriko Kajiya.
All in all, this is as fine a "Swan Lake" as you'll find anywhere. ABT is on a roll.
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