Oregon Ballet Theatre opens its 34th season this Friday, Oct. 6, at the Keller Auditorium with Swan Lake, as staged after Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov by former company artistic director Christopher Stowell. This beautiful production, with sets by Fillipo Sanjust and costumes by Sandra Woodall, premiered in 2006, with Yuka Iino dancing Odette/Odile. Iino was lovely in the role, technically and dramatically, and even better when she danced it again in 2013: Her interpretation of Odette was lyrical, sad, tragic.

But it was Alison Roper, in a later performance, who was one of the best Odette/Odiles I’ve ever seen — and I’ve seen more than a dozen productions of this ballet performed live, and many more on video. I’ve given a lot of thought over the years about just why, apart from her technical proficiency and her gifts as an actor, and have concluded that she made Odette and Siegfried’s sad story not so much about love as about freedom. She, and Stowell, made it a ballet for our time.

Seventeen years later, our freedom as a culture to choose the art we look at, the music we listen to, the books we read, the dancing we watch, the way we raise our children, and yes, whether or not to have children in the first place, are all under threat. Swan Lake continues, and how, to be a 21^st century ballet.

Absolutely, it’s  a 19^th century classical romantic ballet, one of the troika of Tchaikowsky/Petipa story ballets (the others are The Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker) that are indispensable to ballet companies in this country and all over the world, in part because they have what marketers refer to as name recognition, but also because they are packed with opportunities to DANCE, none more so than Swan Lake. The glorious music both creates and supports the dancing, delighting and moving the audience in the process.

The story is as old-fashioned as it gets. It’s a tale of princesses who are women between midnight and dawn, and swans the rest of the time, held in thrall by an evil, very evil, sorcerer. Nothing will free them unless, to quote George Balanchine’s Complete Stories of the Great Ballets, “a man should love their queen, Odette, marry her and never love another.”  

Prince Siegfried, the man in question, when in Act Two he encounters Odette the first time, has just been told by his mother that he must marry, and that means relinquishing the freedom to do just as he pleases. Tactlessly, she breaks this unpleasant news at his 21st birthday celebration, which in Act One takes place in the palace garden, and in time-honored European tradition, he drinks and dances with the peasants and the staff, including his tutor. That act ends with him leaving the scene, chasing after a swan or two he’s spotted flying overhead, wielding a shiny new crossbow, given him by his mum.

Siegfried falls deeply in love with Odette, pledges to love no other, ever, and to marry her. Dawn breaks. Von Rothbart, the unspeakably evil sorcerer appears to gather up the swans, and Siegfried, understandably confused, returns to the palace for his official 21^st birthday ball, where he must do his duty and choose a bride.  

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As in Sleeping Beauty, there are party crashers who spoil everyone’s fun. Siegfried is seduced by Odile, Von Rothbart’s daughter, and chooses her as his bride. At that moment, Odette appears in a vision, extending her arms toward Siegfried in a fashion that breaks your heart, and nobody at the end of this tale lives happily ever after. In Stowell’s version, Siegfried is not permitted to die for love and thus achieve happiness in the afterlife with Odette.  He must live with what he has done, and he knows it: The last act concludes with him alone, on stage, sobbing. He will never be free of the knowledge of what he has done.

Since the end of August, OBT’s dancers, principals,  soloists, and corps members have been learning their roles and polishing their performances, coached by Stowell, rehearsal director Lisa Kipp, artistic director Dani Rowe, and faculty members from the School. Stowell, who is based in Seattle, arrived on the 28^th, and on the 29^th I paid a visit to the studios to speak with him and watch a rehearsal. I’ve watched him rehearsing Swan Lake before, and I love seeing him demonstrate Odette, the boneless port de bras, the agitated bourrées, the swift pirouettes. In the early stages of rehearsal he often does these better than the dancers, and that day was no exception.

Before rehearsal I asked him what changes, if any, he was making in a production OBT has not performed in a decade. “I’ve made a few very small cuts in the music, maybe a minute or two,” he told me. “And I’ve taken out a bit of the mime, made it part of the movement.  In 2023 we want a danced performance of Swan Lake.”

That’s the Bournonville approach to mime, where it is always part of the dancing, and thanks to former OBT artistic director Kevin Irving, who programmed Napoli in 2018, and Peter Franc who programmed  La Sylphide last season, these dancers know very well how to do this seamlessly.

As I walked past the big studio to get to the small one where potential Odette/Odiles were to be put through their paces I saw Lisa Kipp — who as executive rehearsal director is responsible for organizing all rehearsals, no mean task for a big ballet like this one — drilling the swan corps. Already they were looking confident and, even in rehearsal clothes, swanlike. Rehearsal had started when I arrived at the door of the smallest studio, with Irina Golberg at the piano, infusing Tchaikowsky’s second-act music with Russian soul, and Rowe and Stowell at the front of the room. 

I settled myself on a bench outside the glass doors, in the company of two professional division students from the school, who were sewing ribbons on pointe shoes while they watched — and likely dreaming of someday dancing Odette/Odile themselves.

Inside the studio, Jessica Lind, Carly Wheaton, and Eva Burton, none of whom have danced the role before, were thoroughly in the zone, the lake zone that is. Their port de bras were already swanlike, if not quite enough to suit Stowell and Rowe, who bantered good-humoredly as they coached. “Do swans have shoulders?” one of them asked, while the other instructed the dancers to initiate the movement with the shoulder rather than the wrist. Earlier, Stowell had told me how happy he was that Rowe was with him in the studio every minute, and they clearly enjoy working together.

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All three dancers made the cut, and based on their performances in other classical works, I’d like to see them all. Lind will dance opening night, and at the Sunday matinee, partnered by guest artist Luke Ingham, a principal dancer with San Francisco Ballet, who is also Rowe’s life partner. Wheaton gets her chance to shine (as she certainly did in this rehearsal) on stage on Saturday night, dancing with Brian Simcoe, who danced marvelously at a matinee performance in 2013, and at the matinee the following Saturday. Burton dances this defining ballerina role with new soloist John-Paul Simoens the second weekend, on Friday the 13^th and again closing night.

All of these dancers will alternate in the pas de trois in Acts One and Three, and the corps members also perform many different roles.  Those three intermissions are needed for costume changes as well as a chance to breathe!

All performances will be accompanied by the OBT orchestra, under the baton of resident music director and conductor Enrique Carreón-Robledo, who also conducted last season’s performances of La Sylphide.

 And all casting is subject to change, so be sure to check OBT’s website before you go. 

Oregon Ballet Theatre’s ‘Swan Lake’

• Where: Keller Auditorium, 222 S.W. Clay St., Portland
• Running time: Two hours and 55 minutes, including two 15-minute and one 10-minute intermission.

Tickets/dates/times:

• Friday, October 6 | 7:30 PM
• Saturday, October 7 | 7:30 PM 
• Sunday, October 8 | 2:00 PM
• Friday, October 13 | 7:30 PM
• Saturday, October 14 | 2:00 PM 
• Saturday, October 14 | 7:30 PM

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