A night out at the ballet may once have been a privilege reserved for the upper echelons of society.
But today, it’s something you can do after work on a Thursday night, even if you know nothing about ballet and can’t afford seats worth more than my bills. That’s how I found myself at Manchester Opera House on Thursday night (January 16), enchanted and excited by the idea of going to see Tchaikovsky’s masterpiece.
It goes without saying that Swan Lake is a classic, perhaps the classic ballet.
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Set to Tchaikovsky’s hauntingly powerful score, the timeless story of love and evil has been played out on stages across the world – and for this weekend, it turns to Manchester Opera House to set the stage.
A word on that. After seven years in Manchester it is my great shame to say this was my first time inside the beautiful Opera House. It’s a setting that is both dated and still grand – you can imagine families of times gone by coming here perhaps once a year, if they were lucky, ready to be entertained by a mesmerising live performance. Today, much of the same allure remains.
The ballet has come to Manchester Opera House -Credit:Mergaliyev Classical Ballet
Perhaps this is where the draw of the ballet lies for those of us who are not well-versed in pirouettes and plies. It’s a chance to switch off your phone and forget, enchanted by a world behind the velvet curtain and the other-worldly movements of the talented dancers.
The music in Swan Lake is certainly a good place to start. Before the curtain even rose, Tchaikovsky’s famous score set the scene for a world where Tinder and Hinge are banished to the far off future – all that matters here is love and good versus evil.
Behind the curtain, the backdrops were reminiscent of a pantomime – not necessarily a bad thing, but perhaps lack the sophistication I might expect from a ballet. But, like in any performance, the make or break is the performers themselves.
Mergaliyev Classical Ballet’s production boasts a talented company of classical dancers brought together by Artistic Directors Yassaui and Sophie Mergaliyev. There’s no doubt that Swan Lake is a challenging production, and this was a company well up to the challenge.
The standout performance came from Nilay Tahiroglu as Odette/Odile, who didn’t put a foot wrong all night. This is a talent worth seeing, and a dancer who clearly inhabited her roles as both the pure and beautiful Odette and the evil and malevolent Odile.
But sadly, much of the performance around her fell short of her impressive performance. The dance of the cygnets – easily one of Swan Lake’s most famous sequences – saw the young swans become bunched-up and out of time. The same could be said for many of the soloists – individually beautiful, but collectively out of symmetry.
The dance of the cygnets failed to impress -Credit:Mergaliyev Classical Ballet
When the evil magician Rothbart first appeared in a spangled leotard, I had to wonder what had gone through the mind of the costume designer. The wicked villain’s dancing was beautiful – but in nothing more than his bedazzled black leotard and hand-painted wings, it was hard to feel the kind of insidiousness one might expect from him.
It was a confusion only increased when soloists emerged wearing dresses with a hideos leopard-print trim in Act two. Don’t get me wrong, it can be iconic – but there’s a time and a place (and it’s probably not in Swan Lake). It’s fair to say it took me out of the illusion a little.
But as the show intensified, only three performances came to matter, and thankfully they were the three standouts of the night. Odette, Siegfried (Cristo Civancos Prunes), and Rothbart (Marek Bobosik) all embodied their parts – and as the curtain rose, I was glad I had left my phone off for the night.