Shanghai Ballet in Derek Deane's Swan Lake

[Kevin Ng]

The Shanghai Ballet gave two performances last week at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre of a new production of "Swan Lake" which was premiered during the Shanghai International Ballet Competition last August. This production was supervised by Derek Deane, the former artistic director of the English National Ballet.

Hong Kong audiences had already seen Deane's arena version of "Swan Lake" which ENB performed at the Hong Kong Convention Centre in 1999. But Deane last year did another version of "Swan Lake" for ENB which is not in the round. I saw it once last January at the London Coliseum led by Thomas Edur and Agnes Oaks. It is this more recent and more satifying production that Shanghai Ballet acquired. Peter Farmer's beautiful sets and costumes have been faithfully reproduced.

The choreography mainly follows the Royal Ballet's previous production based on Nicholas Sergeyev's notations. Deane has also included two gems by Ashton, namely his Neapolitan dance in Act 3, as well as his pas de quatre in Act 3 which here replaces the pas de trois in Act 1. I don't understand however why the traditonal pas de trois hasn't been retained. Prince Siegfried has a solo at the end of Act 1 choreographed by Deane, which is inferior to Nureyev's choreography in the Paris Opera Ballet's production. The last act's choreography is entirely Deane's, while it would have been preferable if he had used Ashton's choreography which is more poetic.

Overall this Shanghai production by Derek Deane is superior to the Hong Kong Ballet's production by Stephen Jefferies which was just revived here in September. It is more coherent both in terms of the choreography and drama. The Shanghai Ballet is a good regional company, and its corps de ballet has a stylistic uniformity missing from the Hong Kong company.

The Swan Queen on the night I saw was danced by Fan Xiao-feng, who is temperamentally more suited to Odette than Odile. She threw in some double fouettes in the coda of the Black Swan pas de deux. Her Prince was Sun Shenyi. In his variation in Act 3, Sun finished all his three double tours en l'air in a clean fifth position, which was impressive.

[ December 19, 2001: Message edited by: Kevin Ng ]

[vrsfanatic]

Thank you Kevin for such a lovely review. It is always so nice to read your very descriptive reviews. Please keep them coming!