I know it’s a cliché to say this sort of thing, but it REALLY doesn’t seem possible that Matthew Bourne’s innovative re-imagining of that perennial favourite Swan Lake had its premiere thirty years ago. The buzz at the time considered whether it might all turn into a big, camp joke, what with the swans all being danced by chaps. It didn’t. Using Tchaikovsky’s original score and a set of modernised references to the traditional story line, it’s fair to say that Bourne’s version breathed new life into the classic and opened a new era of popular, non-elitist, narrative-based ballet performance. Its success was apparent from the opening night, and by 1997 it had inspired a television production and an extract included in the Royal Variety Performance, following up with national and international tours, a slew of similarly innovative productions from the same stable and a programme for training young dancers, known as Swan School. This latest, anniversary version features dancers risen from the ranks of this programme, and though there have been some changes over time, it still captures both Bourne’s original vision and the audience’s hearts. The long-ago fairy tale is transformed into a slice of modern royal scandal, with an eligible prince, an amazingly elegant, manipulative mother, a bimbo of a girlfriend and a scheming private secretary in place of the original’s malevolent magician. There’s lots of humour (a seedy nightclub is called The Swank Rag), paparazzi aplenty and a hilarious command performance of a Victorian-style ballet complete with moth-girls and tree trolls. At the centre of it, the stressed and confused prince is clearly being stretched to breaking point by the pressure of events, until Act Two takes him to the night-time Embankment where he finds wonder and acceptance among the boy swans, all feathery drawers, bare torsos and poetry in motion. The plot develops the tragedy of his inadmissible non-conformity, but that urban riverside scene of the swans wordlessly embodying grace and energy in their powerful masculine presence is what encapsulates the eye-opening magic of the performance.

Gail-Nina Anderson