Stephen Baynes Has Brought Psychological Colour and a Romantic Sensibility to His Version of Swan Lake

Adam Bull with artists of The Australian Ballet Photography Jeff Busby SOUND THE DEEP WATER S Stephen Baynes has brought psychological colour and a Romantic sensibility to his version of Swan Lake. Rose Mulready details his approach. Stephen Baynes describes his first experience of The Romantic era, with its exaltation of sensibility Swan Lake as his “Billy Elliot moment”. He saw and melancholy, its half-fascinated, half-fearful Act II of the ballet for the first time in Moscow, attraction to the wilder forms of nature, and its as part of a performance by the Bolshoi. Maya sternly militaristic courts, offered rich pickings Plisetskaya was Odette. Baynes, at twelve years when it came to making sense of Siegfried, the old, was so deeply affected by the music that lost and mournful prince at the centre of the when the family holiday moved on to London, he ballet. For both Baynes and Colman, Swan Lake begged to be taken to the full ballet at Covent is as much his tragedy as Odette’s; he also has Garden. “It was the most beautiful thing I more human complexity. As Colman notes, had ever seen,” he says. “But even “Siegfried changes; Odette doesn’t.” then I could see the problems with The two set out to solve one of Swan it. It’s a very problematic ballet.” Lake’s “problems”: why is the prince, discovered moping on the There are countless conundrums eve of his birthday, so gloomy, facing a choreographer who so eager to leave his home for creates a new version of the eerie solitude of the lake? Swan Lake. What cut of the music will be used? Sad or In a book of photographs by happy ending? Jesters or no the Hungarian Archduchess jesters, Benno or no? When Isabella, showing the family life The infant boy in Baynes was commissioned Archduchess Isabella’s photo of the Habsburgs around the turn to make a traditional version of of the century, Colman unearthed the ballet for The Australian Ballet, images of an infant boy buttoned into he shaped his vision of Swan Lake by full ceremonial regalia, complete with returning to the primary source of his fascination an elaborate frogged jacket and miniature boots. with it – Tchaikovsky’s score. Working closely “You look at that,” Baynes says, “and you think – from the project’s inception with designer Hugh what chance did he have?” Siegfried’s fears and Colman, Baynes decided to move the setting dilemmas – that of a Byronically sensitive young of his version to the 1890s: “The music drives man, haunted by his father’s death, brought up what the ballet is all about, and 19th-century by a grieving mother in a coldly formal court, and Romanticism so permeates every note that it’s reluctant to take up duties contrary to his nature impossible to ignore.” – began to take on solidity. © Rose Mulready FROM TOP: Amber Scott and Adam Bull with artists of The Australian Ballet Adam Bull in rehearsal with choregrapher Stephen Baynes Amber Scott and Adam Bull in rehearsal RIGHT: Hugh Colman working on costume sketches. OPPOSITE: Lisa Bolte as the Queen Photography by Lynette Wills As the psychology of the prince deepened, Baynes It was very important to me to ‘uncartoonise’ von all fell under its spell) and the Romantic association felt the necessity of making “all the characters Rothbart.” It was important, too, not to glaze over the of nature with the unattainable. “The lake represents around him more believable and understandable”. thinnest part of Swan Lake’s plot, in which Siegfried, something bigger than mankind, something that He expanded the role of Siegfried’s friend Benno, dazzled by von Rothbart’s magic, mistakes Odile for mankind can aspire to but never really achieve. And and introduced female friends. He delved into the Odette. Instead, Baynes’ prince is seduced by the this creature that is of the lake and lives in the lake character of Siegried’s mother, the queen, creating a enchanter’s daughter, and “thinking with his pants”, and comes from the swan is something unattainable.” back-story for her: “I wanted her to do more than just as Baynes sardonically puts it, he allows himself for drift on, present a crossbow and disappear.” She was an instant to forget his promise to Odette. Odette, who in Colman’s design wears a crown of a Russian bride, Baynes decided, come to a Prussian pearls, is more linked to water than to sky, and court, tolerated during her husband’s life, plunged into Siegfried then has been filled out and made three- recalls the vilas (a close relative of the wili!), the isolation and permanent mourning after his death. dimensional, with a history, a personality, and human rusalkas and undines of European myth: water spirits When the magician von Rothbart visits the court in Act fallibility, and Rothbart has been rescued from the that enchant human men. After all, the Act II pas de III, dazzling the prince with his scintillating daughter realm of pantomime. Odette, however, remains deux for her and Siegfried was originally a love duet Odile, he seduces the mother as much as the son; luminously mythical, despite her Colman costume, from Tchaikovsky’s discarded opera Undine. Like the using the music of her homeland, he touches long- which emphasises her womanly incarnation over her undine, who longs for a human soul and must marry to buried chords of emotion in her, leaving her as bereft avian one. She is, Baynes suggests, a character like get one, Odette longs to be released from the cycle of as Siegfried when the trick is revealed. Giselle – unchangingly pure, loving and forgiving, a bird-to-woman transformation. “I wanted to get across Romantic ideal of femininity. She is also unattainable, that that metamorphosis is actually incredibly painful Act III is the first time we see von Rothbart in Baynes’ and as such associated with the lake. In this version, to her,” says Baynes, and the ending he chose for his Swan Lake (his presence in the prologue and Act the lake isn’t just scenery; it’s the ultimate still water, ballet leavens the tragedy of Siegfried’s death with a II is subtly suggested). This solves another of the rooted deep in the psyche. Baynes says that “Hugh sense of Odette’s release. theatrical problems Baynes had with the ballet. In almost felt the lake was a character”, and it looms most versions, von Rothbart appears in Act II to throughout the ballet, visible even in the Act I court For a choreographer as musical as Baynes, the whisk Odette away from the prince. “And you think, scene. The prince is inexorably drawn to it, and it’s the decision makes sense. “It’s in the score,” he says, ‘why don’t you just shoot him with your crossbow?’ I site of his most important experiences: the burial of his “In the Wagnerian climax of the ending but then the have never really liked that sort of Batman character father, the discovery of Odette, his own death. Baynes glissando of the harp. It’s tragedy – but hope.” running around, that Disney owl. I think it’s a slightly points to the 19th-century obsession with Lake Como Rose Mulready is The Australian Ballet’s publications editor. pantomime thing that doesn’t resonate anymore. (Wagner, Liszt, Verdi, Shelley, Wordsworth and Byron .

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