TV REVIEW : Makarova’s ‘Swan Lake’ on A&E;, Nureyev’s ‘Nutcracker’ on Bravo

We took the great Kirov defectors for better or worse, allowed them to revise classic choreography and control our ballet companies--as long as they kept dancing.

Some of the cost can be glimpsed on two cultural cable channels this week as Arts & Entertainment presents Natalia Makarova’s “Swan Lake” and Bravo offers Rudolf Nureyev’s “Nutcracker.” Each is an American television premiere and, no, Makarova and Nureyev do not dance.

Makarova’s “Swan Lake” for English National Ballet (a company previously called London Festival Ballet) is scheduled at 6 and 10 tonight on A&E.; The first Bravo showing of Nureyev’s Paris Opera Ballet “Nutcracker” takes place Sunday at 2 p.m. (again at 11:30 p.m. Sunday, and 7:05 p.m. Monday).

Both Makarova and Nureyev were raised in a Kirov regime that honored the name of Marius Petipa but offered its dancers mostly corrupt choreographic texts--and still does. Their versions of these two Petipa/Ivanov classics reflect Kirov values in everything from the elimination of mime to irresponsible changes in Tchaikovsky’s scores.

Designed by Gunther Schneider-Siemssen, the “Swan Lake” wallows in Teutonic imagery a la Ludwig II, with swan-candelabra all over the palace, plus feathery shapes lurking in the landscape.

The plot remains intact, but the text is hardly traditional. Adding her own choreography to that of Ivanov (uncredited), Petipa and Frederick Ashton, Makarova expands the dancing in Act I (though she cuts the pas de trois), drops all but one of the Act III national divertissements and resequences the second act.

Such tinkering might have been tolerable had Makarova passed her profound understanding of the ballet to a new generation of dancers. That hasn’t happened. Canadian ballerina Evelyn Hart dances Odette/Odile with faultless authority, but the astonishing metaphysical rapport that Makarova achieved with Anthony Dowell and Ivan Nagy isn’t even attempted here. Hart and Peter Schaufuss (Siegfried) are polished professionals, but their partnership lights no fires.

As Rothbart, Johnny Eliasen has nothing to do but flap his wings through cheesy TV special effects courtesy of director Thomas Grimm. However, Martin James is a buoyant Benno and conductor Graham Bond leads an urgent, stylish performance by the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra.

Nureyev’s “Nutcracker” uses the full resources of the Paris Opera Ballet and company school, as well as palatial Directoire-era sets by Nicholas Georgiadis. Michel Queval leads an unusually elegant account of the score. In the leads, Elisabeth Maurin and Laurent Hilaire are very beautiful and very accomplished.

But it’s hopeless. The early (party) scenes are utterly without distinction and the later (dream) sequences utterly perverse. From the moment when the mice rip off Clara’s dress and fiddle under her petticoats, you know you’re in for it.

In this nasty, psychosexual “Nutcracker” it is mysterious old Drosselmeyer who becomes the handsome prince of Clara’s dreams (she tries to leave him, but he forces her back to him with magical hand-passes).

In Act II, Clara continues to be menaced and mauled. Even after she awakens back home, Nureyev has her fleeing into the snow outside. We last see her huddled in a doorway, no doubt freezing to death. The accompaniment for this new finale, incidentally, is the mellow, end-of-party music from Act I.

Packed with difficult steps but without any sense of phrasing, Nureyev’s classical choreography is definitively, sometimes hilariously unmusical. (Watch the leg spasms suddenly erupt in the Grand Pas de Deux.) He created this “Nutcracker” back in 1967 and it’s been part of the price that companies and audiences paid to keep him happy. Nureyev was a great dancer in 1967. In 1989, we’re being vastly overcharged.