DANCE REVIEW : A Strange Bird : Royal Ballet Brings New ‘Swan Lake’ to Costa Mesa

The Royal Ballet isn’t what it used to be. But what is?

When the lofty British company last appeared in Southern California a dozen years ago, the golden days of Ninette de Valois, Frederick Ashton and Margot Fonteyn were just beginning to fade. The dancers still had faces. The productions still had style. The grand tradition still survived.

The qualitative decline that followed has been well documented. It reflected the basic troubles that have recently plagued ballet everywhere, not just in London. Now, we are assured, the glories of yore are beginning to return.

That wasn’t altogether clear Tuesday night in Costa Mesa, when the Royal Ballet--now Anthony Dowell’s Royal Ballet--opened a weeklong stand at the Orange County Performing Arts Center.

The introductory vehicle was Dowell’s own staging of “Swan Lake,” which aroused considerable controversy when it was first presented in England four years ago. The former danseur noble had courted the controversy, it would seem, by trying to be conservative and progressive at the same time.

On one hand, he tried valiantly to produce a reasonable facsimile of the epochal choreography created by Petipa and Ivanov for St. Petersburg in 1895. To this laudable end, he enlisted the aid of Roland John Wiley, a noted Tchaikovsky scholar, plus choreological experts who translated the ancient Stepanov notations.

On the other hand, Dowell blithely ignored historical authenticity, moving the action from the vague never-never land in medieval Germany that we all know to the all-too-specific Imperial Russia of the composer’s time. Compounding the contradictions, Dowell engaged Yolanda Sonnabend to adorn the ultra-romantic ballet with decadent decors that fuse Art Nouveau excess with surrealist fantasy.

The result, like many a less pretentious “Swan Lake,” is a hodgepodge--interesting, to be sure, but a hodgepodge nevertheless.

Despite the inherent zeal for fidelity to the original and the laudable revival of significant mime passages, most of the choreography looks remarkably familiar. Contrary to authentic expectation, Benno is not permitted to serve as auxiliary porteur in the White Swan pas de deux. The most welcome restoration, perhaps, involves Ivanov’s hypnotic arrangement of the fourth-act waltz, in which the bewitched bird-maidens elegantly bemoan their lot in increasingly complex, increasingly arresting geometric patterns.

It is nice to see Ashton’s spiffy Neapolitan Dance which has been reinstated in the ball scene. David Bintley’s awkward waltz in Act I, however, must be a more serious anachronism. Not all the choreographic blanks have been filled in wisely.

The quasi-realistic updating creates a jarring visual context for this let’s-pretend saga. Dowell succumbs to cliche for its own picturesque sake, moreover, when he transforms the wily Rothbart into a crazed Carabosse who stalks the ball with an unlikely creepy-crawly entourage. Where are those palace guards, anyhow, when we need them?

Sonnabend’s bleak designs look like rejects for some untold “Tales of Hoffmann” at some modishly Expressionist Stadttheater in the provinces. There is no lake here, and in contrast to their leggy queen, the supporting swans are burdened with long, tattered, feathery tutus. The stage is cluttered with recurring abstractions, the least subtle and most florid of which can best be described as a huge gynecological symbol. As Drs. Confucius and Freud so duly noted, sometimes a doughnut is not just a doughnut.

For all its surface quirks, this “Swan Lake” might be salvaged by an ensemble of inspired virtuosos. Inspiration and virtuosity were in short supply, alas, on Tuesday.

Viviana Durante, 24, seemed oddly miscast in the dual role of Odette, the eternally innocent swan queen, and Odile, her ultra-evil counterpart. Roman born and British trained, she is tiny and fleet, a competent if not particularly supple technician. As Odette, she emerged chronically pert; as Odile terminally dainty. One waited in vain for pathos, for fire, for grandeur and for tragedy.

Irek Mukhamedov, former Bolshoi superman, partnered her with sturdy finesse as Prince (Czarevich?) Siegfried, and flew through the air with the greatest of ease in the relatively modest opportunities for bravura display allotted here. The chemistry between the impetuous cadet hero and fragile avian heroine, unfortunately, remained tenuous.

Derek Rencher, valued veteran of many Royal wars, did what he could with the Big Bird flutters and horror-movie histrionics imposed on Rothbart. For some reason, Genesia Rosato as Siegfried’s mom couldn’t give her boy a crossbow for his birthday, but she did enjoy a hysteria scene worthy of Lady Capulet at the end of Act III. Such stalwarts as David Drew, Gerd Larsen and Leslie Edwards brought nostalgic distinction to minor roles.

The elaborate pas de trois in Act I was deftly dispatched by Deborah Bull and Karen Paisey, rather spectacularly partnered by Errol Pickford (himself an heir apparent to the Prince’s shiny purple tights). Monica Mason, a major ballerina in the golden era and now assistant director of the company, led a lusty csardas divertissement.

The women of the corps de ballet danced with prim politesse. They didn’t dance with the discipline in depth, the unanimity of nuance and suavity of phrase for which this flock used to be celebrated. After many a summer--and a long tour--the swans may tire.