A Review: When Swan Lake Soared—and When It Didn’t

At the Met, Gillian Murphy transcends time—even as Rothbart breaks the spell.

By Cynthia Dragoni

Attending a ballet like Swan Lake in a town like New York is like going to a party with friends you’ve never met. The classical ballets are laden with tradition—like attending an opera or a beloved play—and audiences are often there to see a particular dancer in a particular role. True balletomanes (the official term for ballet super-fans), having seen the ballets many times before are often familiar with the choreography, and with the nuanced—or glaring—differences between dancers’ interpretations. You’ll find these fans on parade during ABT’s Met season, where each year brings the rotating lineup of Swan Lake, Giselle and Romeo & Juliet. Although programming has thankfully become more mixed since Susan Jaffe took over following Kevin McKenzie’s 30-year tenure.

Last night’s performance wasn’t your usual Swan Lake—it was an important debut for one young talent and one of the final performances of a revered veteran ballerina. We witnessed potential and realized greatness partner each other, as if time itself had been cast in the roles.

Gillian Murphy, a ballerina translucent in both body and emotionality, is in her final season with American Ballet Theatre—after the better part of a three decade career. Murphy’s emotional and physical translucence is matched by her continued technical brilliance—a brilliance that has deepened, steeped, and long since merged with her dramatic abilities.

Gillian Murphy & Michael De La Nuez in rehearsal. Photo: Britt Stigler

Michael Dé La Nuez, in a rare, career-defining moment, stepped in for an injured Thomas Forster—Murphy’s longtime partner—to debut in the full-length role of Siegfried alongside our veteran prima in one of her last performances, in her most celebrated role. The contrast and tension could not have been more stark, and the air was palpably charged.

Murphy’s Odette filled the theater even before her second act entrance. We felt the temperature drop and any audience din fall silent. She appeared as if it were the first time—or perhaps the last time—she’d ever performed the role. Either way, it felt like the only time. She was fully expansive, owning both the character and the stage. Her Odette is honest, delicate, almost motherly—her love genuine, and her hope even more so.
In the story, Odile (the evil swan) is meant to resemble Odette so uncannily that the prince is fooled into betrayal. While many dancers play the dual role with a stark contrast—shifting from innocent, virginal Swan Queen to obviously seductive, bravura Odile—it often leaves the audience wondering how the prince could have been so easily fooled. Not so with Murphy. Nothing about her Odile is campy. She brings the same vulnerability she embodies as Odette but layers it masterfully with a manipulative quality of someone who knows she’s superbly impersonating the truth. The audience erupted into a mid–pas de deux standing ovation during the Black Swan. The thrill was real. It is a painful tragedy for the audience to watch an artist at the peak of her powers walk away from the stage. It makes me long for ballet productions to evolve into something closer to theater—or even to the multi-generational dance theater of Pina Bausch. We seek to tell and experience stories, and stories are not populated solely by 20-year-olds. Why shouldn’t dance evolve with the dancer?

Dé La Nuez, our freshly minted Siegfried, has the elegant good looks, height, and regal carriage of a proper ballet prince. He also has the acting ability and presence that, if fully developed, will make him a principal dancer. We saw glimpses of his fully realized self this evening. This prince was no irresponsible youth but a searching young man, brooding on meaning, love, and obligation. We felt his love for Odette and believed his bewilderment at his betrayal.
There was one lift in the second act pas de deux where it looked like she went up too quickly and the momentum might throw them both, but it was a momentary imbalance—and frankly, it added to the excitement of the evening.

Other standouts included corps de ballet members: Elisabeth Beyer in the pas de trois, whose nimble, charismatic lightness made the audience feel as if we were in on the fun; Yoon Jung Seo in Four Little Swans, who already possesses the gravitas of a ballerina beyond her rank; and Isadora Loyola as the Queen—beautiful and world-weary, as one would imagine a queen to be.

The only disruptions to the reverie were on the part of the production itself. In 2000, ABT’s former AD premiered an altered Swan Lake, more or less keeping the iconic sections but altering many of the lesser-known ones so that they make slightly less sense. For instance, why change the open swan arms from the second act corps entrance to closing and opening elbows? It adds no value.
This version also removes the jester from the first act, so instead of having the contrast between the pas de trois, a strong male solo, and a playful character, we get more couples dancing and a maypole scene. Sweet enough, I suppose, but missing texture and dramatic variety. Although, if this is the only version you’ve ever seen, it’s still quite enjoyable.
Rothbart, on the other hand—the antagonist—is a constant disruption to one’s suspension of disbelief. ABT’s world class artists can’t cover for this character’s camp. Formerly a magnetic and mysterious sorcerer, part man, part owl, part mercurial count—he was reimagined as a ram-ogre–green-bird hybrid. He’s neither dark enough to be scary nor absurd enough to be funny.

Then there’s the prelude’s ridiculous swan puppet, which looks so fake it’s embarrassing. Rothbart is seen visibly shaking the puppet—it’s supposed to look as if the swan is struggling, but instead, it resembles a scene from Sesame Street gone wrong. It seems like there could be an easy fix with today’s rapidly expanding tech. Can we project an image of the swan? Or have something—anything—other than a puppet being shaken by a visible human hand?

Puppetry aside, the performance was electric. The important parts of the ballet remain solidly intact in the skill and mythic beauty of its leads.

Gillian Murphy & Michael De La Nuez in rehearsal. Photo: Britt Stigler

Murphy is a ballerina who has transcended the evolution of the art form. She is an embodied bridge between the old guard and the new: the training of the old, reverent school; the glamour of the post-Baryshnikov years; the rapid development of phenomenal technique—all of it archived in her muscle memory. When she gives her final performance in a few weeks, we’ll lose—and yet somehow keep—everything she has given us. As time marches on, the next generation is on stage and in the wings, stepping into the world, the roles, the costumes she lived in and elevated.