ballet-thriller
(recommended for people over 16 years old)
The evoked era in the performance coincides with the time of the original premiere of Swan Lake. At the same time the second half of the 19th century was also a period known for the spreading of mental hospitals; patients ‘possessed’ by animal spirits and treatments of mental illnesses by torture and other bizarre methods.
Our protagonist, the schizophrenic Odette struggles in one of these insitutions with other patients – she, in her imagination is a swan queen; she attends balls, goes to palaces, walks in and out between her past, present, and never-to-come future. The loneliness of the hospital room or the straitjacket can not limit the wing of fantasy. The straitjacket’s long sleeves ending in strings like maimed swan wings display the moment of transformation. She is no longer human, not yet a swan. She is no longer healthy, not yet living dead.
Around her the figures appearing on the one hand, as the characters of the original piece and on the other hand, they are patients or employees of the hospital. The mother of the Prince – a head nurse. Alexander – medic assistant. Siegfried – a young doctor who enhances kindness and patience towards his patients instead of using chains, violence and physical abuse. Rothbart – who hunt Evil using methods like a handful of medicines, binding to bed and head washing with cold water. Then suddenly a girl wearing a black dress appears from the free outside world – Odile, her great rival, and snugs herself in Odette’s fairy-tale-like dreams. In these visions she follows her as a black swan and wants to separate her from the young doctor, prince of her dreams. This is how reality and fantasy merge into a nightmare. Despite Rothbart’s desperate attempts he can not keep the beautiful girl rebelling against her fate sane. Instead of the reality of his physical captivity her final home will be the freedom of hallucinations: the swan lake.
Tchaikovsky’s life was also marked by fearful secrecy as he battled depression countless times, even tempting death. He created the ethereal White-, and the passionate Black Swan as projections of his sensitive, neurotic soul for self-healing and therapeutic purposes.But while in the classical ballet piece being a swan is a metaphor for slavery, in our performance it is for freedom and redemption.
„the victory of good over evil and of light over darkness”
