Metropolitan Opera House, NYC, July 14
There is a particular kind of disappointment reserved for a great company on an ordinary night: it’s not really failure, more like the sight of enormous ability held at half-throttle.
American Ballet Theatre’s Swan Lake on Tuesday — Kevin McKenzie’s staging after Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov, set to Tchaikovsky and led in the pit by Charles Barker — passed without any real mishap but also without much conviction. This is one of the finest ensembles in the world, and one felt throughout the evening how much more it had in reserve.
Some allowance is fair. New York is deep in a punishing, busy summer, and the company is near the close of a long season; the tiredness onstage read less as carelessness than as depletion. Still, Swan Lake asks for a quality of reverie, and that was the evening’s chief absence.
Chloe Misseldine’s Odette-Odile is a genuine talent still settling into a role of this scale. Her technique is really good: the arabesque on pointe is beautifully secure, and she has real musicality, stretching a phrase against Tchaikovsky’s line in a way that suggests she is really listening. But Chloe has a tendency to carry the head slightly forward of the line, which tells most in Odette’s first entrance (doesn’t seems right). Her Odile is fierce and commanding. It tips toward confrontation where the role wants seduction. This is a black swan who seems ready to best Siegfried in single combat rather than to lure him quietly over the edge.
Daniel Camargo’s Siegfried was, unfortunately, unsettled where the prince must look effortless. His partnering was attentive, but his landings turned unreliable coming out of turns.
The corps de ballet was the evening’s clearest casualty of fatigue. The lakeside acts rarely found unison; arabesques and piqués sat lower than they should, and the great architectural patterns lost their edges. Yet their footwork stayed clean and lines strong. These fine dancers must have been exhausted til this night.
In the pit, Barker did really well, very emotional and true to the Tchaikovsky spirit. Though the brass and the strings drifted apart in tempo more than once — enough to make one briefly anxious for the seams to hold.
Zack Brown’s handsome production, under Duane Schuler’s lighting, is showing its years. The white act’s tutus have lost a little of their crispness — one noticed silhouettes that no longer read as perfect discs — and a few passages of staging now land as dated rather than storybook. None of it is disqualifying; all of it contributes to a general sense of an institution running on reputation and muscle memory.
Nothing here was bad in the way that’s really bad. It was a competent, professional Swan Lake delivered by artists capable of a great one. The talent is unmistakable. On this hot July night, the care wasn’t.
