New Zealand Listener – March 02, 2018

56 LISTENER MARCH 10 2018

by FRANCESCA HORSLEY

T

he YouTube trailer of Michael

Keegan-Dolan’s Swan Lake shows

a dancer desperately flapping

huge wings strapped to her arms,

a fierce man shouting, inspired

footwork to lyrical Irish music and masses

of floating white feathers. It is raw, com-

pelling and intense. There is not a pointe

shoe in sight.

In Loch na hEala, or Swan Lake, Keegan-

Dolan has used one of the great ancient

myths of Irish literature, the Children of

Lir, to examine themes of transformation,

capture and muteness. Although these

are themes in Tchaikovsky’s ballet, the

choreo grapher says from Ireland, “Swan

Lake is one of the great classic myths

found in many European countries. It is a

little bit strange that we associate the story

with Tchaikovsky’s version. I don’t think

he has the monopoly on Swan Lake.

“I have been hearing about the Chil-

dren of Lir since I was a little boy. There

is a beautiful statue in Dublin inspired

by the transformation of these children

into swans for 900 years by their jealous

stepmother. So, swans always had an

important meaning to me. Once you’ve

been told a story like that as a child, a

swan is no longer a swan – it is potentially

a transformed person.”

The swans in his interpretation are

“beautiful, noble and graceful. The ones

coming to Ireland to escape winter further

north in Europe are whooper

swans. They have a hard life.

They live in the lakes, which

is tough, wet and cold, but

they never complain. Swans

make little noise, so they are

very interesting symbols.”

H

is adaptation uses the

skeleton of the ballet, but liberates

the myth from the familiarity of

Tchaikovsky’s music, relocating it into an

older, contemporary cultural setting, in

this instance, the Irish Midlands.

“There are some great characters in the

ballet, but the narrative is very simple

and it can suffer from that. Because

ballet people don’t talk, it can become

two-dimensional. I wanted to fix those

problems by making the characters more

complex, exploring their relationships and

also allowing some of them to speak.”

Several stories are interwoven in the

production. One deals with abuse in the

Catholic church. “When that happens,

where someone is abused or hurt maybe

as a child, they never get

a voice, they never get to

tell their story; if they try,

they are not believed, so

they internalise the story –

something happens to them. The swan

can’t tell you of its suffering: it remains

silent and incredibly beautiful, and this is

a really interesting idea.

“I thought a lot about myths and how

often we reduce them into silly, childlike

things, but we must remember that these

stories have been around for a long time

because they have something important

to tell us.

“We are creating myths all the time –

news stories eventually become myths or

become the myths of our future. So, all of

this became the stories on which I built

the show.”

Dublin band Slow Moving Clouds

created the score, drawing on folk music

from Ireland and northern Europe and

traditional string instruments, such as

the Swedish nyckelharpa. “It has an old

sound, so as soon as you hear it, you feel

your imagination travelling backwards in

time.” l

Swan Lake/Loch na hEala, Teaċ Damsa,

New Zealand Festival, March 14-17, St James,

Wellington.

Flight of fancy

A classic ballet gets

a magical makeover

with an Irish twist.

“It is a bit strange that we

associate the story with

Tchaikovsky’s version.

I don’t think he has the

monopoly on Swan Lake.”

COLM HOGAN

Dancers in Michael Keegan-

Dolan’s Loch na hEala.

Inset, the Irish director and

choreographer.

DANCE

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