Tonight, South Africa
By ADRIENNE SICHEL
Talk about scintillating showmanship ...
Have you ever seen dancers who are so wonderful that you wished they could just keep on turning and leaping endlessly? Wished that they could shed gravity and get totally airborne? The Imperial Ice Stars go a long way to fulfilling those fantasies. An arabesque slides into infinity; pirouettes turn entire bodies into gyres and the aerial effects would turn Peter Pan puce with envy.
The title of this show, condensed into two acts, is a. bit of a misnomer - Swan Lake Spectacular would be more apt. By the time Act II skates into action (with black swans on stilt skates) Swan Lake, the four-act ballet, had evaporated into the mist.
After the musical confusions of Act 1, when solos from the ballet's Act III appeared in highly unusual guises, I had given up trying to keep track of the origins. Tchaikovsky's rearranged score (beautifully recorded by the Manchester Light Symphony Orchestra) quite literally goes into a spin.
The main clue to understanding Swan Lake on Ice is the director's note in which the term storyboard replaces libretto.
Theatrical illusion is pushed , to fresh limits in this ice ballet which is informed by the ballet's rich history and ice skating pyrotechnics. The St Petersburg setting and Albina Gabueva's evocative costume designs, inspired by the Romanov period of the 1900s, provides extra Russian texture.
The Ice Stars truly live up to their names. They have perfected the art of fusing their stellar medal-winning sportsmanship with slick artistry. Sleeping Beauty on Ice, which introduced this company to our stages (at the State Theatre and Artscape), was comparatively staid compared to the glittering performance quality of Swan Lake.
Andrei Penkine (who was a Bluebird) is a scene-stealing Benno, Prince Siegfried's ebullient friend. His personality and natural comic flair makes a relatively minor role a starring one.
Part of this ice version's fascination is the characterisation of (Von) Rothbart as a young, very human, powerful man with eerie magical qualities. Anton Klykov is sensational in this role. Vadim Yarkov, as princely as ever, is an utterly elegant Siegfried whose effortless Herculean strength enables him to partner both Odette (the ethereal Olga Sharutenko) and Odile (Olena Pyatash) simultaneously.
For Swan Lake fanatics, the old favourites like the cygnets are intact (on skates, of course), there's even some pointe work, glimpses of folk dance and a terrific fight scene between Rothbart and the Prince.
The storyline takes a plunge into sloppy sentimentality when Odile gets a radical change of heart. But by that stage I'd stopped caring about Petipa's ghost anxiously hovering in the wings and succumbed to the sheer seduction of this enchanting entertainment.