At the NAC Theatre
Reviewed Tuesday night
Classical ballet has forever been borrowing — some would say appropriating — non-European dance traditions to lend “exotic flair” to its otherwise pristine lily-whiteness. In 2010, the subversive, Soweto-born choreographer and dancer Dada Masilo turned this tradition on its head by taking the grandest, whitest ballet of them all and giving it a modern township treatment. The piece had its sold-out Ottawa premiere Tuesday night.
In Masilo’s version of Swan Lake, the white swan Princess Odette is married off to Prince Siegfried. There’s a black swan too, of course, in the guise of Siegfried’s forbidden, secret gay lover. Just as a sorcerer turned the original Odette from a woman into a bird, homophobic South African society has forced the prince and the people who love him into unnatural states of their own.
Masilo is by no means the first choreographer to homoeroticize Swan Lake — Matthew Bourne’s 1995 version remains the most famous. Masilo’s brilliance lies in her ability to effortlessly weave the threads of so many themes — gender politics, art and artifice, the universality of the broken heart — into such strong and vibrant cloth.
Classical port de bras, arabesques and pointed toes are juxtaposed with the foot-stomping, flexed-kneed, booty-shaking moves of traditional South African dance. Both men and women are dressed in fluffy white tutus and feather headdresses. Tchaikovsky’s score, often sped up to double time, is underscored by jubilant, street-party whoops and ululations.
There’s humour too: a cheeky narrator explains how the “top girl” and “top boy” spend most ballets running around stage just missing each other. The pas de deux is described as “weightlifting,” usually ending with the girl swooning into a “nobody loves me fall-down.” The girls wag their fingers and purse their lips: Oh no he didn’t.
Masilo calls her company The Dance Factory, but there’s nothing mechanical or mass-produced about her troupe. The dancers are beautiful: charismatic, joyful, strong, powerfully muscled and exceptionally athletic.
Masilo herself is a magnetic Odette; she’s the smallest person onstage but you literally cannot take your eyes off her. Her Siegfried, Songezo Mcilizeli, is delicate and haunted, all huge liquid eyes and trembling fingers. As the black swan, Llewellyn Mnguni was the only dancer on pointe, the shoes elongating his already endless legs to supernatural proportions. His pas de bourrée was enviably light, and the combination of physical virtuosity and exquisite, tender expression were irresistible.
The piece ends with Masilo and Mnguni, both bare-chested and wearing long black skirts, locked in an embrace of mutual mourning. They are equally betrayed, left to scatter the ashes of their illusions. Princess, man, or bird: we can’t help whom we love.
