Karen Kain’s Turn: The National Ballet of Canada’s new Swan Lake
By Michael Crabb
The last time the National Ballet of Canada unveiled a new Swan Lake, in May 1999, it bore the unmistakably dystopian thumbprint of then artistic director James Kudelka, and was played out against the backdrop of a public scandal.
The previous December, principal dancer Kimberly Glasco had sideswiped the Toronto-based company by informing the media she had been fired by Kudelka. In Glasco’s account, the non-renewal of her contract was in retaliation for comments she had made as a dancers’ representative on the board of directors about the wisdom of spending so much money — $1.5 million was then the ballpark figure — to replace the company’s venerated Erik Bruhn version of Swan Lake.
Instead of settling the matter quietly and internally, the National Ballet allowed it to explode into a public slanging match, a front-page battle with each side lawyered up for what proved to be a prolonged, ugly, and costly dispute.
Mind you, the publicity earned Kudelka’s Swan Lake the kind of attention no amount of advertising could buy. As to the production itself, opinion was divided. Some bemoaned the loss of Bruhn’s slightly eccentric but emotionally driven approach. Others tried to figure out what, if Kudelka actually had an approach, it might be. Then, of course, there was that notorious gang rape in Kudelka’s grim take on Act I, a kind of ritualized bromance for the prince and his buddies.
The new production of Swan Lake that the National Ballet will unveil on June 10, directed and staged by artistic director emerita Karen Kain, has had its own troubling backdrop, one occasioned not by a public scandal but by a nasty little virus called SARS-CoV-2.
It had been no secret during Kain’s long reign as artistic director that she longed to replace Kudelka’s version. However, the harsh reality, as George Balanchine famously noted years ago, is that the combination of the words “Swan” and “Lake” has a strange magnetic pull. Audiences will purchase tickets without particular regard for the merits or demerits of the production itself. So long as the music is still Tchaikovsky, the four little swans come out and do their cute synchronized dance, and the lead ballerina whips off 32 fouettés, audiences will generally believe they’ve got their money’s worth. Given Kudelka’s Swan Lake probably cost closer to $2 million, you can’t just toss it aside because it’s unlikable. It has to earn back its investment, and that can take many years.
Kain, whose ability to attract donor support is unmatchable, was willing to play the long game. With the National Ballet’s financials looking rosier than ever, and with her own retirement clearly not too far off, the board could hardly refuse Kain’s parting wish: a new Swan Lake. Originally scheduled for a June 2020 premiere, the $3.5 million production was to be Kain’s farewell gift, the glorious culmination of a dazzling half-century with the National Ballet of Canada.
When the first lockdowns began, Kain’s Swan Lake was well advanced. “I’d say we were about 80 percent done and heading into a period of intense rehearsal,” says associate artistic director Christopher Stowell.
There were blithe thoughts in March 2020 that the pandemic would soon go away, but it didn’t. As each wave of COVID hit, occasioning a confusing cycle of lockdowns and public health restrictions, Kain began to despair of ever seeing her great project completed. Two years later, even ballet-loving atheists are praying that no fresh outbreak — COVID or, heaven forbid, monkeypox — will arrive to confound her now.
Unlike Kudelka’s idiosyncratic Swan Lake, Kain’s may be viewed more as an act of reclamation. In 1969, the dual role of Odette/Odile in Bruhn’s production was Kain’s first full-length classical role. Although the great Dane’s version, made for the National Ballet two years earlier, was mildly controversial — more dancing for Prince Siegfried and the introduction of an evil Black Queen instead of a demonic male von Rothbart — its emotional love-story arc and tragic ending ticked the expected ballet boxes.
But the world we inhabit now is rather different. The #MeToo movement means we can’t just accept a fairytale about an abused young princess as matter-of-factly as bygone audiences were willing to do. Ballet has been institutionally called to account for its patriarchal shortcomings. So, while reclaiming large chunks of Bruhn’s choreography — themselves derived from accepted tradition — Kain is also injecting her Swan Lake with what she calls “a feminist take” and a measure of naturalism that she admits may take some by surprise. “I want audiences to understand the full horror of what is happening to Odette and her friends. I want people to see that they are being manipulated and abused.”
Kain views Odette and her sorority as “captured women.” Where some versions blur the distinction between the times when the bewitched maidens become swans and when they are human — to the point that Siegfried can appear to have a bird fetish — Kain wants the transformation to be clear.
While portions of formal classical choreography will retain their traditional purity and precision, Kain’s goal is to include an element of humanity so that the love story, the contest of good versus evil, registers powerfully.
Kain is not a choreographer. Where new elements have been introduced she has relied on the assistance of Stowell and National Ballet choreographic associate Robert Binet. But she has been very much present, supervising every artistic decision, coaching the dancers, passing on her insights about an iconic work.
As artistic director, Kain freely admits that her attention was often diverted from the studio by administrative responsibilities. Now, in the final days before her Swan Lake opens, Karen Kain is having the time of her life. “I so missed being in the studio and being part of the process. It’s such a pleasure now to be working with the dancers. I’m enjoying every minute.”
