Bewitched by the Sublime: American Ballet Theatre's Beloved Swan Lake at 25

Chloe Misseldine and Aran Bell in Swan Lake. Photo: Kyle Froman.

During the final days of ABT’s six-week run at the Metropolitan Opera House, as Lincoln Center’s humid plaza swarmed with anticipatory energy, I couldn’t help but marvel. Nearly 150 years after dancers dressed in the plumage of swans first filled the stage, Swan Lake still carries tremendous power no matter how many times it unfurls, or how many dancers make it their own. This year, Kevin McKenzie's Swan Lake celebrates its 25th anniversary, and if the lines that packed Lincoln Center are any clue, there is something sacred woven into its very essence.

Can Swan Lake ever be overdone? Can it become stale as it sinks to the level of mandatory ticket sales guarantee? Or will it continue to live and resonate when it is brought to life with newfound intention? Initially deemed a failure when it premiered in 1877, Tchaikovsky never got to see the day that his score lifted from the orchestra pit for the millionth time. Yet aside from possibly The Nutcracker, no other ballet has filled the stage as many times as Swan Lake has. With a ballet of such familiarity, where does the novelty lie? Is it in soaring flight, always higher? In more pirouettes, cleaner landings, higher legs? Or is it in the nuanced artistry that a dancer brings on top of intricate and astounding technicality that makes any one performance linger in memory? 

Those who have seen Swan Lake more times than they can count most likely have a pocket full of these lingering glimmers. Perhaps it was a certain look in Odile’s eyes, or a startling infliction of intention rippling through the smallest gesture. Was it technique, a hard-earned physical ability, that remained days later, or was it the heart and artistry that flooded through these extraordinary endeavors of physicality? 

The cultural significance of Swan Lake is impossible to overestimate. It has stood the test of time, shaped the art, and, perhaps more than any other ballet, has been a pedestal of opportunity and a framework for careers to blossom upon. For this Wednesday night cast in particular, the ballet has been a catalyst for their careers and artistry to not so much blossom as burst open with startling brilliance. (As was seen last July, when Artistic Director Susan Jaffe spontaneously crowned Chloe Misseldine as ABT’s newest principal dancer after her career-defining New York debut as Odette/Odile). Misseldine’s partnership with Aran Bell, already a seasoned Siegfried at age twenty-six, is nothing short of divine. They are a captivating pair, nuanced and profound in their intentionality, with a genuineness that envelops them.

Amid the tinkling jewels, swirling silks, and visual spectacle of Act One, Aran Bell lets us see Siegfried’s heart from the very start. Act One may be the most undramatic of the four acts, but if we fail to understand the true nature of Siegfried’s wistful, soft-hearted soul in these scenes of simplicity, then the character has nothing to stand upon when he’s made his fatal mistake in Act Three. Bell holds a quiet strength that surprises me every time. Some dancers step upon the stage with a declarative energy of boultrous effort, but Bell’s unassuming power makes the most heaven-bound flights look effortless. Flying passes of buoyancy seem to abound from the smallest whim of energy, and within this gentle nature, Siegfried’s character resounds. In Bell’s hands, he’s a passionate soul, one whose sorrow and desire curl from every fingertip, carrying the weight of the story with great maturity from the start.

While Siegfried watches pensively, the pas de trois, danced by Breanne Granlund, Elisabeth Beyer, and Carlos Gonzalez, was, as it so often is, the cleanest and brightest gem of Act One. Beyer, in particular, has such whimsy in her movement that one can’t help but see a fawn frolicking with wonder in her eyes. Her airy sprite, delightful ease, and épaulement caught every glimmer of light, as did her soaring, suspended-in-the-air pas de basques.

Scene from Swan Lake. Photo: Rosalie O’Connor.

From the moment that Chloe Misseldine leaped from the wings as Odette, it was clear why her performance in this role last July prompted Susan Jaffe to promote her on the spot. An immortal kind of grace overtakes Misseldine in her characterization of Odette. One can’t even imagine her rehearsing these steps, or consciously making artistic choices, for she takes to the role with such natural instinct that it all seems to flood from a heavenly spontaneity. The story ripples through her as though it were her own, as though her limbs had been waiting a lifetime to find their winged places. 

She is all flighty fluidity and willowy precision, emanating a mythical and unearthly kind of levity in her purity of line. It’s a rare sight to see a dancer who so easily finds a remarkable truthfulness in the avian nature of her supple gesture. The woman disappears, and the creature emerges. This artful manipulation of the body that extends the human form into that of a bird is mesmerizing, and few manage to do so with the exactitude that Misseldine finds. Eyes burn with fear, and wild swept arms dash with a dexterity that seems to defy human physicality. Hands sail like feathers, pausing in air to float there a moment, suspended as they catch the breath. Her hands, a crowning detail, are as delicate as petals: tender, cautious, as though they might bruise the air itself. And oh, when her eyes find Siegfried’s, the world comes to a standstill.

As Chloe Misseldine and Aran Bell have consistently demonstrated, they possess a depth beyond their years. Their intentionality casts a spell. They absorb us completely in lines of extraordinary measure that are used not for show or aesthetic advance, but rather, to their fullest emotive potential. In both the quickest flickers and a dream-like lingering that seems to touch the threads of time, a quality of unearthly transcendence emerges. It is in their eyes that the sacred story emanates. Something burns there that is nearly startling in its authenticity. It is this unforgettable sight that still echoes weeks later: the unhuman, haunting look in Misseldine’s eyes as she turned to face an awestruck Bell, her eyes glazed over with uncertainty. In that moment, as they found one body in a haze of blue, the weight of the story brewed between them with palpable agony and grief in every winged breath. Only the regimented four little swans could have broken the spell we were under when they came to a still. We were bewitched, and a breath of complete shock and awe swelled through every corner of the theater in the wake of such unfathomable beauty.

Misseldine’s fluidity turns phrases into rivers of ripples and smoothed, curling currents, finding a truly bird-like speed to fly through with sure-footed ease. It is this ease, this stability of technique, that allows the story to come first, or rather, for the story to unfurl most authentically. Her ability to sway from center in her upper body, coiling to find the midline once more, is extraordinary. As is the potent vulnerability, musicality, and wealth of otherworldly control that practically radiates from her. Misseldine’s power as an artist is the infusion of emotion into every single gesture, glance, and breath, and, of course, the lyrical proficiency with which each fiber of her being expresses the inexpressible. With a timeless and ethereal grace, the profound care given to minuscule, magnificent details already places her among the greatest artists at age 23. 

Near the end of Act Two, as Misseldine reveled in the intensity of those entrechat quatre passés, her decision to veer away from the mood of Giselle’s similar flight and find instead the frustrated strength of Odette was a distinctive choice. While many Odettes paint this scene in a flood of weary sorrow, Misseldine’s infliction of steely anger was strikingly nuanced. A brewing defiance that, moments later, appears again as a glimmer of hope in her far-seeing eyes as she finds Siegfried once more.

In Act Three, amid the rich jewel tones and splendor of color, pattern, and texture, American Ballet Theatre’s Swan Lake shows the complexity of Rothbart’s character in a new light. His variation, to the music used in most productions for a Russian or Persian divertissement, allows us to see Rothbart’s masterful seduction right before our eyes in a way that nearly seduces us as well. Andrew Robare hides Rothbart’s evil particularly well, deepening the story as he throws himself to baffling heights with mighty finesse.

Mighty finesse applies to Rothbart’s daughter as well. The moment that Chloe Misseldine entered as Odile, any thought of Odette had been stripped from her very being. With needle-sharp eyes trained upon Siegfried, her demeanor was unrecognizable: taut with cool command, side eyes full of glee, and a sultry gaze. She already had him pressed beneath her thumb before she’d even reached his side. Misseldine's devilish grin and wild spirit allow even the most bewildering balances and technical executions to resound as nothing but Odile’s accomplished delight. 

Chloe Misseldine and Aran Bell in Swan Lake. Photo: Kyle Froman.

An electrifying undercurrent flitted through their combined power in Act Three's bewitching pas de deux. Aran Bell, etched with such defined ease and clarity, found a rightful corrival in Misseldine’s impeccable feats and righteous lift of the chin, which seemed to declare the same proclamation—a vision of prowess. While lines of absurd beauty stole my breath again and again (oh, isn’t it remarkable how the extension of line can extend emotion?), it is this sight which I will never be able to forget: Misseldine perfectly slipping back into Odette’s skin for a moment–all soft, willowy limbs and a concave sorrow–before the sharp edge of Odile jolted back through her. Watching Odette’s nature flood her fully as she mimicked every soft breath to fool poor Siegfried, and watching as her eyes turned, like a strike of lightning, back to Odile’s dark smirk, was enough to jostle one with the virtuosity of the present moment. Mid-ballet bows repeatedly pulled us from the story to remind us of the scene’s fictitious nature, yet even in bows, the character penetrating her refused to leave, and settled in sharp delicacy upon each fingertip. 

Every production of Swan Lake reaches its end in a different light, but regardless of the form it takes, Tchaikovsky’s melancholic tonality leaves one haunted by its finale. As the Australian conductor Nicolette Fraillon, once said, “It’s totally miraculous, this score, in the context of ballet music of that period. It’s one of those moments in artistic history that virtually came from nowhere.” 

As stirring strings rise, to see a grief-stricken Misseldine upon the rock while Bell reaches for her is to feel the pure potential for Tchaikovsky’s score to devastate. In their final pas de deux, it is the smallest gestures that carve the air with their significance. Odette’s hand brought tenderly to Siegfried’s cheek. The desperation with which Misseldine’s terrified, anguished eyes slowly turn to find his. The chilling urgency of the tumultuous, racing score as Misseldine folds in half above Bell’s head, and the drawn-out sorrow that fills her as she mimes “death” with painful deliberation. It’s all impossibly raw in their hands. Misseldine’s Odette is one truly wrecked by pain, it courses through her with a palpable ache. And as for Bell...oh, his poor agonized soul. Swan Lake may be nearly 150 years old, but on this summer evening in the Metropolitan Opera House, Misseldine and Bell, poets of gesture and breath, suspended reality with resplendence.

It takes a great dancer to dance Swan Lake, but only a true artist of the highest caliber can make you feel it all at the center of your soul. Once they’ve done that, there’s no forgetting how these little glimmers robbed you of breath. How a sharpened glance, or a heavenly glimpse of grace let the rest of the world slip away.