Dance Reviews

Apr 8, 2001 - Is Nevada Festival Ballet's "Swan Lake" a Swan Song

By Jack Neal

Nevada Festival Ballet's "Swan Lake 2001" turns out to be more black swan than great dance - although great dance is sprinkled about in relatively large doses. For better or worse, NFB's "Swan Lake" opened Saturday night (4/7/2001) at Reno's Pioneer Center for the Performing Arts.

The company which can't seem to keep its house in order - two talented leaders in artistry and business have flown the coop over the last two seasons - has attempted to replace its season-closing "Giselle" with a pastiche season-closing "Swan Lake" that is only partly successful. Collage ballet - three companies in search of a unifying spirit - can be interesting but rarely, if ever, wholly satisfying.

And so, adroitly disguising its own recent disintegration and departures, Nevada Festival Ballet has borrowed freely from the Bay Area. The temporary services of Guennadi Nedviquine, a handsome and able Prince Siegfried, and Kristin Long, an elegant and splendid Odette and Odile, have been obtained from the upper echelons of San Francisco Ballet to generally good effect once the icy chemistry of their dancing in the opening act thawed a bit. How does one fall in love in a deep freeze, thick lethargy and lack of energy being what they are?

Choreographer Nikolai Kabaniaev, who this time out has glued together little more than a dull meat and potatoes "Swan Lake," Christopher Young, a properly imposing evil von Rothbart, and Viktor Kabaniaev, a too busy but athletically dashing Jester, were acquired from Diablo Ballet, a company with a growing reputation for brilliance. It's a brilliance, however, that's hard to burnish under the throw-together circumstances of this NFB "Swan Lake."

From Contra Costa Ballet young dancer Anthony Huxley teams with Robert Cisneros to give needed oomph during the Neopolitan segment of "The Castle Ballroom" act. Also from Contra Costa, a floating bevy of 16 corps de ballet swans who are lithe, fragile and lovely, when they have a chance at synchronizing movement with a Nevada Festival Ballet Orchestra, conducted casually and ineffectively by Asher Raboy, that seems in need of at least one more rehearsal.

At least the orchestra, which usually plays much better than it did opening night, is from Reno. So also from Reno, the lighting magic of Michael Fernbach which always makes the best of a bare stage and the gallant let's-put-on-a-show efforts of Leann Pinguelo, who seems to be in charge these days at the NFB office. She's done a terrific job of salvation and in late Lent that's a major plus. The bare-bones sets and lovely costumes are imports from the Eugene Ballet Company, Eugene, Oregon. Ms. Pinguelo gets around.

The lead couple is something of a puzzle. As Prince Siegfried, Nedviquine lacks dramatic depth. He has wonderful physicality when he dances and an impressive technique but there is no sense of his being trapped by his growing responsibilities, although that is as much the fault of Nikolai Kabaniaev's choreography and staging, which makes the "Swan Lake" story virtually incomprehensible the way it's being told.

Long, however, is a revelation. Had she been given a psychological basis on which to hang her Odette and Odile, her emotive powers, I'm sure, would match her crystalline technique. The beauty of her musical phrasing and delicacy of her execution is thrilling. Also of note, the dancing of the four hand-holding cygnets - Alison Gordy, Marie Newsome, Chantella Pianetta, Alison Christie - is brilliantly crisp.

At thirteen minutes the closing act, presumably the "Love Conquers All" conclusion of this oddly construed "Swan Lake," was shorter than the twenty minute intermission that preceded it, the earlier twenty-minute intermssion between the opening act and the middle act, and nearly as short as the ballet's ten-minute late start. I suppose in the more-and-more profit-motive society we live in and for an evening that runs 130 minutes, 80 minutes of dance and music - a sublime Tchaikovsky score - and 50 minutes of blank space should be considered par for the course and something for which an audience should be grateful.

"Swan Lake" can be seen Sunday at 2 p.m. (4/8/2001) at the Pioneer Center for the Performing Arts, 100 South Virginia Street, Reno. For information call 775-686-6600. For other Nevada Festival Ballet events and information call 775-785-7915.