Swan Lake, 3rd act: Cynthia Harvey & Julio Bocca

Jack Carter's Production (Teatro Colón, 1995). A fantastic and extremely interesting production which makes so much more sense: Odile is also a white Swan… Siegrfried falls for someone who really looks like Odette... Think of it: if you would be sitting by a lake, watching a white and a black Swan - you would obviously notice the difference (Note - because one has to be careful nowadays: NO racial prejudice meant - even if the “classic” versions must be very questioned. Why is the Evil Swan black?). Baryshnikov’s ABT production also had Odile dressed in white… It makes so much more sense! (Note: please pay attention to the difficulty of the Fouettés in this particular version. Instead of focusing at the same point while turning, there is a constant change of 45 degrees throughout them,. That makes the turning “longer” and, on the contrary of nowadays’ performances, the tempo was NOT slowed down).

Jack Carter staged Swan Lake in the mid 1960's for London Festival Ballet (which later became ENB) using the music in the order composed for the 1877 Bolshoi production. The use of the original order of the music score was also used from 1960 on by the Paris Opera Ballet in the Vladimir Bourmeister’s 1952 version The most recognized change in his choreography to the ballet was adding a prologue that showed Odette being turned into a swan by Rothbart. When he was invited to choreograph “The Snow Maiden” (Tchaikovsky) for London Festival Ballet in 1961, he became the first Soviet choreographer to work with a Western company and I suppose that this must have influenced Jack Carter’s version