Swan Lake

If you want iron-clad artistic intention, try a Wagner opera." That’s Boston Ballet’s artistic director, Mikko Nissinen, speaking, and the work he’s describing is none other than the most revered of all ballets, Swan Lake, which is the final production (May 13 through 23) of the company’s 40th-anniversary season. The Nutcracker may be dance’s moneymaker, but it’s Swan Lake that’s the Hamlet of ballet. Yet as Nissinen reminds the audience at the last of the season’s DanceTalks, Tchaikovsky’s first ballet, which debuted in 1878 in Moscow, was a relative failure, even though it was revived in 1880 and 1882. It wasn’t until 1895, after the composer’s death, that Marius Petipa resuscitated it in St. Petersburg, with the help of conductor Riccardo Drigo and Tchaikovsky’s brother, Modeste, and Swan Lake became the world’s most celebrated dance pastiche. It’s also, as Nissinen knows, the ballet by which artistic directors are judged. You can tinker with The Nutcracker or Don Quixote and audiences will shrug, but when it comes to Swan Lake, they bring their telescopes.

But Nissinen, who was born in Helsinki and trained at the Kirov Ballet School, has been there and done that. "I was the page who ran in and announced the arrival of the Queen Mother. It lasted all of 30 seconds. I was so proud. For years afterward, I coached the kids who had that part, and I was always frustrated, because I felt they didn’t take it seriously." He went on, he says, to dance every major part in the ballet except Rothbart (the magician who has the swans under his spell) and the Mazurka (one of the ethnic dances in the third act). For this production, his first at Boston Ballet, he tracked the history of the ballet to see what’s been changed, what’s been added; and he’s chosen to rechoreograph areas where the history doesn’t add up, but his aim is to clarify rather than to invent — you won’t see anything like Patrice Bart’s Freudian version for the Staatsoper Berlin, where the Queen Mother has a boyfriend who turns into Rothbart. Nissinen has cast four sets of principals: Larissa Ponomarenko and Yury Yanowsky (who’ll dance opening night), Lorna Feijóo and Nelson Madrigal (May 12, 16, and 18 she’ll be dancing George Balanchine’s Ballo della Regina with New York City Ballet), Sarah Lamb and Pavel Gurevich, Romi Beppu and Mindaugas Bauzys; and he’s brought in some additional staff, including "swan specialist" Lola de Ávila, the associate director at San Francisco Ballet. Between the two of them, we learn that the pose of the standing swans (and they do a lot of standing) should be "halfway lifted, not going down into the ankle" and that you have to "choreograph your breathing" and synchronize it with the standing.

What will be different? Nissinen says he’s added to the third act "a classical pas de cinq, edging toward the neo-classical, just as a contrast. I wanted to be careful not to upstage the Black Swan pas de deux because you cannot go there." And the fourth act will have "a new resolution pas de deux: they make their peace and she forgives him." But he’s reduced the number of swans from 32 to 24 in the second act and 20 in the fourth; he points out that when you use students (this company, like most others, doesn’t have 32 female corps members), the unison suffers. He’s eliminated the virtuoso role of the Jester: "For me it’s not an integral part of the story." And in consultation with Boston Ballet music director Jonathan McPhee, he’s made some cuts in the score, mostly regarding repeats, and that the fourth act will run 20 minutes instead of the full 35. In St. Petersburg, he reminds us, Swan Lake was an all-night social event with caviar, champagne, ice cream. Hmmm — anyone in Boston want to revive that tradition?

Swan Lake is presented by Boston Ballet May 13 through 23 at the Wang Center 270 Tremont Street in the Theater District. Tickets are $38 to $95; call (800) 447-7400.