Crash Landing: Karen Kain’s Swan Lake Stumbles Again

Genevieve Penn Nabity and National Ballet of Canada artists in Swan Lake. (Photo: Karolina Kuras.)

The National Ballet of Canada’s revival of Karen Kain’s Swan Lake is back, and two years later, it remains an exercise in frustration. What should have been a triumphant reimagining of one of ballet’s most iconic works is instead a muddled mess—a lavish production that fails to soar and instead flounders in its own contradictions.

Let’s not mince words: this Swan Lake is still dead in the water.

Kain, who stepped down as artistic director in 2021 after an illustrious career spanning five decades, staged this production as a tribute to her legacy with the company. Yet her vision, revisited in this remount, continues to feel like a misstep—a work that prioritizes spectacle over substance.

The choreography—a Frankenstein patchwork assembled by Kain herself alongside Robert Binet and Christopher Stowell—feels like it was cobbled together by committee. Worse still, it’s as if artificial intelligence had been tasked with creating choreography to Tchaikovsky’s masterpiece of a score: technically proficient but soulless, throwing in random elements without rhyme or reason.

The first act is an interminable parade of flouncy skirts and rose-petal costumes that scream Sleeping Beauty more than Swan Lake. The prince—poor Siegfried—is reduced to a cipher, his brooding conflict with his domineering queen mother barely registering amidst the chaos of an overstuffed party scene. By the time we reach Act II’s carnival setting in Venice (an inexplicable choice), the production has completely lost its way. The narrative thread snaps under the weight of incoherent storytelling and overwrought design choices.

Speaking of design: Gabriela Týlešová’s sets and costumes are undeniably ambitious but utterly misguided. The lakeside scene—the heart of Swan Lake—is stripped of its magic, replaced by dark stormy imagery that smothers the ethereal beauty of Ivanov’s original vision. And then there are the swans—or should we say “young women,” as per the program notes?—Kain’s insistence on deconstructing their mythical identity renders them ordinary, robbing them of their mystique. Even their tutus seem confused: feathered yet stiffly delineated, more hybrid than bird-like.

Genevieve Penn Nabity as Odette/Odile is a rare bright spot in this production. Her technique, showcased at the March 8 evening performance, is impeccable; she dances with strength, precision, and emotional depth that cuts through the surrounding chaos. Her Black Swan performance dazzles with razor-sharp attack and undeniable charisma—a momentary glimpse of what this production could have been. But her Siegfried on opening night, Ben Rudisin, embodies the challenges of a role that offers little dramatic material to work with. His performance feels uneven, marked by moments when fatigue undermines his execution. His hangdog expressions and sloped shoulders convey neither passion nor despair; instead, he seems visibly fatigued by choreography that does him no favours.

The corps de ballet deserves applause for their supercharged energy and dazzling execution of intricate steps—no small feat given that many dancers performed twice on opening day. Yet even their brilliance cannot save a production that feels fundamentally flawed at its core.

It’s worth noting that this run includes notable highlights: Heather Ogden will bid farewell to her Swan Queen role on March 21 while remaining with the company, and Dutch National Ballet principal dancer Jessica Xuan is scheduled to perform as Odette/Odile on March 13, 15, and 20. But these upcoming special performances feel like consolation prizes rather than highlights in a production that should have been the crowning achievement of Kain’s tenure with the National Ballet.

No doubt inspired by present-day politics centred on external threats to Canada’s sovereignty, the evening began with a stirring demonstration of national pride as David Briskin led The National Ballet Orchestra in "O Canada," prompting the audience to rise to its feet in thunderous applause for "the true north strong and free." But by the time we reached Russia—or rather this Canadian-made version of it—the cheers had turned into polite applause masking disappointment.

As I noted in my original review in 2022, this Swan Lake had every opportunity to be something new—to breathe fresh life into an enduring classic—but instead it retreats into antiquated clichés while simultaneously losing sight of its own story. It commits, as I said then, the cardinal sin for any work of art: leaving audiences feeling nothing. Two years later, that emptiness remains, proving once again that even swans can crash-land when weighed down by bad taste.

– Deirdre Kelly is a Toronto-based journalist, author and internationally recognized dance critic and style writer on staff at The Globe and Mail newspaper from 1985 to 2017. She writes for Dance Magazine in New York, the Dance Gazette in London, and NUVO in Vancouver, and is a contributor to the International Dictionary of Ballet and AWOL: Tales for Travel-Inspired Minds. The best-selling author of Paris Times Eight and Ballerina: Sex, Scandal and Suffering Behind the Symbol of Perfection, she is a two-time recipient (2020 and 2014) of Canada’s Nathan Cohen Prize for outstanding critical writing. In 2017, she joined York University as Editor of the award-winning The York University Magazine where she is also the publication’s principal writer. In 2023, she published her latest book, Fashioning The Beatles: The Looks That Shook The World.