Tchaikovsky - Swan Lake (Matthew Bourne)

I gave this to my brother for Christmas. He was thrilled. He said that is an excellent video of Swan Lake.

I found the DVD of Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake excellent material and I have some friends queuing up to borrow the DVD. It arrived on time as promised by Amazon and the DVD was well worth the cost and the wait.

Bourne's swan lake is an interesting twist on the traditional version. The choreography (especially for the swans) is very modern. Theatrical choreography is used throughout the show, which does have many good moments...but I can't say that I'm an overall fan of Bourne's choreography in this show. His Nuctracker is simply amazing though! When I saw Swan Lake live, I had the same feelings about it as I do about the video, but the "live" aspect at least allowed me to watch what ever I wanted to watch in the seen, and just made things more exciting all the way around.

I saw the live version of this production in Brisbane (April 2007) and it was truly magical and amazing. I did notice a couple of changes since the filming of the DVD. I love that Matthew Bourne's male swans portray the strength and well-known aggression of real life swans (not always easy to watch) and thoroughly enjoyed the DVD performances. It is good to have the traditional version of Swan Lake to turn to as well though, as I believe that it is important to preserve the original classical masterpieces that have inspired generations of lovers of dance.

If you remember the movie "Billy Elliot", Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake will be a great follow up. The last scene in Billy Elliot is of the Swan in this performance.

What Gilbert and Sullivan set out to do a century ago was to make opera popular with people who thought opera was above them. Bourne's work will have same effect on Ballet. It is truly wonderful and highly recommended.