wentieth Century Fox's 2010 hit movie "Black Swan," directed by Darren Aronofsky and described by Daily Variety as a "wicked, psychosexual thriller" with "Swan Lake" as its center, is but the most recent example of a skewed take on the familiar ballet with the majestic Tchaikovsky score. For more than a century, in addition to Mr. Aronofsky's fanciful filmmaking, supposedly savvy choreographers have helped spread misunderstandings of the ballet's subject matter. Helpfully, movie audiences spurred to see the actual ballet at the center of Mr. Aronofsky's overwrought film could have more than a few "Swan Lake" misconceptions corrected by attending American Ballet Theatre's two-act reworking of the onetime four-act work, which began a weeklong run on Monday. While the production is not as solid as a truly inspired "Swan Lake" might be, artistic director Kevin McKenzie's staging, "after Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov," first shown in 2000, is one of the best looking and least ignorant around.
For starters, in a Prologue enacted during the overture to Tchaikovsky's 1877 score, Mr. McKenzie tells his audience that there is a swan involved here, one that takes the form of a prop bird restive in the arms of von Rothbart, the sinister character who has bewitched Odette, a princess. This introductory scene helps audiences see Odette and later Odile as lookalike women (regularly played by the same ballerina), and not as a relentlessly flapping dancer aiming to look avian.
Zack Brown's designs are apt and mostly pretty, if a little wispy around the edges. Pointedly, his settings stress a lake. This might not seem a noteworthy detail, but you'd never know from various other productions—Peter Martins's often unsightly version at New York City Ballet among them—that the lake of the title has anything to do with what occurs on stage. As for the swans themselves, the work's originators meant these feathered creatures to be seen as stage properties either swimming on the lake or flying overhead. They were not to be confused with the female dancers who dominate the work as an ensemble led by a central figure, Odette.
Even this staging missed an opportunity to sharpen the distinction. When melancholy Prince Siegfried, the duped hero of the narrative, finds himself hunting swans at a lakeside, the presence of a swan, or swans, gliding along the lake's surface before the appearance of Odette in her human guise would have further clarified the ballet's imagery. Such an effect was in place for previous ABT productions.
Filmgoers who search ABT's helpful synopsis will find no references to the nickname "Black Swan." Instead, it tells us that the female character brought to the great hall by an uninvited Rothbart is his daughter, Odile. This didn't stop the woman three seats away from me, however, from exclaiming "Aha!" as Odile, dressed in her now-traditional black tutu, entered the third scene.
The crazed central figure of Mr. Aronofsky's film, the desiccated-looking Nina Sayers, played by Natalie Portman, grows black feathers, which fan into actual wings in one preposterously fantastical moment of the film. Let's hope balletgoers attending their first "Swan Lake" won't be disappointed when Odile remains a seductress in a black tutu.
Mr. Brown's own eccentric and inexplicable costume indication of blood-red detailing at the base of the plunging neckline of both Odette's white and Odile's black tutus predates "Black Swan." It may, however, still suggest connections to the movie for an unsuspecting public. With their ruby-red glow, the accented bodices might indicate that ABT's Odette and Odile are as deranged as the film's Nina and have given themselves self-inflicted wounds. If only someone had told Mr. Brown that the Swan Queen's gemstone is supposed to be emerald and not ruby, things might not be so confusing.
ABT's "Swan Lake" is advertised as selling briskly, likely due in part to the popularity of "Black Swan." Monday's opener, led by Irina Dvorovenko as Odette/Odile, partnered by Jose Manuel Carreño, presented the staging effectively if without real excitement. Ms. Dvorovenko is forthright with her dancing and its accents, but she fails to shape the physical highlights of her raised-leg positions and her arched-back or extended-arm postures in a way that suggests limitlessness. Her Odette and Odile command the space they occupy, but each falls short of the ecstatic release that both roles reveal when most effectively performed.
Mr. Carreño, substituting for the indisposed Maxim Beloserkovsky, supported Ms. Dvorovenko with strength and confidence, dancing with much of his usual impressive pliancy and unhurried finesse, even at this late stage of his career. At Thursday's "Swan Lake," as it turns out, ABT will celebrate the 43-year-old's final New York performance with the company, which he joined in 1995.
The 26-strong female ensemble, representing Odette's enchanted sisters and traditionally listed as "swans" but shown as dancing women in white tutus who move in ways related to Odette's, framed and occupied their scenes with physical care. They didn't, however, transform their choreography into moments of haunting luminosity that define the best of such efforts.
I suppose it's only a matter of time until someone creates "Black Swan, the Ballet," muddying the "Swan Lake" waters further. Meanwhile, ABT's "Swan Lake" is doing its part to keep separate the tale concerning the mysterious "lake of the swans" from the notion of a nutcase dancer who is driven by an ignorant and pompous director to think of herself as a demonic water fowl.
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