In 2016, Léonore Baulac and Germain Louvet were named Étoile dancers after two performances of Swan Lake. Since then, they have both taken on numerous roles. They are now coming back together to play Odette/Odile and Prince Siegfried. Octave went to meet with them to ask them for their impressions and to reflect on their careers.

Léonore Baulac: It’s a pleasure and a privilege to dance such a masterpiece from the repertoire. However, having been named an Étoile in the role of Odette/Odile doesn’t diminish the difficulty and pressure that the role engenders.

Germain Louvet: Beyond the fact that we were both named Étoiles for the same ballet, it’s the first great classical ballet that Léonore and I are dancing again. Up until now, I’ve practically only performed roles that are new for me. This is an opportunity for me to rediscover the sensations from two years ago and build on them by giving greater depth to the artistic and dramatic aspect of the role of Prince Siegfried. Technically, it’s almost like putting on an outfit which has been sitting in the closet for two years but you’re happy to be wearing it again.

LB: I’ve sought to improve my rendition of the role’s highly distinctive arm work and upper-body work to make me seem as much like a bird as possible. I also wanted to accentuate Odette’s fragility and put greater emphasis on the tragedy of her condemnation in the fourth act.

GL: These last two years have given me greater confidence and self-assurance. I’ve tried to use that experience to give greater gravitas and theatricality to my role. Two years ago, I allowed myself to be guided by my instincts. Now, I want to embark on a more profound exploration by examining the details: where to focus my gaze, how to interact with the dancers of the Corps de Ballet, with Rothbart, Odette, etc. In 2016, performing the role enabled me to find depth, precision, a personal balance, a certain ease. Performing it again two years later allows me to see how my body and my mind have developed.
    

LB: Obviously, the two characters need to contrast each other. Odette is pure and fragile while Odile is seductive and manipulative. However, one still has to insufflate Odile with enough ambiguity to make Prince Siegfried’s doubts seem credible.
   

GL: I think it’s important to be able to express a certain duality. You need to find the right balance between a character of high rank and noble elegance and at the same time be able to reveal the tortured and melancholic human side of a young adolescent prince who is still trying to find himself. To achieve that, I looked to my own experiences to find a way to express it on stage.  

LB: The Corps de Ballet in Swan Lake is magnificent. As a matter of fact, my favourite passage as a spectator is the dance of the swans at the beginning of the fourth act. It’s also one of the hardest ballets for the dancers. Certain poses, for example, are really long and painful. So, we decided with Germain to not linger on or prolong certain gestures because we knew that there were 24 dancers behind us with cramps. It’s a question of teamwork and we all support each other.

GL: The Corps de Ballet is the life force which holds the whole performance together. In general terms, it is the cement of a classical ballet like Swan Lake. For me, there are two forms of interactions. The first has to do with the narrative. The Corps de Ballet provides the material and gives me what I need to work with so I can give a quality performance. The second is more personal. The Corps de Ballet is an essential support for the soloists. For me personally, it allows me to maintain my self-confidence and to feel motivated and assisted.
    

LB: Tchaikovsky is a masterpiece that never ceases to stir and inspire. By combining it with the bright idea of transforming the woman into a mythological creature whose grace can exceed that of a human makes the ballet quite unique. I am always impressed by works which manage to move people in such a universal way across time and through the generations.

GL: In my opinion, Tchaikovsky poured his soul, his sensitivity and his suffering into the music for Swan Lake. It may be a pain linked to his sexuality in an era when he couldn’t live it fully. We need to perform these roles with the emotion contained in the music. It’s like constantly having to battle between the joy of discovering who you are and the fear of not being able to accept the discovery. I think that Nureyev made much use of that ambivalence and fragility to steer his choreographic narrative.
    

LB: To dance Nureyev’s Romeo and Juliet, Pina Bausch’s Rite of Spring and John Neumeier’s La Dame aux camélias were dreams, and to actually realise them was particularly fulfilling both in my career and in my life. Today, I dream of dancing them again. Now, I’d really like to tackle the roles of Tatiana in Cranko’s Onegin and Giselle. There are a lot of contemporary choreographers who I’d like to work with, and with a little luck, I’d like to participate in creations that will also mark the history of dance!

GL: My role in Romeo and Juliet turned out to be a true artistic encounter. After Swan Lake, Don Quichotte proved to be a great personal challenge. It really was the first time that I’d performed a role that was less “serious”, it was rather like being cast against type, but it ultimately allowed me to discover another facet. I realised that when you are honest with yourself, you always find a way to fit with character. Sasha Waltz’s Romeo and Juliet was outstanding. Working with her and Juan Cruz Diaz de Esnaola was extremely fulfilling. It was the first time that I’d danced on stage simply as myself without artifice. As for the future, I dream of dancing both Béjart’s Boléro and Pina Bausch. I also want to perform Mayerling. In terms of classical ballets, the Prince in Sleeping Beauty, the Chevalier Des Grieux in Manon or Armand in La Dame aux camélias are roles that I would love to dance.    

Swan Lake was the first music for a ballet which the Bolshoi Theatre commissioned from Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky in 1877, to accompany the choreography of Julius Wenzel Reisinger. The initial version was judged mediocre at the time, however, it was unearthed thirteen years later by Marius Petipa. If he remains faithful to Tchaikovsky’s intentions, the symbolism of the white swan and the black swan was explored in greater depth by Rudolf Nureyev to give the ballet a more psychoanalytical dimension. That interpretation would later be used by a number of filmmakers as they constructed psychological thrillers while questioning the quest for artistic perfection.   

Several versions of Swan Lake exist, but the one by Rudolf Nureyev — created for the Paris Opera Ballet in December 1984— undoubtedly remains the most Freudian. The choreographer opted to place a male character, Prince Siegfried, at the heart of the narrative to portray the full gamut of his emotions on stage. In the prologue, the dozing prince has a “strange and premonitory” dream just as the synopsis for the ballet indicates. A princess is captured by a bird of prey and takes to the skies with it…a scene that in reality heralds the end of the ballet. In Leonardo da Vinci a Memory of His Childhood, published in 1943, Sigmund Freud writes: “To be a bird is only a disguise for another wish […] in a dream, the desire to fly signifies nothing other than the inner desire to be capable of sexual activities”.

Here, Odette, the white swan, symbolises the perfect woman, the one to which Siegfried must go to, even though he is irremediably attracted to a darker more shameful desire (homosexuality?) represented by Odile, the black swan. This inner turmoil is also exacerbated by Wolfgang, his tutor, and Rothbart, the cruel magician, each in turn a symbol of a Freudian projection of the Superego (reason) and the Id (perversion). This analysis is all the more poignant when we take into account that Tchaikovsky himself was homosexual. Embittered by this, Tchaikovsky wrote at the time in a letter to his brother Modest: “I find that our tendencies are the greatest and most insurmountable obstacle to happiness”. A quote that could equally be applied to Siegfried, who ends up mired alone in the fog of his own consciousness.    

In 2010, Darren Aronofsky directed the film Black Swan, the story of Nina, a dancer at the New York City Ballet who, after accepting the role of Odette/Odile in Swan Lake, plunges into a profound introspection that ultimately leads to her demise. Even though the ballet staged in the film is not Nureyev's, the director draws inspiration from the choreographer’s Freudian aspirations to turn Nina’s life into a mise en abyme of Swan Lake. At the beginning of the film, the dancer is a young innocent girl who cuddles the stuffed toys in her room and seems withdrawn. She has everything to embody the white swan or rather, on a second level, everything to embody Siegfried. Like him, she often has dreams haunted by a black bird—a representation of her repressed fantasies of rebellion, strength and desire for a woman (Lily, a fellow dancer). Nina in fact seems more like Siegfried’s avatar than the “Black Swan” at the end of the film: at the film’s conclusion, she dies in the costume of the white swan after fighting her morbid impulses. Just like the prince in the ballet, who is left alone and unhappy once the evil has been banished.

But Swan Lake also questions the quest for perfection in an artist, particularly a dancer. In the ballet, that perfection is symbolised by the white swan—an unattainable figure for Siegfried. Furthermore, irrespective of the choreography, there has only ever been one dancer to portray these two swans with diametrically opposed characters. It is a complex interpretation and a rite of passage for any ballerina who dreams of surpassing herself. It is also symbolic of self-denial and a font of inspiration for filmmakers. In Black Swan, Nina is in search of the ideal incarnation and ready to die for it. As such, in the closing scene, after stabbing herself with a piece of glass (while fighting against her inner enemy), she performs the final act, collapses, covered in blood, and murmurs: “That was perfect”.    

Another example can be seen in the 1948 film The Red Slippers by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. In that film, Victoria Page is a young ballerina whose performance in Swan Lake is criticised by the director of the ballet. Madly in love, she does not manage to express herself in her art and must choose between her lover and her love for dance... In utter despair, the young girl ends up killing herself by jumping off the balcony of the Opera. Here again, Swan Lake seems to be the driving force of the same passion: to abandon everything for the sake of art, at the risk of losing one’s life.

Signature ballet of the Company’s repertoire, Rudolf Noureev’s version of Swan Lake is back on stage at the Opéra Bastille. The well-known story of Prince Siegfried in love with Odette, a young woman whom Rothbart has transformed into a swan, never ceases to please both the young and the old. Even more well-known are the Corps de Ballet who embody the thirty-two swans accompanying Odette and subjugate the spectator. With fascinating precision, the dancers draw perfect geometric lines and adopt long majestic poses in which, perfectly grouped as one, they become almost immaterial. The utter precision of the choreography is an immense challenge. Clotilde Vayer, Associate Ballet Mistress, reveals the work done in rehearsal.    

"The Lake" has a very important place in my career. I danced in Bourmeister's version as soon as I joined the Paris Opera's Corps de Ballet. When Nureyev proposed his version, the majority of the Corps de Ballet were ready to go on strike against his decision! He then had the sense to say he was scheduling both versions in the same season. His "Lake" soon became the Paris Opera's iconic version. This is the version in which I first danced the role of Odette/Odile. I later revived the ballet as Assistant Ballet-Mistress and it was following this production that Hugues Gall appointed me Ballet Mistress.

The defining feature of the Corps de Ballet in Swan Lake is its homogeneity. A homogeneity which above all must not be mechanical. There is poetry to be found in resemblance and harmony. In the way we use our arms, for example, or catch the light. It is very difficult to be truly as one, identical to the person in front of you. For this reason it's a very difficult ballet for the dancers. Not only do they have painful poses but they also have to pay constant attention to the others in order to be as one, to breathe as one. They play an essential role, their presence is crucial to the beauty and magic of the ballet. I try to accompany every gesture with an intention just as I do when working with the soloists. When they surround Odette, their round is accompanied by a feeling of tenderness and their poses must always suggest humility. In my opinion, each swan represents a double of Odette.    

At first, I work on the steps, the geometric lines and symmetries which form the choreography's skeleton. It is essential to know the steps to be able to add the "flesh" afterwards. They have to be learnt very quickly because we have little rehearsal time: places and positions are agreed upon beforehand. When we arrive in the studio, each dancer already knows his or her place and his or her sequences.    

During rehearsals, I go over all the versions danced during Rudolf's lifetime. His first version, performed in Vienna, is illuminating and shares similarities with the one created for the Paris Opera. I draw on archives, especially films, and try to find inspiration in direct sources to reconstruct the choreography and be as close as possible to Nureyev's style.    

The work of transmission is twofold: to remain faithful to the original version whilst adapting it to the dancers' physiques and personalities. Every Ballet Master proposes his or her own Swan Lake. Reviving a ballet is as much a question of fidelity to the original version as of personal choice.