Swan Lake Reloaded
With the return of the Bolshoi Ballet to the Royal Opera House this summer, Britain has been obsessed with Swan Lake! We’ve seen it in the round, on the big screen, but now we can see it in a modern light, as Fredrik Ryman’s Swan Lake Reloaded comes to the London Coliseum from August 6th to August 10th.
The Swedish ballet dancer come street dance teacher, Fredrik Ryman is famous for his rebellious rewrites of classic tales. A founding member of the dance troupe Bounce, he created the sell-out production ‘Insane in the Brian’; a Hip-Hop interpretation of Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. This year he has already choreographed the comical interval act at the Eurovision Song Contest in Malmö and now he is back in London with a new take on Tchaikovsky’s classic Swan Lake.
Ryman has introduced ‘street dance, contemporary dance, pop music, electro, smartphones and special effects’ to ‘reboot’ this ‘classic ballet staple’. Taking the traditional story of Prince Siegfried and Odette and placing it in a modern context he has used dance to explore the social issues surrounding drug addiction and prostitution. Inspired by furs and leather shirts he saw in Camden Town, he debuted the show in Stockholm on 1st December 2012 to huge success, and has since sold 70,000 tickets in Sweden alone. Packed audience across Europe have been dying to find out whether love can truly prevail in these circumstances, while enjoying rock and pop mixed with Tchaikovsky’s characteristic riffs.
Advertised as ‘Tchaikovsky meets street dance’ it promises to be a spectacular fusion of different music and dance styles. Here at Dancewear Central we think it is refreshing to get away from the tutus and pointe shoes for one night, and celebrate urban and contemporary dance. After London, the tour will be travelling to Moscow and Paris before returning to Sweden again. Ryman already has plans for his next production though, which will tackle ‘the trap of egoism, the way people get caught in a society and a system they don’t want to be part of’. Until then, here is a preview of what to expect from this unusual version of Swan Lake:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uwAm08iQJY