Ballet mime in “Swan Lake”—a dying art
No, not whiteface mime of the Marcel Marceau type. Ballet mime, which is quite different and more like sign language. Ballet mime is almost never used anymore, which I think a pity.
Ballets used to contain a lot more mime, by the way. But now even the remnants have been eliminated by most ballet companies and replaced by not-especially-great dance passages. I find the mime very poignant and effective when done well, even if I don’t always understand every single gesture-word. And this wonderful video from Britain’s Royal Ballet explains with great style and flair the mime used in the second act of “Swan Lake”:
I said that very few ballet companies keep the mime, although many of them produce ballets such as “Swan Lake” that used to contain passages of it. But on YouTube, I found two versions of “Swan Lake” that do retain it (the only two I could find on all of YouTube that did, although the quest involved watching tons of them).
The first is from American Ballet Theater, and I’ve cued it up to start with the mime passage that occurs right after the Prince first meets the Swan Queen:
This is the Royal Danish Ballet (cued up to start at the same point):
All three videos in this post appear to have been made relatively recently (I would guess they all are post-2000, anyway), although I don’t know the exact dates. To my surprise, all the Russian videos of “Swan Lake” that I could find on YouTube dispensed with the mime sequence, as do certain other American Ballet Theater productions, as well as some of the older Royal Ballet videos. So even those latter two companies haven’t always included the mime.
Neo, thanks very much for posting these. I had no idea about the mime included in classical, story-telling ballet — call me a philistine in that regard. :>(
Interesting, and the information makes the ballet even more enjoyable to watch. Very much appreciated!
Beautiful. Although not a dancer myself, I spent many evenings many years ago watching ballet dancers practice in a studio in Saint Paul, Minnesota. The Ballet Borealis. The instructors were Anna Adrianova and Lorand Andahazy. They were former dancers with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. Although I took a few classes, dancing just wasn’t my thing. (I was a competitive swimmer). I did learn a lot about the hard work, dedication, artistry, and commitment that ballet required. To this day, I love to watch.
My wife and daughter took me to see the ABT swan lake at the Met in June. This was the first real ballet I have seen (other than young girl dance classes) and I did notice the mime. Until you described it I didn’t know what it was called. I suppose you could consider it the equivalent of spoken lines in a musical.
The performance was very good but my favorite part of the show was the mad-man era sign at the bar for the handicapped. The sign showed a wheelchair with an arrow to a martini glass complete with olive! The wheelchair bound patron seemed to be rushing to get the drink.
Thank you for posting this. My wife and I enjoyed it very much. We started going to the ballet thanks to your blog. We even saw Swan Lake last season.
Cheers.
I was watching Japanese and Korean puppetmastery, and it was quite interesting.
The Japanese show was some kind of science fiction thing back in the 80s, I forget the name of. But the Korean, or at least I think it was Korean, show was called Thunderbolt Fantasy. It is designed for a Japanese audience, but the original source came from China/Korea. Why? Because some of the writing and lines are Chinese, plus Japan doesn’t use puppets any more for that kind of show.
For those that want to watch the episode, they can probably find Thunderbolt Fantasy online.