Spotlight on the 20th Anniversary of Kevin McKenzie’s Swan Lake

This year, Kevin McKenzie’s acclaimed Swan Lake celebrates its 20th anniversary. As one of the world’s most beloved classical ballets, modern audiences may struggle to believe that the ballet was not a hit when it first debuted at The Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow in 1877 under the name The Lake of the Swans, choreographed by Julius Reisinger. Few critics were able to acknowledge the classical and dramatic virtues of the ballet and most considered the ballet too noisy, the music too complex, and the density of the entire production off-balance.

It is Marius Petipa’s revival of the ballet in 1898, presented at the Imperial Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, Russia, the version most often seen around the world, from which McKenzie derived his interpretation. Although ABT had already been performing David Blair’s Swan Lake for years, McKenzie’s production offered something grand and exciting for his dancers. He “pulled out all the stops to show off his company,” the New York Post said in 2000, adding that, “this sumptuous new Swan Lake proves an attractive blend of the borrowed and the rethought, the traditional and the original.”

Kevin McKenzie’s version of the ballet is notable for its amplification of the role of von Rothbart, using two men to play the two versions of the character in the ballet, and giving the role additional solos. Mirroring the dual incarnation of Odette and Odile, the evil lakeside sorcerer, in both his bestial embodiment and his regal alter-ego in the ballroom scenes, represents the duality that is seen across all productions of Swan Lake—the everlasting themes of freedom and imprisonment, loyalty and betrayal, hope and despair. It speaks to the essential truths that lie within all of us, the qualities that transcend our physicality. The shared fate of Odette and Prince Siegfried invites audiences to look beyond the limits of rationality and fear and asks the question, ‘What would you do for true love?’

The production made its World Premiere on March 24, 2000 with Julie Kent as Odette/Odile and Angel Corella as Prince Siegfried. A few months later, on May 9, the New York premiere featured Susan Jaffe and Jose Manuel Carreño in the leading roles. The New York Times review on May 22, 2000 hailed the emotional and large-scale production as “hair-raisingly brilliant” and “deep.” Astounding and captivating audiences across the country for two decades, the vitality and endurance of American Ballet Theatre’s Swan Lake are bright and profound, no less than they were 20 years ago.