reviewvancouver: Swan Lake

Coastal City Ballet
Swan Lake

Date and Venue June 10, 2016, 8pm | Surrey Arts Centre, 13750 88 Ave, Surrey

Reviewer Ed Farolan

It was a sold-out house at the Surrey Arts Centre for this magnificent show reminding me of Nutcracker, with all the beautiful costumes and the international dances in Act 3 where Russia, Poland, Italy and Spain dance away with their national costumes galore and their typical national flair. The Italians got the most applause (Riia Usui and Manrico Serpente) after they did their pas de deux.

Choreographer Irene Schneider did a fine job with her interpretation of Swan Lake . In it, she explores the human emotion of a romantic love contrasted against a realistic and practical love of an arranged marriage. Odette (Sakura Inoue), the White Swan, comes to Siegfried (Diego Ramalho) in his dream, embodying the ideal of true love, while Odile (Ana Paula Oioli), the Black Swan, is presented to Siegfried by her father Rothbarth (Tyler Carver) as the woman he is to wed.

These four main dancers wowed the crowd and they received, together with the entire ensemble, a warm applause at curtain call. What caught my attention most was how multicultural the dancers were. They came from all over the world--from Europe, Asia and South America. And of course, Canada.

I've been impressed, from shows I've seen in the past of this company, by the professionalism of these dancers--the discipline I observed as white swans danced in unison, while the four main dancers did their solos with such finesse. All that practice and rehearsal time really paid off. Unlike modern ballet which is mostly improvisational, there is nothing like classical ballet, and I'm really glad that we have a company like this here in the Lower Mainland that continues the tradition of classical ballet.

Kudos to Irene Schneider and Artistic Director Li Yaming and the production staff, especially costume designer Stefan Stanisic for those beautiful and colourful costumes.