From the Archives: Swan Lake and Gender Perceptions

The Royal Ballet 

Though the plot of the ballet Swan Lake is pulled very loosely from a few existing tales, it was basically created for the ballet itself. Given that it reflected the values of a few men in 1895, the gender roles in the ballet are very cliche. In fact, the last time I saw the ballet I found myself bored with Odette and Siegfried's characters-Siegfried spends the vast majority of his time looking perplexed, or trying to find Odette, who looks scared and woeful the whole time. My favorite character was Odile, who has not only the flashiest moves but at least looks like she enjoys dancing.

From this site, by Aaron Green:

"We do know that Tchaikovsky had much control over the stories content. He and his colleagues both agreed that the swan represented womanhood in its purest form. The stories and legends of swan-maidens date as far back as ancient Greece; when the Greek god Apollos was born, flying swans circled above their heads. Legends of swan maidens can also be found in The Tales of the Thousand and One Nights, Sweet Mikhail Ivanovich the Rover and The Legend of the Children of Lir. "

So I guess according to Tchaikovsky and his colleagues, "womanhood in its purest form" is a fragile and powerless creature, with no real personality or depth, defined by being a victim (Ironically, Tchaikovsky was a pretty fragile creature himself-more on that here.)

This view of women is frowned upon by most people in Western culture today. The ballet has been reinterpreted by Matthew Bourne with a corps of male swans, challenging preconceived notions (this is the production Billy Elliot stars in, if you saw the movie). Bourne said, "The idea of a male swan makes complete sense to me. The strength, the beauty, the enormous wingspan of these creatures suggests to the musculature of a male dancer more readily than a ballerina in her white tutu." It's true that the power of the male dancer is extremely impressive-while the female can acheive the affect of defying gravity by dancing en pointe, the male can do so simply by the strength of his jumps, seeming to linger in the air for longer than humanly possible.

Then of course there's the Mercedes Lackey novel, Black Swan, which I've mentioned multiple times before, but I really prefer Lackey's compelling characters. Though the prisoners of Von Rothbart are still victims, Lackey's females have depth and dimension and her unique take on Odile's character is just wonderful.

The original ballet ended tragically, and each production comes up with its own. I think happy endings are the most prevalent these days (ballet people out there, correct me if I'm wrong!). Although, listening to the music-the famous minor theme is major at the end, it seems hard to believe it could accompany the death of the two main characters...

Fairy Tales in the Russian Ballet

Interwoven through the history of Russian Ballet are ballets based on fairy tales and folklore. Early on, Russian folk tales provided the source for plots because it provided a sense of national pride for the audience. Ballets were based on fairy tales that are little known today, such as The Little Hump-Backed Horse, a well-known fairy tale (at the time) by Yershov, premiered in 1864, or The Goldfish, inspired by Pushkin's fairy tale. The former was a success and the latter not, although both tales were altered very much from their original sources (sound familiar?). In ballets, plot is only a part of the formula that makes it successful or not-much is also dependant on the music, the choreography, and the quality of dancers themselves. However, understanding the plot and its source was nonetheless important. The 1867 ballet The Fern's success was credited not to  Sokolov's talents in choreography, which were not outstanding, but the fact that he had a "better understanding of Russian folklore."

Scene from The Goldfish, 1905

In 1877 we come to the ballets which are well-known and loved still by Tchaikovsky, starting with Swan Lake. The element of a swan maiden is a popular theme in many Russian fairy tales, and the creators of the ballet adapted the specific plot to suit their purposes. It is Tchaikovsky's music that is recognized as the most successful element in this production. His "portrayal of the inner spiritual state of the heroes through music was an important discovery destined to turn over a new leaf in the history of ballet music and upset customary ballet cliches."

Later, in 1888, Tchaikovsky was invited to write music for another ballet based on a fairy tale-this time using Perrault's Sleeping Beauty as the source. Ironically, the choreographer, Marius Petipa, didn't like using magical elements and fairy tales in his ballets, as he thought they weren't serious enough. However, he was ordered by the Directorate of the Imperial Theaters to use Sleeping Beauty and he transformed it to become something he wanted to work on.

Maria Petipa as The Lilac Fairy in Sleeping Beauty

Again, critics hail Tchaikovsky's music as transforming the history of ballet. Academician Boris Asafiev claimed that Sleeping Beauty was "a new form of musical-choreographic action." Asafiev claims that through the progression of the music, you can even trace the princess' maturing and growing up. As a musician I wish Roslavleva went into more detail on this one...

In 1892 production started on The Nutcracker*, with a detailed program provided by Petipa, but due to illness, the project was taken over by Lev Ivanov. Tchaikovsky's music suggested "much broader vistas and a greater range of human feelings." Ivanov used the music as his primary inspiration, portraying, in Asafiev's words, "the ripening soul of a little girl, at first playing with dolls, and then arriving at the dawn of love through dreams of a brave and manly hero-in other words the process of the 'education of sentiments'".

Scene from The Nutcracker, Mariinsky Theatre, 1892

It seems that the combination of fairy tales and music created a new direction for ballets. No longer just pretty entertainment, ballet could be a deeper exploration of humanity. Fairy tale scholars would later see the tales as exploring the human subconscious, revealing universal stages of human development. Afasiev's descriptions of the music indicate that this process was already beginning in Russian ballet.

Also unrelated to fairy tales, but I find it fascinating to see how far ballet technique has come in the past couple hundred years. Even in the late nineteenth century, double pirouettes en pointe were considered a great rarity, whereas they're now considered standard for any ballet student. That partly has to do with the development of specialized pointe shoes, but ballet is so different now than it was then.

*No, the Nutcracker is not technically a fairy tale, but I really really like it
**All information taken from Natalia Roslavleva's book, Era of the Russian Ballet: 1770-1965

Swan Lake and gender perceptions

I saw Swan Lake this weekend and it was enchanting. Got me thinking once again about the story. Though the plot pulled very loosely from a few existing tales, it was basically created for the ballet itself. Given that it reflected the values of a few men in 1895, the gender roles in the ballet are very cliche. In fact, I found myself bored with Odette and Siegfried's characters-Siegfried spends the vast majority of his time looking perplexed, or trying to find Odette, who looks scared and woeful the whole time. My favorite part was Odile, who has not only the flashiest moves but at least looks like she enjoys dancing.

From this site, by Aaron Green:

"We do know that Tchaikovsky had much control over the stories content. He and his colleagues both agreed that the swan represented womanhood in its purest form. The stories and legends of swan-maidens date as far back as ancient Greece; when the Greek god Apollos was born, flying swans circled above their heads. Legends of swan maidens can also be found in The Tales of the Thousand and One Nights, Sweet Mikhail Ivanovich the Rover and The Legend of the Children of Lir. "

So I guess according to Tchaikovsky and his colleagues, "womanhood in its purest form" is a fragile and powerless creature, with no real personality or depth, defined by being a victim (Ironically, Tchaikovsky was a pretty fragile creature himself-more on that here.)
This view of women is frowned upon by most people in Western culture today. The ballet has been reinterpreted by Matthew Bourne with a corps of male swans, challenging preconceived notions (this is the production Billy Elliot stars in, if you saw the movie). Bourne said, "The idea of a male swan makes complete sense to me. The strength, the beauty, the enormous wingspan of these creatures suggests to the musculature of a male dancer more readily than a ballerina in her white tutu." It's true that the power of the male dancer is extremely impressive-while the female can acheive the affect of defying gravity by dancing en pointe, the male can do so simply by the strength of his jumps, seeming to linger in the air for longer than humanly possible.

Then of course there's the Mercedes Lackey novel, Black Swan, which I've mentioned multiple times before, but I kept thinking of Lackey's compelling characters as I watched the ballet. Though the prisoners of Von Rothbart are still victims, Lackey's females have depth and dimension and her unique take on Odile's character is just wonderful.

The original ballet ended with a tragic ending, and each production comes up with its own. I think happy endings are the most prevalent these days. Although, listening to the music-the famous minor theme is major at the end, it seems hard to believe it could accompany the death of any of the main characters.

The Snow Maiden: A Spring Fairy Tale

The Snow Maiden is a Russian tale that was set to music first by Tchaikovsky, then made into an opera by Rimsky-Korsakoff.

The tale itself is along the veins of the stories of seals, selkies, mermaids, or any other inhuman girl who lives on earth and has trouble with her love life. The Snow Maiden is the daughter of Spring Beauty and Grandfather Frost, and wants to go live with the villagers. The man she loves (Lel) loves another, while she does not love the man who loves her, (Mizgir,) which makes Mizgir's former lover, Kupava, jealous...but she ends up with Lel.

Mizgir still loves the Snow Maiden, and after seeing how happy Lel and Kupava are, the Snow Maiden decided she wants to truly be able to love (apparantly her affection for Lel before didn't cut it.) Yet as the Snow Maiden declares her love, a ray of sunlight appears, and she melts. Everyone is horrified, but it ends the fifteen year long winter under which the villagers had suffered.

The moral of all these stories appears to be that inhuman girls and mortal men can never stay together. Whether these were propogated by men who had been rejected and were feeling sorry for themselves, or women who hated the thought of being chained down, or by people who truly believed in superhuman creatures who were prone to romantic longings but did not belong with mortals, I don't know; but this type of tale is found all across Europe.

The excerpt above is from Rimsky-Korsakoff's opera. Below is from Tchaikovsky's incidental music to the same tale. This movement, Dance of the Tumblers, is very popular:

Swan Lake Origins-or lack thereof

Swan Lake is a hard story to track down the origins of. Most internet searches lead to Wikipedia, which gives the two most likely origins-the most likely source appears to be "The Stolen Veil," collected German stories by Johann Karl August Musaus, although I can't find text for it online. The other story alluded to is the Russian "The White Duck," (also in Andrew Lang's Yellow Fairy Book) although it has very little in common with Swan Lake. I think far more likely are the many tales from around the world of Selkies (or swans or seals) who shed their skins to become women, or perhaps other European tales where a band of brothers is turned into ravens or swans and their sister has to save them.

For anyone interested in reading on the possible origins of the ballet story, this has some good reading. No matter what the speculated origins, it points out that Tchaikovsky himself had a bit of influence on the ballet story, making it truly unique and not primarily a folk tale.

Surlalune has a Swan Maiden tale. The site is not yet annotated and doesn't include history currently, but this particular tale has a very interesting twist on the story-it has a more typical Swan Maiden beginning, where the man steals the dress of the maiden while she is bathing and won't give it back, insisting she become his wife. She goes with him unwillingly, although these tales always have them happily married after this rather unlikely beginning, which irritates me. As always, the maiden escapes when she has a chance-but then the fairy tale turns into East of Sun, West of the Moon, only with the male doing the searching instead of the woman. Once again, the running away part would imply that she doesn't WANT to be his wife, but once he finds her at the end she goes back with him and they live happily ever after (they must have a REALLY good marriage counselor.)

Speaking of gender role reversals-off of Surlalune you can read more versions on the web. One of Ashliman's collected tales is a German tale, "The Three Swans" (you have to scroll down past a couple other versions to get to it). In the tales about brothers turned into birds I mentioned before, the heroine saves them through a mix of silence and making shirts for them out of painful nettles. Naturally women get all up in arms because this could imply that the ideal female is silent, but in this version the male has to get the female back with suffering and silence! Although, the females who suffer from silence do so for a lot longer...

One more issue that comes up when telling this tale to children is the issue of the happy vs. sad ending. It's a controversial topic that comes up often in fairy tale conversations-which versions should we tell children? The most authentic, most "adult" versions? The Victorian, somewhat authentic, sometimes very morbid versions? Or the modern children's versions that fit our ideals of "child appropriate," which are not authentic at all?

There are those who adamantly claim that children should not be spoon-fed idealized and unrealistically happy stories, yet I wonder if they have ever actually looked a child in the face and told them all the gory details of an old fairy tale, or that the Prince and Odette die at the end of Swan Lake. It's simply different when you have an actual child in front of you. Keeping in mind, of course, that each child is different and has different tolerance levels. But speaking on the teacher side of things-parents get reeeally uptight about what you teach their children. Some of it is understandable and some of it is not (a fellow teacher once got a passive agressive letter starting, "Dear lady, I hear you have been telling kids I don't exist..." and signed "Santa Claus" because she taught a lesson to fourth graders about the history of Santa Claus. My mom has had to stop showing certain movie versions of stories because parents report that it gave their children nightmares.) Basically, when other people's children are in your care, it pays to be extra careful.

I solve the problem of the Swan Lake ending by asking, "Do you want the happy ending or the sad ending?" when telling it to students/children. No one has ever asked for just the sad ending-they either ask for both, or the happy one. Some storybooks, or maybe even ballet productions, have a true love conquers all ending, so it's not entirely made up by me.

Images-Finnish National Ballet, picture by Neil McCartney; Kiev Classical Ballet; Mariinsky Ballet

Sleeping Beauty-a Very Brief History

Edmund Dulac

Earliest influence-"Perceforest," French romance from 1528, which has similar elements-mainly a girl getting raped in her sleep.
Edmund Dulac

Giambattista Basile-"Sun, Moon, and Talia," from Il Pentamerone. A version can be read online here. Several suprising elements of this story-
-Talia is not cursed by a bad fairy, just had a bad horoscope.
-She doesn't prick her finger on a spindle, but gets flax under her fingernail
-A passing young king finds a hot, unconscious girl and rapes her
-Talia became pregnant from this and birthed twins. She woke when one of the twins sucked the flax out of her finger and names them Sun and Moon
-The young king thought to check back on his hot, unconcious lover and finds her alive and with his twins. They fall in love. Problem: he's married. His wife orders the children to be cooked, but the kindly cook hid the children.
-The Queen is about to burn Talia. She cries while removing her clothing and the King hears and comes. The King has the Queen burned instead and is about to burn the cook (thinking he had eaten his own children) but the cook brings out the children and is spared.
-Takeaway lesson: "And of course he married Talia, who lived a long and happy life with her husband and children, always knowing full well that "The person who is favored by fortune has good luck even while sleeping." "
Gustav Dore

Perrault-"Sleeping Beauty"-from Histoires ou Cont du temps passe, 1697. Online version available here.

Noteables from Perrault's version-
-Introduction of fairies, spindle prick curse, and hundred year sleep as antidote
-the good fairy puts servants to sleep to be there to serve the Princess when she wakes, but sends the parents away
-The passing prince hears of the tales and enters the castle. He doesn't actually kiss her, just happens to be there the moment the hundred years are over. They were married that night.
-The prince kept the marriage a secret. Again he fathers two children, Dawn and Day.
-The cannibalism attempt on the children and rescue by cook is repeated, but this time by the ogre mother-in-law. The Queen's fate is to be eaten as well.
-Ogre mom hears Day crying one day after she thought she had eaten them. Furious, she sets up a huge vat to be filled with vipers, toads, and all kinds of horrible animals, to kill the Queen and her children. The Prince returns home just in time to throw his mother in instead.
Gustav Dore

the brothers Grimm-"Briar Rose" in their Kinder und Hausmarchen, first edition 1812-online version here

Grimm notables:
-Story starts with childless couple wishing for child, wish granted by fish (or frog)
-This version is very close to the Perrault version, only it ends after the marriage-no ogres and attempted cannibalism
-the whole royal family is put to sleep
-Finally, the moment we've all been waiting for-the magic awakening kiss is introduced

Herbert Cole

New York City Ballet - Sleeping Beauty - Alexandra Ansanelli as Princess Aurora, Arch Higgins as a SuitorPhoto courtesy of Paul Kolnik

The ballet Sleeping Beauty-Music by Pyotr Tchaikovsky-1890 (read more on wikipedia)

Story noteables:

-Mostly based on the Grimm version
-After the kiss, a huge wedding is celebrated with many fairy tale characters, who each get to do a dance
-Names: Sleeping Beauty-Aurora, Prince-Florimund, bad fairy-Carabosse, main good fairy-the Lilac Fairy
-Note: details of plot and choreography will differ from company to company. So the ballet version is more malleable, more like the original oral versions, than the set-in-stone literary versions listed here.
Disney movie-Sleeping Beauty-(1957)

Noteables:-Only three good fairies instead of twelve
-The good fairies raise Briar Rose in an attempt to hide her from Maleficent
-This Princess meets and falls in love with the Prince before falling asleep
-A whole battle scene is added between the Prince and Maleficent, who is a dragon for part of the time
-Plot and characters embellished to make a full-length musical
-Soundtrack mostly taken from the Tchaikovsky ballet music

Tchaikovsky

Today is the composer Tchaikovsky's 170th birthday! (once again, thanks to Google icons for the reminder.) Since he is a pretty big figure in the world of fairy tales being made into ballets, and I have birthdays on the mind since my own was yesterday, I thought I'd do a little tribute to him. (Heidi of Surlalune also has a birthday this weekend. Quite the weekend! Good enough excuse as any to eat cake.)

Tchaikovsky, born on THIS VERY DATE in 1840, was an incredibly sensitive and weepy child. His nurse referred to him as a "child of glass." To this I can relate-I was also oversensitive as a child and my mother (who doubled as my piano teacher) wrote a little piece for me to play at a piano recital called "My China Doll." However, bearing similarities to Tchaikovsky isn't exactly something to be proud of.

Tchaikovksy started out in law and started music relatively later in life (at 21). He was horrible with money (he had to borrow money from his servant) and had a paranoia that his head would fall off while conducting, so he conducted with one hand and held his head with another. Like many great composers, critics hated his music at first. As far as his love life goes, he had an infatuation with soprano Desiree Artot, who married someone else. He was later married to Antonina Miliukova for a whopping nine weeks (bad even by celebrity marriage standards), but not surprising considering he was a closet homosexual. The marriage resulted in his attempted suicide, and she eventually ended up in an asylum.

However, his career started improving with the comission of Swan Lake in 1894. Below is an excerpt from the score:

The premiere was not well received, due to several non-music related factors, but including the fact that the Russians did not approve of the German fairy tale being used as the basis for the ballet. But with new choreography in 1895, and the introduction of the same dancer dancing both Odette and the enchanted Black Swan Odile, it has become a standard in the ballet repertoire. The excerpt below is Odile's part-note the famous 32 fouettes starting at about 10 minutes.

The original version ended in the death of Odette, as consequence from Seigfried's unwittingly professing love to the wrong woman (Odile). Other versions have added on a true love conquers all ending (If Disney ever created a Swan Lake, we all know which ending they'd choose. But it could hardly be worse than the Barbie Swan Lake, right?).


Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty premiered in 1890, and The Nutcracker was created later. Tchaikovsky himself didn't like his music for Swan Lake or The Nutcracker, which are now both greatly admired. Again, critics were harsh at the premiers, but shows how much critics know- The Nutcracker is the most performed ballet of the Western world.

Sleeping Beauty ballet

I always think of the Tchaikovsky ballets as seasonal--"Swan Lake" is fall/winter, "Nutcracker" is obviously Christmas, and "Sleeping Beauty" is a spring/summer ballet. Less dark than Swan Lake, in setting and in the music. And since Chicago weather has blessed us with a beautiful spring day, I couldn't resist.

Anyone who has seen the Disney version has already heard parts of the Tchaikovsky score.

In the ballet, the Rose Garland waltz is done for the celebration of the Princess' birth. The Disney team added words and it became "Once upon a dream."

(The song doesn't start till about 7 minutes in)

Musically, one of my favorite parts is the Rose Adagio, which also features the ballerina doing incredibly difficult balancing.

The plot of the ballet is similar to the story everyone knows, with the addition of a Lilac fairy to help the Prince find Sleeping Beauty, and a wedding celebration at the end where lots of other fairy tale characters show up.

The White Cat and Puss-in-Boots

Danced here by Natasha Oughtred and Ricardo Cervera

© John Ross

The Lilac Fairy - Daria Vasnetsova
Copyright: John Ross ©