Review: THE SWAN, Birmingham Royal Ballet Home From Home

Since taking the lead as Birmingham Royal Ballet's Director just three months ago, Carlos Acosta certainly hasn't had the easiest time of it. His ambitious first season of programming - featuring Don Quixote, Romeo and Juliet, their popular Nutcracker and a exciting Curated by Carlos bill featuring Alessandra Ferri - is on hold for now thanks to Coronavirus, but Acosta has not shied away from trying something new.

Quickly shifting into Home From Home mode, Acosta and co. have experimented with performance and social distancing to create a specially adapted version of The Dying Swan, or as it is known here as simply The Swan. It premieres online as part of the BBC's Culture in Quarantine festival.

The Swan is a short solo made famous by Anna Pavlova, who first danced it in 1905, composed by Camille Saint-Saëns and choreographed by Mikhail Fokine. Commonly mistaken as featuring in Swan Lake, the standalone piece was performed by Pavlova an incredible 4,000 times, it is estimated.

In the video, Acosta introduces the work, admitting, "I frankly don't know how it's going to turn out", describing how he hopes the piece will evoke a sense of the end of something and beginning of something else.

A simple three-way split screen shows our two musicians, pianist Jonathan Higgins and cellist António Novais, from their respective homes, with Birmingham Royal Ballet Principal Céline Gittens in the centre, shown in her living room, fully dressed in a dazzling white tutu, pointe shoes and a feathered headdress. Acosta has especially adapted the choreography, not only to create a more uplifting conclusion but also to allow for the confined space.

Gittens flutters wearily and desperately, but there is something hypnotic and watchable about her plight - her neat bourrées contrasting with her wild arms and stretched fingers. She covers one side of the room to another in a few small steps and a tense arabesque pose before entering a faster, more frenzied series of turns while still busily, urgently running en pointe.

In an affecting conclusion that diverts from the original, Gittens is seen placing her hands to her heart before raising them aloft as if to spread a message of hope before turning to face away from the camera. It's powerfully effective.

The evident claustrophobia is so very relatable, but made beautiful here, and will speak to us all in these unique times of lockdown.

This really is a moving watch that delicately captures these strange times we're all experiencing. Loneliness, desperation and eventually promise mean this is a touching, emotive and uplifting few minutes of art in a climate where such a distraction is very welcome.

You can watch The Swan and check out Birmingham Royal Ballet's other lockdown offerings here

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