Giannandrea Poesio

Ruffled feathers

The Royal Ballet could not have timed better its new run of Swan Lake. Swans — and black ones, in particular — are all the rage these days.

issue 29 January 2011

The Royal Ballet could not have timed better its new run of Swan Lake. Swans — and black ones, in particular — are all the rage these days.

The Royal Ballet could not have timed better its new run of Swan Lake. Swans — and black ones, in particular — are all the rage these days. Unsurprisingly, the first performance played to a packed house, although the sell-out could not be entirely credited to the swan-o-mania prompted by Aronofsky’s movie Black Swan.

Sarah Lamb starred in the demanding double role that the ballet is famous for and which the film focuses on. Not unlike the character portrayed by Natalie Portman, she is a diaphanous beauty, who knows how to turn into a splendidly vicious and irresistible seductress. Lamb, however, is also the dancer who, two days before the performance, exposed the movie’s fallacies on live television, refuting what Portman had said just a few minutes earlier.

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