Louise Levene

Second life

Plus: a Swan Lake from Michael Keegan-Dolan that ditches Tchaikovsky, tutus and toe shoes

issue 16 December 2017

You can pay homage to a ballet classic or you can tear it up and reinvent it. Both approaches were on offer in London a fortnight ago: a revival of Frederick Ashton’s Sylvia, set to Léo Delibes’s 1876 score, and a Swan Lake from Michael Keegan-Dolan that ditches Tchaikovsky, tutus and toe shoes and relocates the story to a dysfunctional community in the Irish midlands.

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