Swan Lake, Royal Opera House review: Olga Smirnova rises to ballet's ultimate challenge

Swan Lake is the definitive classical ballet: to many people it is ballet. The Tchaikovsky score is a lush and tragic glory. Then there is the look of the thing, the blurred blend of aquamarine and ghost-white as the corps of swans takes possession of the stage, an expression of the ethereal magic that only ballet can conjure, and of the great innocence that sits at its heart.

But it is the dream girl Odette-Odile – the tender white swan, the alluring black facsimile – who holds all the mystery of the form. She is the female ballet dancer’s ultimate challenge, Hamlet in pointe shoes, and an image of mythic femaleness from a world far beyond today’s gender politicking. Her power is that of beauty, which is also true of ballet. It uses the human body to express emotion, in a way that is transcendent, highly cultivated and, above all, beautiful. Sometimes this makes it the ultimate art form. At other times, when the aesthetic becomes all about itself rather than the thing that it is expressing, it tips over into pointlessness.

Which can be the problem with the Bolshoi Ballet. The dancing is all that one could desire, not boringly perfect, but a delicate feast of silent springy jumps and that poignant placement of arm and head that only Vaganova training seems to produce (the rising star Eleonora Sevenard, in her Act II Polish princess dance, was notably rich in these qualities). Yet the grasp upon the meaning of Swan Lake – its tumultuous sense of love and loss – feels a little slippery. It doesn’t help that the story stops after every stunning interlude so that the dancers can take a mini curtain call, a Russian quirk that shatters illusion every time.

More unhelpful still, however, is the nature of this 2001 production by Yuri Grigorovich, the 10th Bolshoi version of Swan Lake since Petipa and Ivanov’s ballet premiered in 1895. It uses original choreography – including the matchless Odette-Siegfried pas de deux – but does some strange rearranging of the score, and it feels conceptually simplistic.

Grigorovich streamlined the ballet into two acts, with two contrasting scenes. The first depicts the “real world”, a medieval court filled with wigs reminiscent of Olivier’s Richard III, with the hero Siegfried a romantic young prince in search of a bride. The second is Siegfried’s “inner world”, in which he roams the dark landscape of his imagination and conjures the whole folkloric caboodle: Odette and Odile, the swans and their captor Von Rothbart, here conceived as “the Evil Genius”, a symbol of destiny who capers behind Siegfried and mirrors his movements.

There is logic to this concept. Swan Lake is indeed disjointed, with its showy court dances set alongside the stark purity of the swan scenes, but what this production proves is that trying to rationalise it leaves a feeling of impoverishment. Furthermore the first-night Siegfried, the light and elegant Semyon Chudin, does not really convey the emotional complexity that Grigorovich’s vision requires.

Yet none of this matters a jot, because Chudin is one of the best partners I have ever seen, and of possibly the finest Odette. Truly, Olga Smirnova is a dream girl to match the role. The articulacy of her limbs is a miracle. She floats en pointe with a leg bent in attitude as if born to be poised in that near-impossible way. When she first meets Siegfried, the terrified fluttering of her arms turns to a touching, animal-like curiosity as she decides tentatively upon trust. Although her lyric style is less naturally suited to Odile, she creates an extraordinary moment as she echoes, with feline irony, the yearning movements of her alter ego.

Smirnova is prodigious, of course, in her technique. Yet with her pale withdrawn face and immersed, selfless dancing, she takes one back to a lost time before 90-degree extensions and casual triple fouettés. Indeed I was reminded of a photograph of Olga Spessivtseva, described as the supreme classicist, who is the ballerina I should most like to have seen; absurd, perhaps, but I now feel as though I have.

The Bolshoi season continues at the Royal Opera House until Aug 17. Tickets: 020 7304 4000; roh.org.uk