REVIEW: Swan Lake, Moscow Ballet – La Classique, at Pavilion Theatre, Worthing

But Prince Siegfried was a right evening April Fool at The Pavilion Theatre on Sunday (April 1).

The sudden and apparently permanent calculating smile on the face of his perceived beloved was something completely new as “she” arrived at the court for his birthday entertainment.

As we know, his shy and sensitive Odette is not the Odile he is now confronted with, as chaperoned and fathered by the Von Rothbart in a way the evil magician had not behaved with Odile at the lakeside in Act 2.

The smile was incessant on Anastasia Chumakova’s face and Siegfried never twigs until too late.

Despite Odette’s fleeting appearance before Rothbart flings his cloak in front of her as desperate a screen.

This so-simple deception in Swan Lake is when we have to suspend our disbelief.

Surely Odile must even smell different to Odette.

But, hey ho, such is this sorcerer Rothbart’s ruthless power.

And, contrary to Russian ballet tradition, in this production he is undone and destroyed by the reunification Odette permits in forgiving Siegfried his stupidity and in betrothal grabbing her lifeline back to humanity.

The ballet crowds thronged back the Pavilion to see this Russian company in its most famous and popular native Tchaikovsky repertoire.

The Moscow-born, now Latvian-residing Chumakova rejoined the company as guest principal for this tour.

Her dancing was plenty of what the swan requires and as her imposter she duly sparkled, but her characterisation was as dismaying as Odile as it had been winning as Odette.

By the lake she defeated her shyness and fear, and in their pas de deux warmed to Dmitry Smirnov’s Siegfried to the extent of twice stealing a kiss, and, of course, incurring the wrath of Rothbart.

But not before two subtle pairs of head movements told us in bird-speech, that she was even edging towards mating mode.

But I fear her blatant Odile took us unnecessarily close to pantomime.