This month, Calgarians can experience Alberta Ballet’s production of the legendary ballet Swan Lake. This beautifully elegant ballet deserves to be seen live. Choreographer Benjamin Pech’s ambitious vision takes the ballet in an interesting new direction, which is bound to excite those who will see the show. On most dates, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s breathtaking score is performed live, fully immersing the audience in the story.

Ahead of Alberta Ballet’s production of Swan Lake, WHERE Calgary chatted with Pech (former étoile of the Paris Opera Ballet) about the ballet.

“I love it because first of all, the music is absolutely stunning,” Pech says. “I think it is the most beautiful score of Tchaikovsky to dance on. Also, all the layers of the characters are so intense. It’s really interesting for a dancer to get into that. The third reason is that Swan Lake is probably one of the only roles in the repertoire that we follow the story through the male. Normally, you follow the female – we follow the story through the male character Siegfried. It makes it very special because it is his point of view.”

Pech changed up the story, as in his version of Swan Lake, he reimagined Benno as the true villain. “I wanted to tell the story between two boys – Siegfried and his best friend Benno,” he says. “It’s about betrayal… I thought it was interesting to eliminate the magician in the traditional version, which is Rothbart and to give that part to Benno, so Benno becomes the angular stone of the story. He is jealous of his friend. He wants everything Siegfried has and everything Siegfried doesn’t want, because Siegfried just wants to escape his condition. Benno is envious. He wants to get the power. He wants to have attention… It was really interesting to read the story through the friendship of two males.”

In taking this approach, Pech hopes the audience can relate more to the story. “I think it was amusing and more interesting for the audience to have the possibility to identify themselves with something that can happen in their life,” he explains. “I wanted, of course, to make a ballet that brings the audience to another place – a very dreamy thing. I also wanted to say something which was very actual, and that’s why I chose the angle of the relationship between the two males. I find it really interesting to find an aspect where somebody in the audience could go, ‘Oh, that could happen to me in my life too.’”

Pech feels it is important to keep ballet's traditions alive, but also to modernize it for the new generation. “We keep moving from one generation to another, passing on the tradition, and, of course, dance has evolved,” he says. “We don’t dance the same 30 years ago, even 10 years ago, but the little keys that you need to keep because they are part of the tradition, I like to give them to the new generation. My mission as a young choreographer is to keep this rep alive. We have to understand where we come from to know where we go. When I go to see ballet, most of the time, I think it is a bit old-fashioned and can be a bit tacky. I want to bring the best of that world because it’s my world, and to keep the tradition, but to modernize it a little bit and to keep it alive because it is very actual. You just need to re-adapt it. That’s why I changed the story. In the new version of the story that I’m doing for Alberta Ballet, I decided to put the ballet in the 50s – it works perfectly. It’s the same emotion. You have to do something you don’t want to do, and you have to try and find an escape, and that escape is to fall in love with something or someone.”

Being the choreographer for such an iconic and beloved ballet like Swan Lake is an incredibly special honour; however, it does come with its share of challenges. Pech shares what he found was the most challenging part of the process. “The most incredible challenge was to be on the level of the music because the music is such a masterpiece,” he says. “But it is also a great help because Tchaikovsky said everything. The music is very narrative, and it tells the story in a very magnificent way, so I had to follow the story and put the dramaturgy, the drama point on that [same] level.”

Updating the score was another challenge that Pech had to deal with. “As the choreographer, my starting point is always the music because I think the music says everything,” he says. “I reorganized the score a little bit because there is a lot of reprise and a lot of repetition… I tried to build a score and a rhythm that keeps you very active – I don’t want to destroy what was made, but I just want to make it the best. I built the score and have my structure; it is kind of like the foundation of a house. I know I can do beautiful decorations inside and organize something very homey. Then right away I talk to the conductor [Marcelo Spaccarotella] and say, ‘Ok, this is how I want to do it. This is the cut I want to do,’ and 99% of the time they agree with me.”

For his version of Swan Lake, Pech also wanted to shorten it a bit to keep the audience’s attention throughout the performance. “You don’t want to be sitting for three and a half hours with two intermissions as it’s too much and too long for the audience,” he says. “I just wanted to keep one intermission. I’m doing the first act and the second act, and then a break. Then I do the third act, and right away I go into the fourth act, whereas some versions just do a break between the third and fourth act. I think it was interesting to keep the attention of the public always on and to keep the dramaturgy level very high because the third act is the highest point of the betrayal. You don’t want to have the curtain down, go to the toilet, and have a glass of champagne. You want to just keep going on in the story, like when you watch a series on Netflix, you just want to go on to the next episode.”

From March 13-21, you can catch Swan Lake in Calgary at the Southern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium. Swan Lake is also coming to Edmonton on March 27th and 28th at the Northern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium. “It’s magical, and it's part of history,” Pech smiles. “The music is amazing, and just to be in the room when the light comes down, and you watch this story of Siegfried, I think it brings a lot of emotion. You have to go, you have to come, and you have to clap your hands.”

Joseph Mastel