Scottish Ballet's Swan Lake fails to live up to the hype

Dawson’s piece certainly breaks radically with the ­tradition set by Lev Ivanov’s famous 1895 ­production in St Petersburg. However, one ­hesitates to endorse Scottish Ballet’s boast that this is a “Swan Lake for a new generation”.

For sure, John Otto’s set designs are ­characterised by a combination of cool, grey ­minimalism and occasional, bold ­post-industrialism (think large, pseudo-metallic lattice works that are reminiscent of the bigger engineering works of Scotland’s past).

Yumiko Takeshima’s costumes dovetail with Otto’s sets, opting for simple, 21st-century attire in pastels and shades of grey.

In visual terms, the production is, without question, about as far from the opulence of Tsarist Russia as it is possible to get. ­

However, Dawson offers in its stead a work of visual ­insipidness that lacks entirely the dynamism of modernity.

Here, Prince Siegfried and his blue-blooded pals seem like a band of Old Etonians who have all gone shopping in the same high-street ­clothing store. When Princess Odette and her friends are transformed into tutu-less swans, their lingerie-style attire looks like ­something Michelle Mone might have sold before she ­donned the ermine (and the full PPE ­outfit) and took to the benches of the House of Lords …

Dance is, of course, a sweaty business, but some of the fabrics selected here seem to have ­actually been designed to provide visual ­evidence of the perspiration of balletic ­exertion. Take, for instance, the early pas de deux ­between Siegfried and the white swan Odette.

Dawson transforms the scene from a fairytale vision into what looks like a late-night ­encounter between a sweat-soaked, male ­clubber and his half-dressed girlfriend.

This juddering conflict between the beauty of Tchaikovsky’s glorious score and the imagery on stage is typical of the production.

The problem here is not the show’s ­“modernity”, but its lack of conviction in its supposed modernism.

Sadly, Dawson displays little of the visual ­imagination of a great modernist choreographer such as Pina Bausch, Lloyd Newson or Michael Clark. Much of the dance here swings between classical ballet and contemporary dance, and, in doing so, it satisfies the demands of neither.

Which is a pity, as there are some lovely touches, such as the pleasing geometries of the first great swan scene.

The dancing itself is, as one would ­expect of Scottish Ballet, universally excellent, with ­Bruno Micchiardi impressing as Siegfried and Sophie Martin (Odette/Odile) all but stealing the show with a performance that is, ­paradoxically, as graceful as it is ­vigorous.

Thank goodness for the superb Scottish Ballet Orchestra (under the baton of Martin Yates). If the colour and vitality of their live playing were to be replaced by recorded ­music (as, depressingly, is the fate of Leeds-based Northern Ballet), this production would sink to deeper levels of disappointment.

As it is, however, one can’t help but feel that this revival is a mistake.

This Swan Lake is a failed experiment that would have been better left on the shelf.

Touring until May 4