Concert Report: Swan Lake by Joffrey Ballet Chicago

Over my Fall Break, I took a trip to Chicago to visit my family who came up from Nashville. The short break was spent catching up with each other and enjoying the huge city. On the second night, we decided to go see the Chicago Joffrey Ballet's performance of Swan Lake at the Auditorium Theatre there in Chicago. I didn't plan on using this performance as a concert report post, but after learning about Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, I felt like it would be very appropriate. 

This was the first time I had ever seen a main stage ballet performance, and I really did not know what to expect. I walked in and was struck by the enormity of the theatre space. The Auditorium Theatre is grand and very impressive, it set a great introduction for the show I was about to see. As the ballet began, it became apparent to me that this was going to be different than what I had imagined. I pictured the traditional Swan Lake enchanted, Grimm's fairytale environment, but the show was set in a 19th century ballet studio. It felt almost like a ballet inside a ballet. 

What really brought it together was the music and the choreography synchronized with the music. I didn't know it at the time, but I would learn about the exact composer who wrote Swan Lake, Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky. Just focusing on the music alone, there was a haunted and mesmerizing emotion evoked from the full orchestra. I hadn't heard Swan Lake in its entirety, and experiencing that was magical and even sort of eerie. I had never realized how chilling of a story Swan Lake is!

It really struck me how brilliant the storytelling of this performance was executed. As a theatre major, I am so used to working on dramas and musicals where the stories are told and performed through words. This was something entirely different. The only words throughout the entire three hour performance were the preshow emergency warnings. The story was told through the perfect synchronization of masterful ballet from the dancers at Joffrey, and the full orchestra conducted by Scott Speck. 

This is the only way I can explain the emotion and story telling: as you are listening to the music, you feel the intensity and atmosphere that the music wants to put you in. You feel the movement of the music but, just through the music alone, you can't really visualize how the music would be depicted through motion, which is right where the choreography comes alive. From the solos to the large group synchronizations, Joffrey Ballet did an excellent job at translating the music's emotion into actions, telling the story just through motion and music alone. 

 At the time of the show, in class we had only gotten up to the conclusion of the 18th century Enlightenment Era of classical music. Throughout the entire show I kept listening carefully, trying to identify the different cadences and phrase structure that we had studied through our look into 18th century music, but I kept getting stumped because there were so many slight differences. The phrase structure wasn't like what we had learned. There were varying lengths and elaborate tricks throughout the music. Just recently, I learned that it was confusing to me because it was just how Tchaikovsky put his mark on his music. Romantic Era music has an entirely different taste than 18th century Enlightenment Era music, and I feel like through Joffrey Ballet's Swan Lake, I have come to this realization and the differences have become more recognizable.